| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| BaftaBaby |
Posted - 12/27/2010 : 19:09:37
I APOLOGIZE TO YOU ALL IN ADVANCE FOR THIS - BUT I'M TURNING INTO A VIEWING MACHINE IN A HERCULEAN EFFORT TO WATCH A GAZILLION FILMS IN TIME FOR THE 1ST ROUND BAFTA VOTING. AS SOME OF YOU WILL KNOW MY RECENT ILL HEALTH PREVENTED ME FROM SEEING SO MANY OF THESE IN THE CINEMA. NOW IT'S A BIT OF A RACE TO CHOMP UP ALL THE DVDs THE ACADEMY SENDS. So, please forgive me, but I'm posting up the film threads I've started on the 4UM so I can refer to them in making my assessments. once the three voting rounds are done, I promise to remove this, or to leave it if you want. What I just don't have time to do, I'm afraid is to enter into any discussions about these films or my take on them. And I ALSO PROMISE TO KEEP THOSE OF YOU WHO ARE INTERESTED INFORMED ABOUT THE VARIOUS VOTING ROUND RESULTS. Then we can all have a virtual BAFTA party! Thanks so much for your indulgence.
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Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Well, Michael Apted's certainly revitalized this franchise with some bold strokes, and thank goodness, some real laughs. Will Poulter, that kid from Son of Rambow, does a nice line in the Annoying-Cousin-who-gets-his-comeuppance department, as he and the two younger Pevensies embark on a wild and wet adventure.
There's plenty to absorb your attention, and an odd conflation of risk and safety that should hold adults as well as kids.
The fx are quite stunning, as you'd expect and the story just rollicks along to a satisfying, if a tad predictable conclusion.
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Little Fockers
I'm sure this franchise is nearing its Fock quota. This latest is yet another Focking romp of little import but great opportunity for some veteran talent to camp it up and shake it up and rip it up. They're all as comfy as an old sofa that's been recovered a few too many times.
As before, Stiller and DeNiro carry it, but with performances they could have phoned in.
There's a very sweet little lizard. I could have done with more of him.
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Tron:Legacy
It is not a good sign when you spend so much time watching stunning light fx - some even embedded in the skin-tight catsuits which reminded me of the once trendy gear designed by Yves St Laurent in the late 60s, and here worn by nearly everyone inside the grid - watching and wondering how complicated it must be to unleash the clothing to go for a crap.
And by the way, where ARE the hygiene facilities in this world? You see the clones and iso-folk eating at one point - so you gotta assume there are digestive consequences. One of the meal items includes a roast suckling pig. Which got me wondering how come we never see any farmland, or even a digital equivalent. There's digital booze, glassfuls of ice blue stuff out of one of those vodka commercials. But no pets, no plants growing, no kiddies, and no moms ... in fact no women except for a handful of service bots.
And that iso. Who turns out to have feelings. Gee, I bet that whiney kid from A.I. wishes she was his mom. Oh, yeah, another thing - her eye make-up is very neatly applied, but for what? What does she need make-up for? Oh, I get it ... for the Best Hair and Make-Up Award!
No, none of that musing is a good sign. But, of course, there is no real film, is there? I mean it's no surprise that first-time feature director Joseph Kosinski comes from the games world. Because more than anything, the film looks as though it's a game prototype.
You know I absolutely adore Jeff Bridges and think he's one of the most talented actors we're privileged to see in our lifetime, but even he cannot turn this turgid turd of a script into anything but the pretentious crap it is. Some of the dialogue, especially that assigned his son, is just laughable, and then there's his own hippy-dippy zen peace-and-love, we have to learn to value who we are bullshit. It all sounds as though it's copied from a particularly bad comic book. Philosophy for Dummies.
So, ok, what did I expect? And, no, I'm not a 12-year-old boy, clearly the target market for this.
And yet, if it weren't for the totally predictable music actually there are some shots in the grid-fights that might be a kind of light ballet.
Then, out of nowhere, mincing it up like the love-child of Tim Curry's Frankenfurter and Lady Gaga, we have silvery-faced Michael Sheen ... as Zuse -- does he have the power of Zeus, or is that just some illustrated wordplay?
Well, don't look for logic. I never thought Tron-the-first was actually a good film, but I really dug the whole idea of becoming so immersed in vid-games that you literally became absorbed into one. That seemed novel at the time.
This time round - well, yes, the sfx are stunning, but ... in the one moment of truth Kosinski and the writers offer ... it's all blown away by the fragile power of a sunrise.
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Gulliver's Travels
How disappointing is Rob Letterman's inane version of the wonderful social satire by Jonathan Swift. Swift was kind of like the Lenny Bruce or Bill Hicks of his era ... extremely entertaining even as he pointed out the contradictions and hypocrisies of contemporary life. And believe me they haven't changed so very much in over three hundred years.
Letterman's Gulliver, embodied in the talented pudge-ball that is Jack Black, may be full of the kind of elastic energy that bounces Letterman's animated features Shark Tale and Monsters vs Aliens, but it's an empty ride.
He's turned Swift's social commentary into a ho-hum fairy-tale fuelled by the most cavalier kind of romance. He's wasted the comic talents of the likes of Catherine Tate, Chris O'Dowd, and James Corden, and relegated Emily Blunt to a stooge alternating between simper-simper and karate-kicker.
What a great project this might have been in the hands of Chris Morris!
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Megamind
I think the first Pixar thing I ever saw was a demo copy of a short where the 'I' in Pixar becomes a baby character of a desk light. It comes alive discovering its powers as a piece of animation. The sheer brilliance of the cgi ability to create emotions, indeed a personality, based on so little astounded me and the others who were privileged to see it.
How quickly we've become accustomed to what the technology can do, and let's face it, how we crave characters inhabiting stories that are worthy of it.
By chance - as if I didn't have enough films to watch before Wednesday night's 1st round voting deadline -- I saw WALL-E again. As my faithful readers will know it's one of my fav films of the decade. I wasn't planning to see it, but just checking something on the telly, and there it was. I couldn't stop watching, even though I knew nearly every frame by heart. And yes it still made me laugh and it still brought tears to my eyes.
I didn't dislike Megamind exactly. But I can't imagine that in a few years if I happened on it on telly that I'd drop everything else to watch it again.
The story's wholly derivative, going way past homage to a mixed bag of super-heroes and villains including Superman and The Incredible family, and Gru and the minions from Despicable Me. But there's precious little wit to justify the references, nor do they help shape the basic story, never mind create something new.
Since Despicable Me paved the way for an animated kids film to big-up a villain, the message has become really fuzzy. I mean - take away the bright color animation and perky music - what if a kids film comedy featured Britney Spears behaving badly i.e. living la vida loca, snorting lines, mainlining, falling down drunk without her knickers on, attacking people with fists and put-downs. But she was beloved by a photo-journalist who managed to get her into rehab. Is that a cartoon you want your kids to see?
Megamind is yawn-yawn in 3D. There is no earthly reason for it to be in 3D. If the filmmakers had spent the 3D budget on a script even a fraction as witty as that first Pixar demo, the voice talent they've captured would have been immortalized in a classic.
But, you know, even the combined delights of Will Ferrell, Tina Fey, Brad Pitt, and yes, even Jonah Hill - have not been given enough to create truly memorable characters. I suppose the only one we really connect with is Megamind's minion, voiced by David Cross (Crane in the Kung Fu Panda movies). Here he's a little fish with big powers and a bigger heart. I bet if he ever met the little light from the Pixar short they'd be best pals.
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Animals United
The cruellest thing my mom could hit us kids with was not that she was angry, but that she was disappointed. I really hated that. But, having seen co-writer/ director Reinhard Klooss & co's animated eco-friendly animation about how the world's animals get together to protest about humans screwing up the planet ... well, all I can say is I'm very, very disappointed.
Oh, how I wanted to love this. I really want the kids who'll take over when we're all gone to understand early why the eco message is so important. What I know with every eco-cell of my being is that neither kids nor adults will ever respond well to preachy lectures.
The fact the speeches are delivered by such a group of wonderful and well-meaning actors won't change anything.
The project started life as a popular German children's book. I dunno, maybe it's just lost a lot in translation. Its heart is definitely in the right place, but it forgets who it's aimed at.
Unlike most of the stuff I've been viewing, I saw this in a cinema. With kids films I'm always conscious of loo-traffic. This was practically non-stop. As the film dragged on these kids wanted to be anywhere else.
Me too!
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Steet Dance 3D
You don't really have to be into either street dance or ballet to admire the sheer hard graft that dancers need to perfect their art form. A documentary wouldn't have conveyed half the exuberance of the kids that make up the crew inherited by Carly when Jay, her partner in bed and on the streets ups and leaves. Time out, as he says.
Jane English contrives an okay-ish story to justify the reason anyone would go to see this UK reply to the Step Up films. The dancing is everything.
All you need to know is that there's a Street Dance Off coming up, and some ballet students are gearing up for their auditions to the Royal Ballet. Their stories merge via English's screenplay, which provides just enough non-skid stepping stones to follow these dancers' dreams. But the script is sloppy: for example there's an early scene of lesbo flirting that's not only never followed up, but totally superceded by the hetero pairing off of the young women involved. So it all feels totally gratuitous.
Though not much real acting is required, some of it only serves to point up the inexperience of several of the cast. For some it's not only their first film, but their first time as actors. But there's one thing for sure, they can all dance and dance and dance and dance. And when they're through they dance some more.
Veteran and imaginative music-vid and commercials directors Max and Dania know how to turn the appropriate spotlights on both forms of dance. They're best in the show-stopper numbers where the focus is on kapow and technique. They're shakier on grounds that balance the cheesy personal story threading through it all. Too much is derivative, and we don't really care about the peripherals. And that's depite some scenes from such highly reliable performers as Charlotte Rampling, Eleanor Bron, and Max Baladi.
The real star of the show is the choreography - here divided into the ballet stuff with stage and tv veteran Will Tuckett and Kenrick Sandy, called the godfather of UK street dance.
If nothing else the film should land a b-boy toprock on any cynic who thinks the Brits can't dance.
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Another Year
Mike Leigh's Another Year proves yet again the depth of his understanding of how people behave. He presents the film as a quartet of seasons, each introduced by white on black titles, a la Woody Allen. Which is where the parallel ends.
Woody's forte has always been a unique and largely successful comic wardrobe donned by a medley of characters as though physical and verbal schtick were dress-up garments. His more "cerebral," Bergmanesque works pointedly ask questions about the hypocrisy of relationships. But he cannot seem to unite the two approaches.
What Leigh achieves pretty consistently is something Woody's never truly managed to pull off. Namely scores of films that reflect the way people's choices guide their lives, and without hectoring, invite you to include yourself in the equation. That he can achieve a level of sublime, quiet humour as well as the poignancy of truth, attests to the success of his working methods and the sheer commitment of his cast.
Chief among these are the three given the most screen time -- which is not to denigrate the contribution of any of the lesser roles. It's ensemble work in the real Vakhtangovian sense. The screen almost glows whenever Lesley Manville's deeply troubled Mary appears, and matching her luminance are the couple who more than tolerate her often unbearable cries for help - Ruth Sheen and Jim Broadbent.
The two have evolved the kind of comfortable married relationship that recognizes life is lived in discreet moments, it's neither a competition nor a linear progression.
They accept and respect and love each other - he the geological engineer, digging deep to accommodate a changing landscape; she a hospital cousellor sensitively probing the emotional pain of her patients to cauterize it with gentle truth.
Withal they each have great heart and are generous with it and their time. Without being cloying they embody what's fundamentally good in people. A sort of middle-class English Our Town for our times. In some kind of comic brilliance they're called Tom and Gerri.
Mary muscles into the balance and completeness of their lives as a long-time work colleague of Gerri's. Her form of muscle is a subconscious courting of disaster. She's a magnet for wrong choices and in her solipsistic view of cause and effect, she can hardly acknowledge that anyone's life might actually go on without her. She represents herself as happy when it's nakedly clear she's drowning in tears.
Add to the mix Tom and Gerri's still-unmarried-at-30 son Joe, Tom's very under-developed brother up North, and his long-time pal Ken, who matches Mary in self-imposed misery.
There's really no plot to spoil, merely incidents whose appearances are often surprising but never gratuitous. It's the way the cast models those moments without the need for 3-D glasses that gives the film its particular brand of recognition. It's the familiarity of being human.
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Inception
It may be that the most original thing about this is its not always successful splicing of the Michael Bay/John Woo gene with the Charlie Kauffman DNA - particularly his helix of Synecdoche.
I know it feels like it's about dreams, but it's not about dreams. Dreams is a McGuffin. No Freud was harmed in the making of this motion picture. Though some dream imagery has been plundered.
It's really about architecture. About responsibility. About accepting responsibility for the architecture of your life as reinterpreted by you to reach points of understanding, and, equally as important, points of acceptance.
It's about how all our life experiences are constructed from the same - or similar enough - building blocks, which we continually examine and play with and add to throughout our conscious and unconscious time. There's a great Yiddish word - potchke. That, Nolan suggests, is what we do all the time. We fiddle about. We re-assess. We change the lighting. Change the temperature. Change the angle. We remember what it was like when ... anticipate what it's going to be like when ... We're pursued by, almost haunted by the relationships of our past. The most visceral ones. The ones that matter most. And we fit in others. Briefly significant others. Others we hardly notice until ...
Nolan wants us to examine those edifices we've created in which to enclose ourselves, to protect ourselves, to con ourselves ... and find the courage to let them crumble, to hang on to the solidity of grass, of impermeable snow, of the frightening predictability of the tides.
Over all this he imposes lotsa action and even more noise.
What he forgets is to provide enough human dimension to people whom we should care about and not just be fascinated by. In the end, his film of ideas seems to have carved no room for the heart.
Shame, because it's so brilliantly crafted.
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Toy Story 3
I don't wanna make myself too unpopular here. Let's just say, pixar-magic apart, it didn't make me want to run out immediately and see it again. Which TS 1 certainly did.
But ... I cannot praise enough the by-now obligatory short Night and Day which preceded the main flick. Visually it reminded me of the early Mr Magoo and Gerald McBoing-Boing cartoons. But as for ideas and life lessons - just chock-full, pithy, engaging - even astounding. I don't care whether kids will get it or not. I totally loved it. By comparison, TS3 is fine, fine.
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The Death and Life of Charlie St Cloud
I tried, I really did, to willingly suspend my disbelief to try to squeeze anything valuable from this candy-coated piece of mushy turd.
Zac Effron is gorgeous, no two ways about it. He's a decent actor and in scenes with Charlie Tahan who plays his little brother, both capture the screen with an ease you'll really believe.
And - apart from some stunning pix of the Puget Sound region - that's about it, folks.
There's no charisma between Zac and Amanda Crew. The script was churned out by ScriptRobot on a bad rivet day.
Oh, yeah. There are sailing boats.
If any frame of this film moves you in any direction except toward the Exit sign, there's no hope for you, my friend.
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Made in Dagenham
Nigel Cole's latest tells the true tale of the 150-ish women in 1968 who worked as machinists on the Ford line in Dagenham, a factory district in East London.
Against all odds in an almost totally male-dominated workforce, they paved the way for equal pay for equal work, regardless of gender.
A few tiny facts have been conflated for dramatic purposes, but by and large Cole's presented a pretty accurate account, helped by some of the finest performances by a group of British actors I've seen for ages. Also some excellent work by West Wing grad Richard Schiff, emphasizing the pressures of US industrial policies in the world market.
It's not a laugh a minute comedy, though it does have some refreshing and unsentimental humour. But it's a truly human film - and if you Palin-eers can overcome your prejudices - you'll see it's not a political tract nor a preachy polemic. It's real and true about people and friendships and how people cope with the expected and the unexpected.
A joy to watch that will stay with you for quite a while.
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The Social Network
As randall sez -- best film of the year. Don't even think about it - just go see it!
Whatever else it is, it's the best screen treatment of misunderstanding - not just between generations and genders - but, much trickier - between people who are more intelligent than the majority of dodos who make such vital decisions about our collective lives - and those said dodos.
If Sorkin doesn't win every Best Screenplay award going - then I guess it'll be the dodos doing the voting.
I repeat: Don't even think about it - just go see it!
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The Next Three Days
Talking acting here -- the thing is that Russell Crowe probably couldn't turn in a bad performance if they paid him. The natural screen charisma he exudes is topped by such attention to detail you'd think he'd fashioned it with elven tools.
When as ultra-devoted hubby to jailed wife Elizabeth Banks he visits her, together and without very much dialogue, they establish the years of a marriage built on trust and devotion. Both, but especially he, send out looks that mean there's no way he will ever believe her guilty of murder and failed as they are by the system, he will find a way to get her life back, get their lives back. Back together with their son.
They are quite simply the kind of family that assumes a mythical paradigm. The kind that 1950s American television tried to make us believe was possible, despite clear evidence to the contrary, latterly documented by such post-modern series as Mad Men.
But director Paul Haggis, in this remake of the French film Pour Elle (For Her), propels Crowe into a journey of emotional truth that sadly never quites lift the material from its confused roots. It's clearly not a typical romance, nor exactly a thriller, though it borrows from both genres.
It does play with our sense of uncertainty. Maybe she did really kill a woman. Maybe he's just driven so crazy from the implications of what the rest of his/her/their life will be like from now on, that he must take any risk to subvert the inevitable.
Either way, there's just not enough substance. The pacing is great, the shots often sublime. And if excellent acting is enough for you to overlook big fat scripting flaws, then see it for a lesson in screen honesty.
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Never Let Me Go
Oh, this one's gonna divide people, and you can quote me on that! From the same pen that brought you repression personified in The Remains of the Day, comes another understated tale, this one set in the what-if parallel universe of our recent past.
Director Mark Romanek, who made his name with music vids, also gave us One Hour Photo, which is becoming one of my fave films of the decade.
I'm afraid this one ain't. It's no fault of Romanek who produces the kind of imagery that embues ordinary British suburban landscapes with a frosting of magic.
And the trio of Carey Mulligan, Andrew "Spiderman-in-Waiting" Garfield, and Keira Knightley work well on their own and together, pretty equally matched. Even Knightley almost completely loses her mannerisms.
Their able support is provided primarily by Charlotte Rampling, doing the best she can with very little, and Sally Hawkins, playing brilliantly against the ebulliance that made her name, as a teacher who can't play the game anymore.
So I guess it's a matter of how surprising you find the film's (and the novel's) premise of a society that cannabalizes some of its children for the benefit of the majority.
Now, on a philosophical level it's an intriguing premise, and one which someone like Nagasaki-born Ishiguro probably wrestles with on a daily basis. And who can blame him.
But for me, the screenplay is too gentle, too remote, its consequences too far below the surface to truly engage me. Others will connect more strongly.
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Black Swan
First, and just in case I get sidetracked ... you will NOT recognize Winona Ryder, whose brief time onscreen conveys everything you need to know about the once-lauded prima ballerina about to retire not so gracefully. You just know that a decade or so ago she'd have acquitted herself in the title role as stunningly as does Natalie Portman here.
Aronofsky's film probably takes a bit too long to get galloping, but it does eventually explode into a tale, part melodrama, part psychological exploration, and all theatrical alakazam. And, though I see the need for some, even most of it - there's just a tad too much gratuitious prurience. When it's woven, however, into Portman's labyrinthine emotional journey it's an homage to the best of David Lynch. And I mean that in a good way!
What Aronofsky has achieved - and very few directors ever have - is the depiction of irrational obsession and single-minded joy and pain that makes the life of a dedicated artist more rigorous, more onerous than going down the mines.
That Portman as Nina the Ballerina -- (I think the nursery-like rhyming, thought but not uttered, is a deliberate attempt to prove how she defines herself, echoed in the toys that still decorate her room though she's well into her 20s) -- that she so brilliantly masters the journey is quite simply amazing. For the depth and grace and pain of her performance she deserves every scrap of applause that greets her staggering last portrayal of The Swan Queen from Tchaikovsky's classic ballet.
What artists need to do with every breathing moment is relegate everything to a synthesis of what will help in the conquest of their particular challenge. This is as true of ballet dancers as of fine actors, painters, poets, et al.
Standing in Nina's way yet essential to her throughout the rehearsal journey are her overly supportive ex-dancer mother, the choreographer/impressario, and a new girl in the company whom she both identifies with and suspects.
The way her paranoia grows feathers and then wings is really at the heart of the film. When Aronofsky chooses moments to visualize the process, we're in for a real cinema treat.
Barbara Hershey as the mother, Vincent Cassel as the choreographer, and Mila Kunis as the new girl are all way out in front of the chorus for Portman. But it's so much her film, that when ballet shoes are mentioned hereafter we'll still think Shearer Red, but with swans, it's gonna be Portman Black.
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The Kids Are All Right
Just two questions on today's pop quiz:
Why isn't this wittier?
Would anyone seriously be considering this film if it weren't about a lesbian family?
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True Grit
Comparisons, as we know, are odious. And I'm surely not saying that Henry Hathaway wasn't anything except a wonderful director, especially comfortable with the big action sweep of the western.
When he came, as an old man, to True Grit in 1969 he was as empathetic to Rooster Cogburn as he could be. Maybe, though, he suffered from a post-war hangover of expectation, with not enough recognition that the studio movie was in transition to a different kind of story-telling.
Maybe it's just that the Coen Brothers remake has too much superior cinema driving it moment by moment. Or maybe it's just that I've never ever ever bought two words that John Wayne strings together; whereas I think Jeff Bridges inhabits every character he plays with some sublime transcendence that simultaneously reminds you he's a star as well as making you believe he has become another person.
Compare his Cogburn with another recent aging alcoholic Bad Blake. He's just so brilliant at carving out two completely different men built on individual and most importantly specific histories.
The Coens have based their screenplay on the original used by Hathaway, but have cleansed it of any hint of schmaltz. The music is period-perfect and evocative of all the values that the western genre was devised to represent. The brothers' framing of every shot is faultless, and the editing is like a symphony.
The result is an exciting tale of hunt the villain, fueled perhaps not by the most original narrative impetus, but justifiable in its humanity. Perhaps the theme isn't quite as towering as similar treatments by Sophocles, and perhaps Mattie Ross hasn't the heightened stature of a 19th century Antigone, but the film satisfies on a purely human level.
Haile Steinfeld as 14-year-old Mattie has learned much from her three-year career. She's surprising with a determination that proves the title is equally about her as it is about the fuck-up Cogburn.
The Coens never manipulate you - they tell their tale with precision, with humor, with heart. They've surrounded their unlikely pair of protagonists with a uniformly excellent cast, including most prominently Matt Damon and Josh Brolin.
Brolin, especially, turns in one of the bravest performances I've seen lately - never for one moment is he afraid to reveal the pitiable worm of a man who's resorted to ultimate cowardice. He even provides hints, in the brief time he's onscreen, that something quite horrid has made him into what he's become.
There's no big moment of what I'll call the Bonanza-music-finale. But there's a cathartic finality that just about convinces me that the top-and-tail voiceover is justified. And normally, I really hate them!
Go see it.
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Somewhere
Nope, I just don't get what the fuss is about. Coppola's kid's not a bad director, but there's just nothing memorable that she brings to this ho-hum tale. Dorff is just fine, and so indeed is Elle Fanning, but in the end - who cares?
Would the praise be lavished as thickly as brie on toast if Coppola weren't her daddy's daughter? I think not, and certainly not for this film.
For openers, we've got twenty minutes of almost wordless "flavor" - putting Dorff as filmstar Johnny Marco in context as a divorced dad whose ex dumps the kid on him while she "finds herself." Twenty minutes that could easily have been squeezed into five, for all it actually provided.
Then the rest of the film is a series of some almost-arbitrary moments of Dorff-dad coping. Or not, as the case may be.
I don't care if the concept is supposed to be some recognition of Coppola's own childhood. In fact, she hardly makes me care about any of it, mostly because we've seen it all before in more crafted hands.
I've read that some folks think this is a compassionate film. It's slick, I'll grant you that. And there are no glaring errors. But it's got all the compassion of a l'Oreal commercial. And I'm worth more than that.
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Rabbit Hole
I didn't see the Tony-award winning play on which this film is based, but I sure hope it was structured with greater attention to what's expected of drama. Because in sheer story-telling terms, this is a tear-stained mess.
Well, I say tear-stained even though it brought not one lump to my throat, but then maybe I've just seen too many grieving parents for the loss of a kid films.
Straight away, however, you will not find better acting from any of this year's crop. Both Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhardt as the bereaved Corbetts match each other for totally believable emotional subtlety and beneath the surface truth. They're surrounded by an equally able supporting cast headed by Dianne Wiest as her mom.
Shortbus director John Cameron Mitchell acquits himself well, confident in his framing and the rhythms of his editing.
But just a step back to take in the bigger picture reveals what's missing - any sense of drama and surprise. Considering it's the playwright who's credited with the screenplay, that's surprising in itself.
There's one relationship the could have formed the basis for a truly engaging and original film, but it's treated as a side-bar, brought into the story far too late and then sketched in with colored sand that blows away in the wind. What's left is probably a t.v. movie that deserves neither its big screen presentation nor budget.
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Miral
Julian Schnabel's tale of Palestinian female courage couldn't be further from his previous feature, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, though both are based on true tales.
Sadly, this gap isn't just in choice of subject matter, but also of style - the first film powerful and contained, whereas this is a rambling treatment, patchwork affair. Normally, I'd give the director the benefit of the doubt that such a choice was deliberate - in this case perhaps to underscore the chaotic nature of a conflict that's been raging since Israel was declared a state in 1948.
But I really don't think so. The very raggedy opening certainly isn't saved by cameos from the super-reliable Vanessa Redgrave and Willem Dafoe. Their appearances only raise expectations above some ropey dialogue and acting - expectations never picked up let alone developed into anything that resembles story-telling.
Even though Bell&Butterfly told various truths, their encasement in drama rendered the film vital - no mean feat when the protagonist is trapped in an iron lung the whole time.
In Miral - whose name, we learn early on means "those common little red flowers that grow by the roadside" - characters are introduced then dropped before we ever get to bond with them, let alone care that some are experiencing hell on earth.
I like very much that, without being at all anti-Semetic and not forgetting Schnabel's own Jewish ancestry, the film's p.o.v. is an antidote to the west's largely condemnatory perception of the Palestinian plight. But Schnabel does nothing except string together a series of incidences over more than 40 years, so we learn very little and feel even less.
We're meant to understand why a young Arab woman would take the path of rebellion given the history. But the film explains nothing, and certainly not viscerally. It's just too arbitrary in the telling, a bit like a badly-researched school report and, sadly, Schnabel too often seems way out of control.
His screen vision - actual framing, camera positioning, etc - those are as solid as you'd expect from someone who made his reputation as a painter. And perhaps, not being catty just saying - perhaps he was too close to his partner to do her screenplay the favor of brutal editing.
Shame really - there's a really important story buried somewhere in here. But, like some of the impoverished Palestinian villagers, it's been too destroyed to recognize.
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Beyond the Pole
No, not a Slavic doco, or one about "those" dancers, but an almost hilarious pseudo-doc about two loser friends who decide to "do something" to save the world from eco-fuck-ups.
One, Stephen Mangan, whose planet-passion is genuine, but may also be driven by the utter hopelessness of his private life, is joined by best-pal Rhys Thomas who approaches life as a kind of adventure whatever it throws at him. His naive enthusiasm contrasts well with Mangan's more stolid sense of purpose.
They decide they can best save the world by walking, unsupported, to the North Pole. Unsupported means they can accept no help from anyone once they begin their snowy hike near the edge of the Artic Circle. Mangan aims to stay true to his organic, vegetarian lifestyle, whereas Thomas is keen to make it into the Guinness Book of Records. You get the feeling, though, that if Mangan would rather starve than eat a dead seal, Thomas would wolf down a wolf if it meant saving his life over principles.
Both men are skilled comic actors, frequently appearing in some of the funniest UK television shows where they've honed timing, understatement, and a wonderful sense of irony.
Thomas garnered national praise as the green-around-the-gills host of a BBC Radio4 pseudo-phone-in show, largely a vehicle for some of Britain's finest comic actors to create and present a gallery of characters.
So appreciative of his and Mangan's work was Helen Baxendale (the one that Ross marries in Friends), star of the hit series Cold Feet, that she endorsed them for her second feature as Executive Producer. Both films are beautifully directed and co-written by her partner David Williams.
The film shifts effectively from comedy to a deeper exploration of all levels of human relationships. It's the kind of presentation done so well by The Office, so that itself isn't a problem. But there is one of focus.
So, even at under an hour and a half, the film feels too long, and perhaps may have started life as a pilot for a television series that got poked and prodded into a feature somewhere along the way.
The supporting cast, particularly the ever-reliable Mark Benton as the lads' equally absorbed point-of-contact back home and long under-rated Rosie Cavaliero as Thomas's devoted girlfriend, are excellent no matter how much screen time they occupy.
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The King's Speech
Well, I totally agree about the level of filmmaking expertise. randall's points about the acting are well made and justified - it's significant, too, that of the two of them, whose close-up ends the film. The direction, while not astounding is thoroughly reliable as are all the technical supports. And the script is crisp and spare (except for a few scenes of wordy exposition) and understands the power of levity.
Pity, though, so many crits continue to be so beguiled by the whole notion of monarchy. I'm not talking now about any of the actual people who happened to be born into The Firm, as they call themselves.
At one point it's revealed that the notion of Divine Right of Kings is alive and well, held not least by the royals themselves ... and that's not so very long ago. Not a notion I'm comfortable with, dunno about you.
So as a portrait of a true friendship of equals, as Logue demands, it's a very moving experience. It would be wrong, though, to extrapolate from that, especially given what had to be left out of the account.
Despite the fact Bertie was subject to such appalling behaviour from those around him, The Firm is as privileged as is possible to be.
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127 Hours
If you think you won't find anything mesmerizing watching a man trapped by a rock, think again.
There are plenty of people who worked to make this true tale of adventurer Aron Ralston's life-testing 5 and a half day ordeal into a stunning recreation not only of the situation itself, but of its emotional effects. But truly, it's director Danny Boyle's constant filmic invention and the remarkable performance by James Franco that demands our attention.
Boyle needed the actor to deliver the moment-by-moment micro-changes which propelled Aron from the witty, look-danger-in-the-eye-and-laugh-in-its-face carefree guy to someone who finally has time to stop climbing and abseiling and plunging and hiking to appreciate the fabric of his life. And then to make the kind of decisions you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy just to survive. Franco delivers.
That's really all you need to know - when it comes near you, go meet it.
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The Illusionist
Words like charm and innocence blink on and off throughout this film like random traffic lights. But they don't cast a lot of light.
It's not that there's anything wrong with Chomet's follow-up to the surprising Belleville, except perhaps it's about 40 or 50 years past its sell-by date.
The script is by the late genius Jacques Tati and dedicated to his late daughter Sophie Tatischeff who died aged 55 of lung cancer in 2001. Word is Tati had planned the film as a live action piece, himself as a down-on-his-luck magician with Sophie in the role of the Scottish lass he meets in the highlands and with whom he forms a relationship.
See, back then such a concept was pretty well clear of innuendo, in the same way that Eric and Ernie sharing a bed never conjured up Brokeback Comedians.
As you'd expect from Chomet, the animation itself goes a long way to redressing the Pixar balance. As with Tati's live action films the dialog, though just about audible, is largely and intentionally unitelligible. The film's about what happens between the characters, not what they say. Actually, a bit of dialog might have helped.
Because that's where the film falls down flatter than 2D. Though we can surmise the magician's pain of dreams unfilled, we're never quite sure about the girl, not even how old she is, or come to that, whether she's just slow-witted or possessed of the kind of innocent trust not unusual in the transition from post-war retrenchment to 60's ebullience. Nor do we know why the magician - called Taticheff - accepts, albeit reluctantly, to slip on the cloak of quasi-parenthood, assuming complete care for her.
Various people who claim to know, suggest that Tati was plagued by guilt for abandoning his eldest daughter after splitting with her mother, and for neglecting his other kids because of work commitments. The script was meant to make amends.
And, though there's much to praise in Chomet's depiction of Scotland, especially Edinburgh in its small brave grandeur, taken on its own without benefit of explanation, the film leaves us a bit baffled.
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Hereafter
What's so careful about Clint Eastwood's latest, transcends any saccharine notion of whether or not there's an afterlife or any of the trappings that accompany such an unimaginative question.
Instead what we get is an acceptance that plenty of people all over the world have opinions and beliefs around such a complex aspect of our curious selves. I mean curious in the sense of our curiosity, whatever it lands on, to try to make sense of the chaos, the inexplicable, the moments of coincidence and connection that feed our lives.
Screenwriter Peter Morgan has openly stated, and Eastwood more reticently implied that neither believes in an afterlife. And that seems just fine to me. Both Beethoven and Berlioz were atheists who composed sublime religious music. That's art for ya - weaving with heart and skill all the stuff that connects us.
Perfect in Morgan's unsentimental intelligent script is the introduction of Dickens as a template for Hereafter's themes, his novels being so dependent on them, whatever the tale. And the introduction of the great dead author feels wholly organic to the plot.
Eastwood is among only a handful of directors who could so confidently open a film with the iconic tsunami horror still vivid, still evocative of a power whose force we can only begin to quantify, let alone understand.
When a film kicks off with such sheer chaos we know we're not in for some innocuous special fx vehicle culminating in such a tragic event. And we're sure not going to get the all-too common laughable attempts at characterization, or endings of moments of pre-fab hope. Gee, I wonder if I could be thinking of Roland Emmerich ...
No, what Eastwood does is whip you from that wave into a tripartite tale of three minds connected by their attempts to understand not just events but their lasting consequences. I say three, but one of those is shared by a pair of twins.
The way the individual stories are so separate is part of the pattern, epitomised in much of Dickens. So when the strands do converge, however unlikely, it doesn't feel so contrived we can't accept and welcome it.
Because, Eastwood seems to be saying, life is like that sometimes. Stop asking the questions that can never have answers and just live. Life will smack you in the chops one minute and kiss your boo-boos the next, and no one knows what's coming round the corner.
In such an ensemble piece it's invidious to single anyone out and only the inexperienced twins don't quite measure up. I forgive them.
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London River
This gem of a film is surprising. It's about something important, it never relies on cliches to tell a deceptively simple story, and most of all celebrates themes so universal they reach out across the world to change the heart.
Let's get out of the way up front that the film is set in the aftermath of the July London bombings five years ago. That is definitely NOT what the film is about, but I believe you cannot truly understand it without knowing the geo-political situation at the time.
Most tellingly during the following weeks, both in Iraq and Afghanistan, there were escalations of heavy bombings, primarily against isolated village targets. The UK papers ran stories of attacks on weddings and children's hospitals among others.
OK - I wanna take a brief sidebar here. Personally, I'm very sceptical about the official explanations of these horrific bombings, both in London and in the two war zones. This was a particular moment when both the Americans and the Brits were trying to re-invigorate dwindling support for foreign military action. It was in the run-up to the planned American annual tribute to the bombing of the WTC.
For the British public generally, any sympathy for that condemnable event had devolved into media jokes and, significantly, to a confusion of how to interpret the phrase nine-eleven.
See, in the UK, I have NEVER heard anyone refer to dates like that. Brits speak of the Lockerbie tragedy, not of 12/21 or 21/12. If Europeans see a date written as 9/11 they'd instantly assume it signified the ninth of November, and not the eleventh of September.
Brits were publicly asking what had happened on the ninth of November that the Americans wanted us to mark with them. Let's not forget we're talking about a society that finds it hard to recall what happened last week.
So, anyway, I believe that someone or some group of people inside or outside of power, needed a symbol to justify the already planned military escalations. In Iraq was the matter of not being able to contain the guerilla tactics of the rebels. In Afghanistan the atmosphere was clouded by moves to silence the opposition to election results which were increasingly suspect in the world's press.
And everywhere was a largely unchallenged and mistaken view that Al-Qaeda and the Taliban were one and the same. There was certainly no public acknowledgment that it was the US that had originated and funded Al-Qaeda as a controllable means of opposing the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Nor that both Russia and US were primarily focused on controlling a vital section of the fuel supply chain between Asia and the Middle East. In Charlie Wilson's War, Mike Nichols deals with this and the CIA's involvement.
But, however unspeakable they were in human terms, in p.r. terms the London July 2005 bombs were a damp squib. No one spoke of seven/seven and marches against UK military action increased as Blair's support was questioned.
So, when the London bombs went off the police were extra-vigilant and especially eager not to be called racist in their pursuit of Arabic speaking and Asian looking suspects.
But Rachid Bouchareb's London River explores a much more human though no-less dynamic story, his cinema expertise honed after a quarter century of filmmaking.
The London explosions trigger a mother's quite understandable desire to have her only daughter confirm that she's all right. Brenda Blethyn as the mother has never been better ... and that's saying a lot. I hope the nature of the film doesn't color Bafta's members' voting her Best Actress. And this is a year of truly astounding female talent, including Natalie Portman and the amazing Ruth Sheen. It's the scripts, really ... because Blethyn's widowed Elisabeth Sommers has the most treacherous river to cross.
When daughter Jane fails to respond to any of her chirpy, then scolding, then thinly disguised panicky attempts to make contact, Elisabeth persuades her brother to look after her farm, donkeys, and dog, while she plays detective in London.
She goes through all the expected channels, camps out in her daughter's flat, and papers the neighbourhood with photos of Jane.
After hitting many frustrating dead-ends, and trying hard to overcome the racial prejudice she cannot quite disguise - even in the face of undeniable help, support and good-will by the blacks and Muslims she meets - she finally is contacted by the French-speaking Mr Ousmane, who thinks his missing son may hold a clue to her missing daughter.
That Elisabeth, well-off widow of a naval officer, should be fluent in French is no surprise. She may be selectively naive and sometimes a bit slow on the uptake, but she's not stupid and has been well-schooled in the expectations of her class.
It's an unlikely pairing - this Devon woman of the soil and a dreadlocked highly articulate arborculturalist, neither of whom truly knows their children. He left his Mali family to pursue a highly successful career in Paris, still in touch with his wife, but having left his son exclusively in her care. Jane has also been raised by a single mum when Elisabeth's husband was killed in the Falklands war.
The film reveals the many crossings each must make to reach the genuine points of communication that seal their bond.
As Ousmane Sotigui Kouyati's performance over-runs superlatives. He won the Silver Bear at Berlin for his portrayal, prepared brilliantly by his long career as a tribal story-teller, and as a member of Peter Brooks' story-telling theatrical company. His approach couldn't be more perfect for Blethyn's, learned to such exhilarating effect by her work with Mike Leigh.
It's one of the saddest pieces of cinema news to report Kouyati's death soon after his Berlin triumph.
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Barney's Version
The novels of Mordechai Richler, so rooted in the Canadian-Jewish experience, have only occasionally tempted Hollywood, as The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. Though he's often called the Canadian Philip Roth, Richler's insights, perhaps more gentle though no less incisive than Philip Roth's more muscular narratives, consistently failed to find real acclaim outside of Canada.
Now, as his first feature since Whale Music, Barney's Vision - dedicated to Richler by television director Richard J. Lewis - is clearly a labor of love, unleashing main character Barney Panofsky to barge through his own and our lives.
The film's already been and will be again nominated for a slew of Best Picture awards, but really it doesn't and won't deserve them.
Not that it's a turkey, even a non-kosher one. But, at 2 and a half hours long, and though it presents many scenes and some well-observed moments delivered by a stunningly good cast, we never actually learn what makes Barney run, or tick, or scream, or fuck-up, or act-out, or self-destruct.
There are plenty of missed chances to understand this aging romantic who gets more from friends and family than he appears to deserve. I'm pretty sure part of the problem is that Richler's novel, though published in 1997 was begun decades before and its references and ambience feel constipated and old-fashioned.
Lewis and 1st-time feature screenwriter Michael Konyves don't help, primarily because they've chosen to eliminate the sine qua non of the novel -- a memoir by one of Barney's sworn enemies which galvanizes Barney to provide his own Version of his life. It's a mistake to conflate that with the book from an ex-cop pursuing a cold case over decades, one that seeks to implicate Barney.
But we've seen too many stories of men rampaging through life to be satisfied with just a parade of incidents. We at least want the Version to give us even a hint of the wisdom both Barney and his son ask from their respective fathers.
Although we know nowhere near enough about son Michael to predict whether the acorn will fall far enough from the tree to grow up less twisted, we see both Barney and his charmingly obnoxious dad betray those they love. But where did the pattern begin, and why are these guys so un-self-aware that they seem quite impotent to recognize the prison of their own behavior, let alone change it.
And then they whine for some forgiveness, never understanding why it won't and can't be granted.
Somehow, and with far more genuine humor than the film manages, Richler's novel does shine hint-y lights on Barney's emotional stasis, relating his own development to its cultural context.
What makes you keep watching, I guess, is down to Paul Giamattis' staggering central performance. He has and will be nominated for a Best Actor award and yep, he does deserve it. He even had me believing that such a shlubby guy, so wobbly of gut, so thin of hair, so hangdog of eye, so bloody unsexy - that such a guy could partner a succession of - as they're referred to in the film - lookers. Well, at least I could suspend my disbelief till my arms got tired.
Why any one of those women would be attracted to him is not only never answered, it's never even questioned. And that's most significant for his third major relationship with a beloved wife and mother of his two kids. As embodied by Rosamund Pike she parlays an astounding youthful intellect and emotional depth into a sophisticated developed persona that just gets more and more profound. She's just terrific.
The supporting cast makes the most of every moment, particularly Dustin Hoffman as Barney's ex-cop father. As a series of in-jokes there are cameos by Canadians David Cronenberg, Atom Egoyan, and Paul Gross.
I just wish all that banquet-sized footage provided a more satisfying cine-feast.
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Chico & Rita
If you're a fan of the kind of jazz overflowing from American and European jazz clubs in the 1940s, 50s and 60s, and you celebrate the adult animation of films like Waltz with Bashir and Persepolis, you'll find lots to love in this decades-long love story between fabulous jazz singer Rita and Chico, the equally talented piano player she meets in the Havana hood.
Experienced director Fernando Trueba and his less confident co-helmer Javier Mariscal really elevate their material both visually (with no-holds barred sex scenes), and with a truly infectious soundtrack.
Yes, the story is poignant in theory, but it's never really clear why the love story takes the twists and turns it does. A more socially aware script would have used the vagaries of the relationship as an organic outgrowth of the complex political situation instead of using it primarily as a backdrop. There are some points made about American racial hypocrisy and Cuban cultural anti-imperialism. But they're isolated points with no demonstrable bearing on the focal romance.
Instead, that story is full of cliches of cheating lovers, false expectations, the inability to communicate and missed opportunities.
The ending should be as resolute and emotionally satisfying as a Duke Ellington suite, but unless you're easily manipulated, it's just not.
The filmmakers have just taken on too much to present a story as lean and spare as the music. It's as true for movies as for music - less is more.
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Blue Valentine
I guess how much you take from this film will depend on how many others like it you've seen before, and whether you think this version - directed and co-scripted by Derek Cianfrance and co-produced by stars Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams - tells you anything new.
When I say 1) I've seen lots and 2) nope, you'll get an idea of my own assessment.
But first the good stuff. Gosling and Williams are almost in an acting duel, thrusting and parrying - and not just sexually. They play a couple teetering on marital disaster, torn apart by her emotional estrangement, his amorous delusions, and devotion to Frankie, their small adorable daughter (Faith Wladyka quite brilliant).
As the day progresses we get to change and change again opinions of who could/should take responsibility for the couple's disintegration. Punctuating these scenes are a series of flashbacks over the years of meeting, wooing, sharing fun, lotsa sex, whispers of dreams, and ultimate disappointments.
You keep wanting to reach into the screen and hand them each the number of a terrific couples counsellor.
At one point - perhaps THE point - of realization, we get the warring couple each admitting they just don't know what to do. That the answer for her is so different than for him underscores their ultimate incompatibility. And yet, perhaps, there is a wisp of hope.
The film has quite a European sensibility, and that's a change from most La-la Land depictions of personal problems. But I'm not sure why I'm meant to be engaged by this particular version of a post-modern family phenomenon.
I suspect it would all have more potency if it made more of the unintended effects of the socio-economics of society on what's expected from the so-called norm.
Am I supposed to use Cindi and Dean's story to question what family love is all about? Because these people are just not that interesting. It's a bit like listening to someone recounting their dreams. You're pretty sure what they're saying has significance for them. You're just not really sure it has anything relevant for you.
But hey, I'm an old cynic and you may find all this stuff refreshing and novel.
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Brighton Rock
After months of speculation that Carey Mulligan would be starring opposite Sam Riley in Rowan Joffe's remake of John Boulting's classic Brighton Rock, Wall Street won out and Andrea Riseborough took the part of Rose.
This remake's bona fides seem to auger well. Joffe is, after all, the progeny of powerful director Roland and meticulous actress Jane Lapotaire. Riley won kudos as Ian Curtis in Control. Graham Greene's source novel is packed full of ideas, fit for the 1947 version as well as this updating. The support cast most tellingly headed by Helen Mirren, John Hurt, Phil Daniels, and Andy Serkis are really no more than fine, but then there's little to challenge them.
Riseborough's quirky looks sustain our interest because although Rose is incapable of deception, Andrea lets us witness whatever passes for logic in justifying her character's actions and attractions.
Part of Richard Attenborough's seething irrationality in the role of Pinkie is sparked by an irritation with Rose's OTT expressions of what she believes is true love. But here she's not given the chance to try to learn what drives Pinkie bananas, so we have no idea why she chooses to stay with him.
After seeing him as Curtis, I just don't believe that Riley's incapable of the emotional demands of Pinkie Brown's psycopathy. But Joffe's screenplay reduces both Pinkie and Rose to the kind of melodrama B movie relationships so favored by Hollywood as cine-fodder for double bills that changed twice a week. It's a cliche, and an almost risible one, to see Pinkie pull the legs off a spider as someone might the petals of a daisy for the old love test.
Boulting knew that Greene's story was worth more than that. That it used Pinkie's condition to examine the relationship between the sense of failure sometimes felt by devout believers when they cannot conquer what they're told are their basest impulses. That's why it was important that Pinkie was actually or felt himself to be impotent, possibly homosexual, and certainly not complicit with Rose's naive expectations of love.
Greene's Pinkie is far closer to the insane counterpart created by James Cagney in White Heat. This Pinkie's too tepid to inspire either true fear or loyalty.
Greene's setting in the 1930s was also a deliberate reminder of the growing sense of violent social fascism - not necessarily allied to the Nazis - which was increasingly the result of a global financial crisis.
Joffe's choice to update Greene's story is in itself neither wise nor ill-advised. Many stories gain by being told with a different perspective. But to update it to an era on the brink of the kind of cultural explosion only possible after a period of financial security, that just seems to misunderstand why Greene created his microcosm of small-minded criminals.
The film is also overloaded with inappropriate visual references to an era of film noir. This is just film grey, rooted nowhere. There's very little sense of place or of the means by which mid-1960s teens and young people were grabbing at the technicolor excitement bleeding into their bleak lives, from the Big Smoke and The Big Apple.
Greene's underlying religious questions are reduced to a few lines and scenes so arbitrary and unrealistic they're laughable. Why bother?
Apparently at one point Martin Scorsese mooted a remake. Oh, how I wish he had taken it on.
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Biutiful
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu has produced some remarkable work in Amores Perros, 28 Grams, and most recently Babel. As director and co-writer of this latest he continues never to shy away from the complex and brutal layers of the lives of people in trouble.
Biutiful is set in Barcelona but weaves a tale that implicates several cultures, each caught in a downward spiral of poverty and its associated choices for survival. Some are more successful than others.
The focus is on Uxbal, played by Javier Bardem with what poets call quiet desperation. Like so many people, he really doesn't know what to do for the best. Unlike so many, he can admit it. Perhaps it's the newly discovered threat to his health that allows him to step back from the crap he's covered his life with. Perhaps the crap is just too thick to ignore.
He's a dad of two, granted custody over an emotionally disturbed wife whose own fairly predictable destructive choices render her truly unfit as a parent. The embers of love just about cast a beam of heat within this family, but their prospects sure ain't good.
And then Uxbal learns of the horrific cruelty his actions have caused. It's the kind of social shock shoved at us by Arthur Miller in All My Sons.
Inarritu's and Bardem's dual portrayal of Uxbal's personal story proves just the vehicle for the interdependence of people. In fact, without it, life isn't merely not biutiful, it's meaningless.
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Four Lions
Chris Morris, comedy brain supreme, caused one of the most hysterical and potent media scandals with his Cake episode of a seminal series called Brass Eye. The show parodied those hard-hitting investigative series which intercut filmed sequences with talking head interviews, sometimes with media celebs.
Cake was supposed to be a highly addictive substance being marketed to children. Many politicians and telly personalities were duped into proclaiming their collective outrage. But neither the episode nor the show was about embarrassing particular people, nor was it, as some asshole critics declared, condoning kids taking drugs. It was a scathing examination of how far the media will go for a sensational story.
Morris's reputation survived, though his prime-time profile suffered. Four Lions should redress the balance. It's his feature directorial debut and pulls no punches about the insane way the media portrays Muslims, primarily to justify the barely legal so-called security operations.
By the way, much of it is stunningly funny. Anyone who's concluded that Morris is racially prejudiced because one of his main characters isn't the brightest bulb on the tree, really can't see beyond their own nose.
Morris presents us with four friends, flirting with and then wholly embracing the kind of Muslim revenge on -- well, on not being Muslim. They plan a series of destructions in the name of the cause, but are completely deluded about what that cause might be. Their hip-hop street talk blends into a kind of Pakistani slang with bits of the Koran and the wisdom of elders. They each have their own interpretation of the meaning, except that they can all relate to blowing stuff up.
The film follows them in their determination to do something, hiding their fears behind bombast. Only the white convert consistently pursues his fanatacism, disgusted by everyone and everything, even these so-called mates.
Without turning a klieg light on it, Morris implies the various ways that policy makers manipulate society's outsiders to justify their own agenda.
It's funny, warm, and very human.
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The Disappearance of Alice Creed
This taut quasi-thriller has had a staggered global release and is on the list for this year's Bafta Awards, so I'm just catching up.
It's almost Pinteresque in the way it transcends genre, and though it might have worked as a three-hander stageplay, it never feels closed in. There's LOTS wrong with it, but also plenty right.
That's mainly down to the terse menace of Eddie Marson as Vic, the meticulous kidnapper, fully confident, wholly convinced he has planned for every contingency. Martin Compston plays Danny, his accomplice. They appear to be working together like clockwork. It's a job. Do the kidnap, follow the plan, and wind up as rich as small-time criminals think is big buck-land. Chump change, of course, to bankers, CEOs and stock-market high rollers.
But this is a different world from that. This is a rusty-dusty British world, and debut director J. Blakeson maps the territory well. His sure-fire command of the screen is one of the film's big pluses. Sadly, he also wrote the screenplay, which just slithers away from him.
As does the eponymous kidnap victim. And, despite being hampered by way more than her various tethers, Gemma Arterton really acquits herself well. She's definitely got enough talent and intellect to be offered more layered and challenging roles that this, or - come to that - than the equally scrappy Tamara Drewe.
But, as his screenplay for The Descent shows, Blakeson doesn't really seem interested in any socio-political extrapolations from the canny dramatic devices he engineers so precisely. He possesses neither Pinter's more subtle contrasts between victim and abuser as in his remarkable playlet for The National Theatre - One For The Road, nor John Huston's exploration of trust among the most untrustworthy in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
Blakeson presents as bare-boned a set-up as we need, and by the first ten almost wordless minutes, we're pretty sure we know or intuit everything we need to about the two villains.
That we learn so much more as the film progresses is fully justified. But what's missing is any reason to care. And of course if we can't care about these two, what about the victim herself?
And that's the film's biggest flaw. It doesn't seem to matter to Blakeson what will befall her, so it never really matters to us. He handles her character with all the objectivity of the items that put her in the control of the men.
He might have been filming an ad for bondage gear. Indeed when the men go shopping - a brilliantly executed scene - you almost expect a jingle and pack-shot.
I hope he teams up with a writer who can best structure the stories that claim him - they're highly commercial and he'll be able to hone his directorial skill before being diverted by some auteur notion when he really has nothing to say.
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NEDS
Peter Mullan's latest directorial triumph is kind of like a Glaswegian version of This Is England. It's quirky and bleak and honest, and has a central performance by the very talented Conor McCarron as John McGill.
Well, everyone's pretty fucking fine, actually - and I'm swearing because if you don't fucking like it, don't fucking see the fucking film. If youse fucking ken what I fucking mean.
We first meet McCarron's younger self as the unusally intelligent son of an abusive drunken father (Mullan himself), and a caring mother who's also looking after John's younger sister, and trying to keep tabs on his tearaway older brother Benny.
John's relentlessly bullied at school and by roaming gangs of restless, aimless boys determined to make up in violence what they lack in deportment and etiquette skills. It's the early 1970s. Need I say more.
At first John learns to keep his mouth shut in the face of fury, then finds satisfaction that his brother's pals will sort out anyone who dares lay a pinky on him.
Still a high achiever scholastically, he's got that much further to fall when the system lets him down and he learns that teachers and so-called figures of authority can also be bullies.
So the film tracks John's journey to why-fucking-bother, plunging him deeply into the kind of madness epitomised by a certain Travis Bickle.
When social consistency has all the solidity of slush, no wonder John dissolves into the dirt. And I warn you, it gets pretty brutal before some final hope descends. And that may be illusory.
Mullan has such a sure hand on the tiller that you have to stay with him, even though what you want to do is run far, far away and pretend these things didn't happen then and don't happen now.
You might allow yourself to ask why. If not, the film will tell you to fuck right off.
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Of Gods and Men
Based on the true story of how a handful of monks - based for decades in an Algerian monastery - coped during the height of the frightening
terrorization of the local population by a group called Armed Islamic Group of Algeria.
The film, which has already garnered presitigious awards throughout Europe, including in Cannes, was directed by the well-respected Xavier Beauvois. The French title, Of Men and Gods, probably sounds more sonorous in French, but either way it's one of the more poignant stories you'll see. Quite simply it allows us to be cloistered with a group of people whose eventual fate wrote shocking headlines around the globe.
Without feeling claustrophobic the ensemble of actors - the best for me being the wonderful Michael Londsdale - convey no idyllic collection of religious devotes, but a heartfelt and sometimes very funny accommodation to those we must respect. Must, not out of fear or threat, but undeniable connection.
Some of the monks have clearly come to such a retreat from full but strangely unfulfilled lives outside. Lonsdale, for example, was a doctor. He now treats the Muslim villagers and anyone else needing his services and has been able to re-supply his medicine store with no trouble.
The sudden schism of the political situation is briefly dealt with, but more to underline our understanding of the imminent threat than to provide a history lesson.
The technical achievements of the moviemaking process rely on sheer skill rather than special effects. There is one sustained shot of menace that will haunt me, I know, and it has no people in it. But you know they're there, the threatened and the powerful.
There is no musical soundtrack, save for a series of intoned prayers by the monks which punctuate the action. Until, that is, at a point when their dwindling and bleak choices have become undeniable to them, Lonsdale turns on the music of Swan Lake and pours out some fine wine. No dialogue, but their expressions say everything.
I guess my only quibble with this little gem, is that the only manifestion of the monks' interchange with the town involves a handful of villagers who have come to depend on them for medical treatment. We know the monks have sustained other relationships - we see them offer their home-grown produce at the local market. But where, for example, are at least a couple of scenes with a school, a mosque, something.
It's a deliberate choice I know. I'm just not sure it colors our judgement in the fairest way.
But do please see it if it comes your way.
//////////////
The Fighter
Well, I thought I'd seen all my choices for Best Actor. Until I saw Christian Bale in the true tale of Dicky Ekland, a boxer forever hoping for a comeback but diverted by a crack habit and one of the most controlling mothers ever shown on screen.
Back to Bale in a moment ... first let's talk Melissa Leo as much married mom of 9 kids - the almost expendable daughters who bleat on the sidelines like a Greek chorus whose scripts have been stolen by vultures - and her two favorites, the aforementioned Dicky, and his younger brother Micky Ward.
Both sons are enthrall to her, and the men who surround her wouldn't dare contradict anything she says. She believes she is the embodiment of that phrase Mother Knows Best. Boy, how wrong can she be.
In filmmaking, storytelling terms, what's so dead right about this story is that each major character embarks on his/her own journey of discovery. Making a true story come alive as though it might be fiction is only possible by someone totally comfortable with integrating narrative structure with basic facts. That's some coup for director David O. Russell who delighted us with Three Kings and I Heart Huckabees.
If Scorsese's boxing masterpiece Raging Bull is a film In The Ring, The Fighters place is In The Corner. Because this is a film about who's in your corner. They may seem to fuck you over. They may actually fuck you over. But if hearts are true and people can grow beyond the chintzy expectations of what family and friends really mean - then there will be a happy ending.
Back to Bale -- this is one of the most unzipped, naked and totally generous performances you'll see. Dicky needs to first shed his phoney interpretations of the past which he's been hanging on to as a kind of excuse for his failures. He still believes his manipulative mother, whose love for her sons has been tainted by the money she knows they'll make if Dicky trains Micky to be an international welterweight champ. She simply cannot acknowledge the flaws of either son, and it's the main thrust of the film that both sons learn how to deal with that to become their own people.
As Micky, Mark Wahlberg - who also produced - turns in a totally dedicated performance. But he has the easier task. Bale needs to turn himself inside out and display without shame his guts to us.
They both have very able support by a some understated and solid performances, especially by the refreshingly feisty Amy Adams, who also conquers some demons along the way.
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Africa United
I'm always a bit wary of watching sports-related films - though the last one I saw with an African connection was Invictus and I was definitely surprised how much I liked that one.
But anyone who comes away from Africa United without a smile and a tear is probably the leftovers of some alien pod person whose heart has been sucked dry.
Remember this name - Eriya Ndayambaje. Remember the first time you heard Robin Williams as Adrian Cronauer crack open the airwaves in Good Morning, Vietnam.
Now transmute all that wit and energy to Dudu, the 13-year-old irrepresible force behind this exuberant tale of a motley crew of kids who'll let nothing stand in their way to get to the World Cup. If you know Enid Blyton's Famous Five, you might call this Five Go Mad in Africa. Turns out their form of madness is walking some 3000 miles to get to the Games.
What director Debs Gardner-Paterson lacks in practiced polish she makes up for in enthusiasm, an original sense of humor, and the courage of her conviction. She captures both the verve and rhythm of an African tale and allows the kids to soar. She's not afraid to counterpoint swathes of innocence with a sense of menace from those ruthless and lawless opportunists exploiting the poor and defenceless.
Peppering their story is a cut-and-come-again very funny re-interpretation of their adventures as told by Dudu, casting himself as The Kid and the others as his assistants who help him overcome all obstacles. Gardner-Paterson illustrates the tale with a series of charming animations which seem very true to an African story-telling sensibility.
At first it's Dudu's journey. He's acting as the football manager to Fabrice, such a brilliant natural teenaged footballer that a scout for the Games has invited him to a trial, with a promised appearance at the Games themselves.
Dudu, all bombast and a bit of a chancer, seems to have no one to answer to, but as a devoted brother, must take along his very proper sister Beatrice. Fabrice, whose monied family couldn't be more different, wants so much to fulfill his footie dream that he defies his mother to follow his pal Dudu.
Along the way they attract first Foreman George, a young lad trying to recover from the traumas of his reluctant life as a child soldier, and Celeste, a beautiful young girl being exploited after running away from a threatened arranged marriage.
How the totally engaging quintet leap over every obstacle is the journey of the film. The result is a real treat - even if you can't bear football!
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Winter's Bone
Director Debra Granik's quite rightly been winning plaudits and awards around the world with this bleak but gripping tale of Ree Dolly's odyssey.
Relative newcomer Jennifer Lawrence doesn't just perform the role of Ree, she carves her out of the pain and confusion that's accompanied her first 17 years. She doesn't have all or even any of the answers, and she doesn't even always ask the right questions. But the way she attacks the intangible mists of dysfunctional family life testifies to an enviable courage and commitment to understand.
Acceptance and forgiveness may or may not feature - the truth she's after is the kind she can use to carry on. And, trust me, she knows her path will ever be winding and rocky.
Set in the literally dirt-poor woodlands of Missouri, Ree's journey to find her missing father leads her through the kind of social territory usually depicted in the media by disingenuous hill-billy parodies.
The bombshell that sets off the plot is a visit from a bail bondsman warning the family that because their deadbeat meth-cooker father has put up all his property as bail collateral, if he doesn't show up at the imminent trial to testify, they'll all be kicked out and homeless. And, let's remember, we're not talking about a country or a state real big on social welfare.
In its place, though, are some terse but big-hearted friends and neighbors who try to ease the pain. What none of them will do, however, is help her find her father lest they implicate themselves in a legal battle against drugs.
With Ree's mother in an almost terminal state of incapacitating depression, it's been up to her to raise her younger brother and sister, both too young to understand any of the implications of their situation. Somehow Ree's been able to hold it all together.
As Ree never treats her siblings with anything but patience and respect, so the film engages ours. It doesn't talk down to us, or make us feel we've seen all this before. Like Ree we may have our suspicions about the truth, but like her we really have no idea exactly where it will lead.
We follow her because she's earned the role of leader.
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Heartbreaker
What a cart-load of sugar-dusted crap! Maybe, in some throwback world of 1950s French rom-com this might have been smuggled in as a contender.
It should have been an amusing fairy-tale covered in sweet froth served on a tablet of chantilly lace. Instead it's a smelly beggar in a dusty corner, palm out for an undeserved tip.
The premise is so naff, the acting even naffer, and if whimsy still has any currency at all, this pile of poo has lost all its whim.
All I knew about it going in was that it starred Vanessa Paradis, alias Mrs Johnny Depp. Well, let's just hope he didn't advise her to do this. But whoever did ... I hope they drown in a tub of syrup.
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Ghost and Cemetery Junction
With the release of films misleadingly entitled Ghost and Cemetery Junction, we're made aware not of the supernatural but of the startling truth.
While co-writers and directors Gervais and Merchant pit socio-cultural Thatcher-led change against 1970s Conservative stasis, Polanski's bombshell detonates politically, almost spookily so. Both Ghost and Cemetery Junction explore personal and political identity.
The contemporary thriller relies on the PM's ghost-writer uncovering layers of clues, while the light-hearted but serious rights of passage period piece provides a social context for the Iron Lady's regime.
If Ghost's former PM Pierce Brosnan is depicted via a wobbly plot, as a Blair clone with his mitts deep in doo-doo, the tightly directed thriller begs a vital question. It's one predicated on bits of related information, much of which has been made public under the US Freedom of Information Act.
Now available to download from the American Civil Liberties Union website are documents confirming that Dubya's CIA head Porter Goss sanctioned the destruction of nearly 100 videos depicting instances of torture and breaches of interrogation guidelines on at least two al-Qaeda suspects in a secret Thai prison. Condoleezza Rice, too, is implicated in her approval of such common practices.
So, not a few isolated incidents, but a bedrock philosophy, which is neither to be challenged nor its proponents prosecuted. Of course everyone knew. How could they not?
Neither Bush nor Blair nor any superpower mandarin since WWII, boasts hands politically cleaner than Lady Macbeth's. Where's the landscape of truth? It may take a while, but we'll find it.
Obama, too, has been tainted by CIA machinations. Exactly how long did he know that Stephen R Kappes, his own CIA head, had broken protocol so seriously he was forced to resign.
Ghost evokes aspects of an unrealistic special relationship. Brosnan's threatening dilemma gets played out on US soil all too ready to be used as dirt to bury political betrayals and inconveniences. Sounds plausible to me. If Obama can't keep track of the CIA's shell game, what chance do we have?
The irony of his own restrictions can't have escaped the politically savvy Polanski. While Brosnan's PM would fatally compromise his safety by returning home for the publication of his memoirs, the troubled director cannot attend any US showing of his films.
Our headlines become increasingly dominated by psephology in reverse proportion to our jaded conclusions. Emasculated political debates designed as smiley electioneering can only repeat anodyne promises. A wary electorate turned off the consequences of history seems to be sniffing out a lack of political content.
//////////////
Leaving
You can cast actors of the superb quality of Kristen Scott Thomas, you can French-it-up with gorgeous Gallic scenery, you can photograph it with a practiced eye -- but a shit script is shit no matter what.
That Thomas has chosen it - well, I'm not going to judge because I don't know anything about her motives. I know enough about acting to know it's a stonking good role and will address any ego problems which may be lurking around the corner of a woman in her early 50s.
She plays the wife of a well-off doctor, mother of their two teen-aged kids, and about to embark on a return to her career as a physiotherapist, because, as she says, she misses working.
It turns out what she misses is a life. Though it beats me why she hasn't been able to have one. It's not as though she's living in some medieval world where wives are considered property. It's not as though she's trapped by poverty into a sacrifice of choices. I've tried to see it from all angles and it just doesn't make sense.
And I'm not even talking about the spine of the narrative which is purely about a sudden love affair that pushes her out of whatever boredom she's chosen and into something that's faintly sordid and ragged at the edges.
Thomas and the supporting cast all do their best to inject some truth into the thing, but none of that is enough. You can't be willing on the two adulterous lovers because the so-called love is never about more than sex.
There's a huge unasked/unanswered question about couples in less than satisfying sex relationships. And not just in this film. Certainly any film choosing a contemporary setting that's dealing with western cultural sensibilities can no longer ignore that there are publicly advertised ways and means to discuss sex in all its glories and disappointments.
Why doesn't Suzanne have any women friends, for example? She's the right age to have been aware of, even co-opted into the varous women's groups which gathered up European women like blossoms. Even when they were merely on a glass-of-wine-and-bitch-about-your-hubby basis, she might have shared her anxieties long before a sexy hunk stomped into her life, blinding her to its own benefits.
She might have read the French Cosmo or whatever and sought advice about how she could be more pro-active with her husband sexually. Yes, he's presented as a bit of a stick-in-the-mud ... but I bet if she managed to seduce him and learned how to give great head and teach him where her clitoris is ... it wouldn't matter how many Lady Chatterly's Lovers she met along the way - the marital bond wouldn't be so fragile. She must have seen something in him - she married him and bore him two kids.
If she did that just for the comfy life style without any thought or hope of loving him, I'm afraid that radically lessens her for me. And makes me even less interested in the selfishness of her passion for a supposed great love she's only just met.
Thomas's Suzanne behaves like Bonnie meeting Clyde. Now she really was trapped, and he, more than just a bad-boy, was her ticket out of there. She also ran rings around him intellectually.
How dumb does Suzanne have to be not to foresee the consequences of her actions. This never feels like a match made in heaven, but one concocted at a very drunken script meeting. It's as stupid as she is.
///////////////
Monsters
With a title like that you're expecting Godzilla, Kong, and the Gang. With the almost one-man-band of 1st-time feature director Gareth Edwards taking all the key production and sfx roles you're expecting a sloppy vanity project. And learning that the two leads in what amounts to a two-hander are a real-life couple, you're expecting a budget cut to the bone.
Well, you'd get the latter assumption spot on. But this is no amateur night at the Bingo-Bongo. It's proper filmmaking, not just technically. It's got plenty to say about who's us and who's them. And it says it by grabbing your lapels like the Wedding Guest in Poe's Rime of the Ancient Mariner and fixing you with its glittering eye.
You're on a journey with this couple and there's no turning back, however uncomfortable it might be. You're as keen as they are to carry on and truly discover where home is.
We're in a future reminiscent but not derivative of District 9. As in the Australian film, there's a restricted zone and the undeniable presence of alien life forms.
Real-life science is pretty clear that any signs of so-called life within our solar system will be of the bacterial variety, anerobic or other. Edwards' conceit is to present something huge, sentient, and very different from anything we've ever seen however far back we've delved in the archeological records.
We do get to see The Creatures, but only rarely. They're a night-time species and judging by how we earthblobs have treated them, who'd blame them for hiding.
We learn they reached us after a NASA probe on its way home after collecting bio-samples from the moon of one of our distant planets, crash-landed somewhere near the US-Mexican border. Now, six years later the military forces of both nations are massed against further incursion on either side. A fabled Great Wall to rival China's has apparently been constructed to KEEP THEM OUT. Them being us, as well.
Lots of air activity and bombing in a no-fly zone attests to the chosen means of control. Earthlings are frightened into staying out because the whole region has been declared an Infected Zone.
We're plunged into a re-ignition of tension when some Creatures are deemed to be dangerous. Caught in the wrong place at the wrong time is Sam, daughter of a powerful media mogul. She's been travelling through Mexico prior to her imminent marriage.
Ambitious photo-journalist Andrew is also vaguely in the neighborhood, hoping for a real scoop - a kid killed by a Creature. That'll sell for hundreds of thousands and be the making of him.
Daddy cajoles and threatens Andrew to escort his darling daughter home to the safe life he wants for her.
Their surprising journey plots the course of the film. You can experience it on several levels, because it works on all of them. And that's to Edwards' credit. It's not quite a sci-fi film, though because his background is in sfx and even with a tiny budget estimated at well under $1 million, there's a certain credibility. It's especially effective because the future-y stuff is so well integrated into residual remnants of daily life.
Like Andrew and Sam, we never get to see what's on the other side of the border until we reach it. We're trapped with them, wondering what escape means, and from whom.
So, in part, it's a bit of thriller.
And, because she's intelligent and a hottie and he's cute and rugged and confident - and although there's never a moment of hanky-panky - their relationship evolves as they travel. So the film's part love story, too. But it feels really organic - not quite in the league of The African Queen, but somewhere along a similar river.
But the film also works perfectly on a socio-political level. It asks questions similar to District 9, but probably made more trenchant in the interim by questions of migration, conquest and occupation, newly disclosed cases of bribery and corruption, military carelessness, the expendibility of living things, the protection of the planet and its stellar neighbors. And so on.
It's a small indie film that challenges what films are for. It may not make a list of classics, but it will stay with you for quite a while.
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Lebanon
Much deserved praise has been heaped on this unlikely Euro-MiddleEastern co-production that keeps you prisoner in a nearly airless army tank for nearly two hours.
First timer Israeli Samuel Maoz directs from his direct experience in the Army. His focus is the Israeli Lebanese war of 1982, but could easily apply to Israel's many similar conflicts.
He reports with dramatic power and veracity as far as practicable the effects of conflict on a group of young men forced into their situation as brutally as into their tank.
Nicknamed Rhino, the tank is meant to be impermeable, invincible, a mobile safe-house for a cadre whose mission is to examine Lebanese towns and villages assuring no insurgencies.
The handful of soldiers are of an age which western families assume will be filled with the carefree comraderie of university, sports, or workmates. Conscription has taken that choice from Israel's youth, putting them in the life-or-death front line.
Tensions within the tank are exacerbated by the heat, lack of space and assaults on hygiene. They all threaten the integrity of the unit, not made easier by a command structure which proves untrustworthy.
The brief respite of life outside the tank is filtered through the gun-sight operated by the inexperienced Shmulik. His comrades in arms prove no more reliable. Maoz never flinches from the random, occasionally accidental and often inexplicable results of state sanctioned aggression.
Maoz emphasizes over and over how ill-prepared any army can ever be.
Respect and praise for soldiers inhabit speeches. As Maoz shows, there's precious little of that when the panic button morphs into the reality button. He also deals with matters of equipment failure, but leaves it to you to point the finger of blame. And, with examples of the betrayal of those who trust them, he implicates us, too.
Clearly a film from the heart, it's not perfect, but it's honest and unsentimental. See it if you can bear some time of claustrophobia and truth.
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The Secret in their Eyes
Like so many who hadn't seen it, when this film caught the Best Foreign Film Oscar last year, I felt tad cheated. Some had wanted the statuette to go to Handke's White Ribbon, I thought nothing could beat The Prophet.
I still love The Prophet as a fine piece of cinema story-telling, but now I've caught up with this very layered Argentinian tale I understand why it elbowed its way to the podium. It's fantastic!
Perhaps the most stunning element is the approach to narrative. It twins you with protagonist Esposito, a federal court investigator whose detection skills are tested by a case of rape and murder. When we're first introduced to him the case is 25 years old and he's still trying to tie up the loose ends, even though he's convinced the man charged, arrested and convicted was definitely the right choice.
The case also haunts him because it's the first one he took on under his then brand-new boss Irena. She's a beautiful woman with a razor-sharp wit and a style that transcends her years studying criminal prosecution at Cornell in the States.
When he calls on her again after 25 years the pretext is to enlist her help with his reconstruction of the case for a novel he's writing about it. Despite the different paths their lives have taken, it's clear "by the secret in their eyes" that the love they shared in their youth, never truly acknowledged and never acted on, has burned steadily ever since.
The film weaves that thread among the other fraying strands of the cold case. What Esposito discovers comes as a totally unexpected re-examination of justice, and yet it feels quite organic. Each layer of the story impinges in some way on the others, and it's their synthesis which makes the film succeed.
I'm so pleased that the best of world cinema has been gaining so much currency for mainstream cinema-goers. And great that the UK has finally got round to this one.
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ROUND ONE LONGLIST - TO BE REDUCED TO 5 IN EACH CATEGORY, EXCEPT FOR 3 IN ANIMATION
asterisks = Chapter recommendations
Best Film
127 Hours
Another Year
Black Swan
The Fighter
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Inception
The Kids Are All Right
The King�s Speech
Made In Dagenham
Shutter Island
The Social Network
The Town
Toy Story 3
True Grit
Winter�s Bone
Director
127 Hours *
Alice In Wonderland
Another Year
Black Swan *
The Fighter
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Inception *
The Kids Are All Right
The King�s Speech *
Made In Dagenham
Shutter Island
The Social Network *
The Town
Toy Story 3
True Grit
Adapted Screenplay
127 Hours *
Alice In Wonderland
Barney�s Version
Brighton Rock
Despicable Me
The Ghost
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Never Let Me Go
Rabbit Hole
Shutter Island
The Social Network *
The Town
Toy Story 3 *
True Grit *
Winter�s Bone *
Original Screenplay
Another Year
Biutiful
Black Swan *
Blue Valentine
The Disappearance Of Alice Creed
The Fighter *
Four Lions
Get Low
Hereafter
I Am Love
Inception *
The Kids Are All Right *
The King�s Speech *
Made In Dagenham
Of Gods and Men
Make Up & Hair
127 Hours
Alice In Wonderland *
Black Swan *
Brighton Rock
The Fighter
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 1 *
I Am Love
Inception
The King�s Speech *
Made In Dagenham *
Never Let Me Go
Shutter Island
The Social Network
True Grit
Editing
127 Hours *
Alice In Wonderland
Black Swan *
The Fighter
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 1
Inception *
The Kids Are All Right
The King�s Speech *
Made In Dagenham
Shutter Island
The Social Network *
The Town
Toy Story 3
True Grit
Special Visual Effects
127 Hours
Alice In Wonderland *
Black Swan
Chronicles Of Narnia: Voyage Of The Dawn Treader
Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 1 *
Hereafter
How To Train Your Dragon
Inception *
Iron Man 2 *
Kick-Ass
The King�s Speech
Monsters
Shutter Island
Toy Story 3
Tron Legacy *
Sound
127 Hours *
Alice In Wonderland
Black Swan *
Brighton Rock
The Fighter
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 1
Inception *
The King�s Speech *
Made In Dagenham
Shutter Island
The Social Network
The Town
Toy Story 3 *
True Grit *
Cinematography
127 Hours
Alice In Wonderland
Black Swan *
The Fighter
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 1
I Am Love
Inception *
The King�s Speech *
Never Let Me Go
Shutter Island *
The Social Network
The Town
True Grit *
Winter�s Bone
Animated Film
Chico & Rita
Despicable Me *
How To Train Your Dragon *
Illusionist, The
Toy Story 3 *
Leading Actor
Aaron Eckhart (Howie) � Rabbit Hole
Ben Affleck (Doug MacRay) � The Town
Colin Firth (King George VI) � The King�s Speech *
James Franco (Aron Ralston) � 127 Hours *
Javier Bardem (Uxbal) � Biutiful *
Jeff Bridges (Marshal Reuben J Cogburn) � True Grit *
Jesse Eisenberg (Mark Zuckerberg) � The Social Network *
Jim Broadbent (Tom) � Another Year
Johnny Depp (Mad Hatter) � Alice In Wonderland
Leonardo DiCaprio (Cobb) � Inception
Leonardo DiCaprio (Teddy Daniels) � Shutter Island
Mark Wahlberg (Micky Ward) � The Fighter
Paul Giamatti (Barney Panofsky) � Barney�s Version
Robert Duvall (Felix Bush) � Get Low
Ryan Gosling (Dean) � Blue Valentine
Leading Actress
Andrea Riseborough (Rose) � Brighton Rock
Annette Bening (Nic) � The Kids Are All Right *
Carey Mulligan (Kathy) � Never Let Me Go *
Gemma Arterton (Alice) � The Disappearance Of Alice Creed
Gemma Arterton (Tamara Drewe) � Tamara Drewe
Hailee Steinfeld (Mattie Ross) � True Grit
Jennifer Lawrence (Ree) � Winter�s Bone
Julianne Moore (Jules) � The Kids Are All Right *
Michelle Williams (Cindy) � Blue Valentine *
Natalie Portman (Nina Sayers / The Swan Queen) � Black Swan *
Nicole Kidman (Becca) � Rabbit Hole
Noomi Rapace (Lisbeth Salander) � The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Rosamund Pike (Miriam Grant-Panofsky) � Barney�s Version
Sally Hawkins (Rita O�Grady) � Made In Dagenham
Tilda Swinton (Emma Recchi) � I Am Love
Supporting Actor
Andrew Garfield (Eduardo Saverin) � The Social Network *
Andrew Garfield (Tommy) � Never Let Me Go
Ben Kingsley (Dr Cawley) � Shutter Island
Bill Murray (Frank Quinn) � Get Low
Bob Hoskins (Albert) � Made In Dagenham*
Christian Bale (Dicky Eklund) � The Fighter *
Dustin Hoffman (Izzy Panofsky) � Barney�s Version
Geoffrey Rush (Lionel Logue) � The King�s Speech *
Guy Pearce (King Edward VIII) � The King�s Speech
Jeremy Renner (James Coughlin) � The Town
Justin Timberlake (Sean Parker) � The Social Network
Mark Ruffalo (Paul) � The Kids Are All Right *
Matt Damon (La Boeuf) � True Grit
Pete Postlethwaite (Fergus �Fergie� Colm) � The Town
Vincent Cassel (Thomas Leroy / The Gentleman) � Black Swan
Supporting Actress
Amy Adams (Charlene Fleming) � The Fighter *
Barbara Hershey (Erica Sayers / The Queen) � Black Swan *
Ellen Page (Ariadne) � Inception
Geraldine James (Connie) � Made In Dagenham
Helena Bonham Carter (Queen Elizabeth) � The King�s Speech *
Helena Bonham Carter (Red Queen) � Alice In Wonderland
Lesley Manville (Mary) � Another Year *
Marion Cotillard (Mal) � Inception
Melissa Leo (Alice Ward) � The Fighter
Mila Kunis (Lily / The Black Swan) � Black Swan
Miranda Richardson (Barbara Castle) � Made In Dagenham *
Olivia Williams (Ruth Lang) � The Ghost
Rebecca Hall (Claire Keesey) � The Town
Rosamund Pike (Lisa Hopkins) � Made In Dagenham
Winona Ryder (Beth Macintyre / The Dying Swan) � Black Swan
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EDIT 18 JAN
Now here's a funny thing ... although - at 08.48 the BAFTA members' site states that members still have about an hour to vote in this 2nd round, their press release of the short-list has already been released and is being published in the press and online. Now, that's probably because no other film has a hope in hell of being included, but it means that anyone who wanted to vote on the right side of the deadline (and, no, not me - I voted in this round a few days ago) - their vote is meaningless. So much for voting.
3rd round voting deadline is 8 Feb. The awards are on the 10th
ROUND TWO SHORTLISTS
Best film
Black Swan
True Grit
Inception
The King's Speech
The Social Network
Best director
Darren Aronofsky - Black Swan
David Fincher - The Social Network
Tom Hooper - The King's Speech
Christopher Nolan - Inception
Danny Boyle - 127 Hours
Best actor
Jesse Eisenberg - The Social Network
Colin Firth - The King's Speech
James Franco - 127 Hours
Javier Bardem - Biutiful
Jeff Bridges - True Grit
Best actress
Annette Bening - The Kids Are All Right
Julianne Moore - The Kids Are All Right
Noomi Rapace - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Natalie Portman - Black Swan
Hailee Steinfeld - True Grit
Best supporting actor
Christian Bale - The Fighter
Pete Postlethwaite - The Town
Andrew Garfield - The Social Network
Mark Ruffalo - The Kids Are All Right
Geoffrey Rush - The King's Speech
Best supporting actress
Amy Adams - The Fighter
Helena Bonham Carter - The King's Speech
Barbara Hershey - Black Swan
Lesley Manville - Another Year
Miranda Richardson - Made in Dagenham
Outstanding British film
127 Hours
Another Year
Four Lions
The King's Speech
Made In Dagenham
Outstanding debut by a British writer, director or producer
The Arbor - Clio Bernard (director), Tracy O'Riordan (producer)
Exit Through The Gift Shop - Banksy (director), Jaimie D'Cruz (producer)
Four Lions - Chris Morris (director/writer)
Monster - Gareth Edwards (director/writer)
Best foreign language film
Biutiful - Mexico/Spain
The Secret in Their Eyes - Argentina
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Sweden
I Am Love - Italy
Of Gods and Men - France
Best animated feature film
Toy Story 3
How To Train Your Dragon
Despicable Me
Best original screenplay
Black Swan - Mark Heyman, Andres Heinz, John McLaughlin
The Fighter - Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy, Eric Johnson
Inception - Christopher Nolan
The Kids are All Right - Lisa Cholodenko, Stuart Blumberg
The King's Speech - David Seidler
Best adapted screenplay
127 Hours - Danny Boyle, Simon Beaufoy
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Rasmus Heisterberg, Nikolaj Arcel
The Social Network - Aaron Sorkin
Toy Story 3 - Michael Arndt
True Grit - Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Best original score
127 Hours - AR Rahman
Alice in Wonderland - Danny Elfman
How To Train Your Dragon - John Powell
Inception - Hans Zimmer
The King's Speech - Alexandre Desplat
Rising Star Award (voted for by the public)
Gemma Arterton
Andrew Garfield
Tom Hardy
Aaron Johnson
Emma Stone |
| 12 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| demonic |
Posted - 02/15/2011 : 02:32:01
Very disappointing results to be honest... I had a feeling for years that BAFTA will basically reward a British film highly regardless of the competition, which is perhaps right as British film needs all the recognition it can get, but it does make it all a little bit insular and more than a bit redundant when the results are so strangely skewed. We knew The King's Speech would clean up, but in some cases at the expense of some genuinely far superior work. Glad that Fincher and Portman got recognised - rightly so, but elsewhere is disappointing. Outstanding British film - of course... but is it actually a better film that The Social Network or perhaps even any of the other nominees for Best Film? I don't think so personally.
Lesley Manville was totally robbed - that's the result that stinks the most for me. There's simply no comparison... HBC could never do what Manville does in Another Year - she's not even in the same league, just more rich and famous.
I would have preferred Christian Bale or Pete Postlethwaite over Rush. Rush is a fine actor, but again compared to Bale's performance... well, there's no comparison. Also Pete deserved a posthumous nod - he was a fantastic actor and it would have been a fitting tribute. It's not like Rush particularly needed the kudos.
I would rather Gareth Edwards got it for Monsters (after all - his *actual* debut) rather than Chris Morris who's been knocking around for a long time, and again, doesn't really need his status raising (I also thought Four Lions was a bit of a misfire) and probably wouldn't even want it from the establishment.
Finally - Of Gods and Men - bizarrely snubbed for the Foreign Language Oscar is easily the best of the foreign category, closely followed by Biutiful - two powerful fantastically good films. I had no great love for the melodrama and credulity stretching of Secrets in their Eyes. Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is popular entertainment, and a good film, but a strange choice for a winner in this field.
As you say... on to the Oscars and hopefully some twists and turns. |
| BaftaBaby |
Posted - 02/14/2011 : 23:56:00
quote:
Originally posted by ChocolateLady
Doesn't look like a whole lot of surprises here, but I bet you were hoping that Bardem and/or Biutiful would get more recognition.
Well, I guess, but the ones that I thought really missed out were Melissa Leo - not even nommed for Best Supporting in Fighter - and with much more of a stretch to give dimension to her character than Amy Adams - which isn't to say AA didn't do a very good job, just that ML was extraordinary. And, not to diss Helena B-C, but either of the Fighter dames deserved the award more than her. It's not that she was bad, but in sheer acting terms she really didn't have that much to do. But I thought her speech was fab!
And what about both Sotigui Kouyati & Brenda Blethyn or anything on the excellent film London River. (And big apologies to lamhasuas who quite rightly pulled me up on BB's character being from Guernsey and NOT from Devon.) This film truly deserves a wider audience.
At least Monsters was nommed, though I'm glad 4 Lions won. But where was Peter Mullan's NEDS among all the candidates?
Someday, when I've got the energy I'll try to do an analysis of why I think BAFTA is losing a grip on standards.
But from a fwfr perspective - it's heartwarming that so many of us seem truly to care about movies, film, and cinema - all 3!
I've said it before and I'm sure I will again - even though I take the voting very seriously, I've never been convinced that once the short list has been whittled down there really is no basis for a clear winner in any category.
Ah, well, ever Oscar-ward!
|
| ChocolateLady |
Posted - 02/14/2011 : 08:39:06
Doesn't look like a whole lot of surprises here, but I bet you were hoping that Bardem and/or Biutiful would get more recognition. |
| BaftaBaby |
Posted - 02/13/2011 : 23:28:23
BAFTA AWARDS
read all about it on the BAFTA SITE
Best film
Black Swan
True Grit
Inception
The King's Speech
The Social Network
Best director
Darren Aronofsky - Black Swan
David Fincher - The Social Network
Tom Hooper - The King's Speech
Christopher Nolan - Inception
Danny Boyle - 127 Hours
Best actor
Jesse Eisenberg - The Social Network
Colin Firth - The King's Speech
James Franco - 127 Hours
Javier Bardem - Biutiful
Jeff Bridges - True Grit
Best actress
Annette Bening - The Kids Are All Right
Julianne Moore - The Kids Are All Right
Noomi Rapace - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Natalie Portman - Black Swan
Hailee Steinfeld - True Grit
Best supporting actor
Christian Bale - The Fighter
Pete Postlethwaite - The Town
Andrew Garfield - The Social Network
Mark Ruffalo - The Kids Are All Right
Geoffrey Rush - The King's Speech
Best supporting actress
Amy Adams - The Fighter
Helena Bonham Carter - The King's Speech
Barbara Hershey - Black Swan
Lesley Manville - Another Year
Miranda Richardson - Made in Dagenham
Outstanding British film
127 Hours
Another Year
Four Lions
The King's Speech
Made In Dagenham
Outstanding debut
by a British writer, director or producer
The Arbor - Clio Bernard (director), Tracy O'Riordan (producer)
Exit Through The Gift Shop - Banksy (director), Jaimie D'Cruz (producer)
Four Lions - Chris Morris (director/writer)
Monster - Gareth Edwards (director/writer)
Best foreign language film
Biutiful - Mexico/Spain
The Secret in Their Eyes - Argentina
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Sweden
I Am Love - Italy
Of Gods and Men - France
Best animated feature film
Toy Story 3
How To Train Your Dragon
Despicable Me
Best original screenplay
Black Swan - Mark Heyman, Andres Heinz, John McLaughlin
The Fighter - Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy, Eric Johnson
Inception - Christopher Nolan
The Kids are All Right - Lisa Cholodenko, Stuart Blumberg
The King's Speech - David Seidler
Best adapted screenplay
127 Hours - Danny Boyle, Simon Beaufoy
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Rasmus Heisterberg, Nikolaj Arcel
The Social Network - Aaron Sorkin
Toy Story 3 - Michael Arndt
True Grit - Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Best original score
127 Hours - AR Rahman
Alice in Wonderland - Danny Elfman
How To Train Your Dragon - John Powell
Inception - Hans Zimmer
The King's Speech - Alexandre Desplat
Rising Star Award
(voted for by the public)
Gemma Arterton
Andrew Garfield
Tom Hardy
Aaron Johnson
Emma Stone
|
| randall |
Posted - 12/31/2010 : 15:41:11
For your readers' sake, I'd suggest you find a new synonym for your favorite word of derision. You ran "bizarre" into the ground years ago. |
| Salopian |
Posted - 12/31/2010 : 01:49:46
quote:
Originally posted by bife
it doesn't seem bizarre at all.
This is not a thread for all baffy's reviews, and all her reviews are not in one place. This is to discuss her review of films she is watching as part of the current year's BATFA process. Conceptually similar to the threads Joe B often sets up during his themed film-seeing/reviewing bouts.
Although I don't normally comment on either bb's or Joe's threads I do read both avidly and get much enjoyment from them.
Unfortunately not at all bizarre or unexpected is the hijacking of a thread to explain how 'bizarre' or otherwise 'wrong' sal finds the actions of another fwiffer.
and why would it have been better to start 20+ separate threads and "simply" combine them all into a word document on a personal computer than to put them all in one thread in the first place? Seems the only thing simpler about would have been maintaining the integrity of sal's own film review index.
The point is that she has already (started, when necessary or sometimes even when not, and) posted in all the threads -- the above copy-and-paste even includes responses to other F.W.F.R.ers! (Even if she hadn't, it would in fact still be more reasonable as it makes it much more practical for other people to post their own views on each film, and in particular it makes it easier for them to read the thoughts on only the films they wish, for example because they have not seen all of them.) |
| Salopian |
Posted - 12/31/2010 : 01:39:08
quote:
Originally posted by MguyX
How deleriously stupid! The Fourum security guard is complaining/insulting someone else for creating an extensive, reference post, while at the same time lobbying for his own. But maybe he didn't notice that there was no rule requiring posts to clear his solopsistic submissions criteria. 
Since the Babe is a member of BAFTA -- and an acknowledged film critic who is published in print media regularly -- some people find it interesting to see her thought process when it comes to BAFTA voting. At least I do. But others are free simply not to read the thread if it so offends their sensibility.
As myfriend's 4-year old says: more cake for me! 
If you bother to read my post, you will see that I have absolutely no objection to B.B. posting her thoughts. The point is that the thoughts in this thread are only copied and pasted from those in other threads. There really is no function in duplicating them, especially as in fact it makes it harder to look through them as the formatting is rather harsh. Her renaming the film threads has in some cases involved cutting the title, which makes them harder to search for (especially were it not for my index). Her professed reason was her own convenience, but it is not possible that this is more convenient than doing it on her own computer. If she wanted to offer one place where people could see thoughts on just the BAFTA films, then the logical thing to do would be to start a thread with just a list of links to those threads. |
| bife |
Posted - 12/31/2010 : 00:49:20
Being a bit of a film-neanderthal, baffy, i have only seen a handful of these.
Completely with you though on those i have seen; toy story 3 (almost formulaic, none of the originality of toy story 1, perhaps to be expected from number 3 of a series but also lacking the strong and engaging story line from number 1), the social network (wonderfully avoids clear-cut right-wrong goodie-baddie characterisations and instead presents complex and realistic personalities which drive differing sympathies from different viewers) and Never Let Me Go (which I enjoyed, as I did the book; but I found the lack of resistance to their fate, and not even a hint of an underground movement, to be a major flaw in both book and film. this could have been excusable or even admirable had it been a 'theme' but it seemed just to have been an oversight. The film did at least add its own adaption of 'checking in' daily with the wristbands to add some credibility as to why none of the clones just buggered off into the wilds or to the centre of london, and perhaps that was already seen to be as big a departure from the book as the filmmakers wanted to go, but it still left a hole where a great book/film could have been). |
| bife |
Posted - 12/31/2010 : 00:32:20
quote:
Originally posted by Salopian
How bizarre. Surely if you wanted all your reviews in one place, you could simply have copied them into a document on your computer. And if you wanted to find your threads easily you could just have used bookmarks (if you didn't want to use my convenient index).
it doesn't seem bizarre at all.
This is not a thread for all baffy's reviews, and all her reviews are not in one place. This is to discuss her review of films she is watching as part of the current year's BATFA process. Conceptually similar to the threads Joe B often sets up during his themed film-seeing/reviewing bouts.
Although I don't normally comment on either bb's or Joe's threads I do read both avidly and get much enjoyment from them.
Unfortunately not at all bizarre or unexpected is the hijacking of a thread to explain how 'bizarre' or otherwise 'wrong' sal finds the actions of another fwiffer.
and why would it have been better to start 20+ separate threads and "simply" combine them all into a word document on a personal computer than to put them all in one thread in the first place? Seems the only thing simpler about would have been maintaining the integrity of sal's own film review index.
|
| MguyX |
Posted - 12/28/2010 : 23:17:25
How deleriously stupid! The Fourum security guard is complaining/insulting someone else for creating an extensive, reference post, while at the same time lobbying for his own. But maybe he didn't notice that there was no rule requiring posts to clear his solopsistic submissions criteria.
Since the Babe is a member of BAFTA -- and an acknowledged film critic who is published in print media regularly -- some people find it interesting to see her thought process when it comes to BAFTA voting. At least I do. But others are free simply not to read the thread if it so offends their sensibility.
As myfriend's 4-year old says: more cake for me! |
| Salopian |
Posted - 12/28/2010 : 18:56:34
How bizarre. Surely if you wanted all your reviews in one place, you could simply have copied them into a document on your computer. And if you wanted to find your threads easily you could just have used bookmarks (if you didn't want to use my convenient index). |
| MguyX |
Posted - 12/28/2010 : 15:58:44
Golly! Do you know how much dough i just saved in rental fees and ticket prices?!?!  
I laughed, I cried, I thought about popcorn (but it doesn't go with a paleo diet), and I acted out some of the parts with sock puppets. MORE! MORE!   |
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