Category Archives: Movies

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Walesa – Man of Hope / Czlowiek z nadziei  (2013)    69/100

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Rating :   69/100                                                                     127 Min        12

A very interesting film that charts the rise of electrician Lech Walesa, from dockland worker in Gdansk in the early seventies to the co-founder and leader of the first independent trade union movement in Poland (and indeed the Soviet bloc) over the next two decades, and eventually the winner of the Nobel peace prize and the presidency of the Polish nation. Internationally respected director Andrzej Wajda had in mind to simply relate a factual account of events, without the traditional sort of narrative that we might expect from a Hollywood biography – and the result is a fascinating story, albeit one that does lack a certain emotional connection at times.

Mixed in with the relation of events chronologically is an interview with Walesa that seems to try and provide insights into his character not given elsewhere, but here the film is at its weakest, with the meaning a little too ambiguous and unclear (anyone under the microscope in an interview is already giving us an out of context glimpse of their personality, likely with an agenda behind their answers) and the heavy stylised use of cigarettes – smoking certainly fits into the historical context here, but with the interview it serves no real purpose, and for a film decrying the corruption of big business it seems markedly odd to be kowtowing to one of the most pervasive, corrupt and destructive businesses there has ever been.

Notwithstanding the occasional drifting of one’s attention, the tale is a fascinating and important one, promoting the rights of the common man as well as the power of self belief and determination to accomplish truly great deeds, as we watch Walesa battle against severe, and at times deadly, political forces. Robert Wieckiewicz as Walesa is believable throughout and seems perfect for the role, with Agnieszka Grochowska as his beautiful but constantly stressed out wife just as good. Real archive footage was used throughout – sometimes with Wieckiewicz’s face digitally imposed on top, and the style of the film very much mirrors one shot in the seventies.

Captain Phillips  (2013)    73/100

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Rating :   73/100                                                                     134 Min        12A

Tom Hanks stars as the eponymous captain Richard Phillips in this based on real events thriller, set in the waters off the horn of Africa as his large cargo vessel is beset by Somali pirates. The events took place in 2009, and although the film is engrossing and recommendable with a good leading performance from Hanks, much controversy has been caused by the depiction of his heroic efforts in the movie. In real life the captain seems to have a lot of questions to answer – with various crew members, who are suing the company they worked for, claiming he had something of a death wish, didn’t try to hide the crew as shown in the film, and sailed the ship unnecessarily close, in the region of three hundred kilometers too close, to the Somali coastline despite knowledge of several attacks on cargo vessels in the three weeks prior to their voyage.

Notwithstanding this disappointing information the film is still definitely worth a look in with a realistic and sustained feeling of suspense throughout – and the brave efforts of chief engineer Mike Perry are related to us just as they occurred in real life. With Hanks’ domineering popularity with movie goers and industry insiders alike (he was recently voted America’s most trustworthy person) perhaps together with the misfortune of being recently diagnosed with diabetes, it is quite likely this will garner him another Academy Award nomination next year. One by no means undeserved. From director Paul Greengrass (‘The Bourne Supremacy’ 04, ‘The Bourne Ultimatum’ 07, ‘Green Zone’ 10).

Enough Said  (2013)    69/100

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Rating :   69/100                                                                       93 Min        12A

This low key drama featuring Julia Louis-Dreyfus, James Gandolfini, Catherine Keener and Toni Collette starts off badly with very little of any interest going on at all, and indeed a rather poor line when an adult witnesses a child dropping litter and chides her saying “What are you doing? You’re not British!”. Not impressed.

Eventually though, the film successfully gives us the impression that we are witnessing the lives of real people and therein lies the hook for the audience, as we watch divorcee Eva (Louis-Dreyfus) begin to fall in love with Gandolfini whilst she also comes to realise Keener, one of her massage patients, is the ex-wife of her new lover – an ex-wife who bitches about him constantly.

There is a bit of a spoiler in the trailer for this, so I would recommend avoiding it if you’re planning on watching the movie, but it becomes a pretty good drama with a small dash of understated comedy, and one that is laced with sadness being the penultimate film to feature the much loved Gandolfini, who passed away from a heart attack earlier this year. A performance made all the more poignant by its vulnerability and contrast to his more common, heavily masculine roles.

Escape Plan  (2013)    70/100

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Rating :   70/100                                                                     115 Min        15

Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger once again put their decades old rivalry behind them and team up for their first non Expendables film together – and their powers combined have produced, for each, one of their better films. Stallone plays Ray Breslin, a security specialist who inters himself in maximum security prisons in order to then try and break out, thus testing their security. It all goes wrong, however, when the CIA ask him to test their not so legal prison for those the government would like to disappear, wherein he meets fellow inmate and soon to be buddy Emil Rottmayer, played by Arnold.

There are elements of both a really good prison break film and the sort of slightly cheesy action we would expect from the two powerhouses, combining to produce a really enjoyable film. The actual escape techniques run the gamut in terms of plausibility, and although some of them may not hold up so well under scrutiny they are at least sold to us in a believable fashion, and at times they are indeed quite clever. It’s always good to see these guys onscreen, and their camaraderie now compared to their rivalry before, which they admit helped drive both of them forward in their careers, is worthy of a film in itself. Jim Caviezel (‘The Thin Red Line’ 98) also appears in support, doing a very good job as the villainous head warden.

Le Week-End  (2013)    53/100

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Rating :   53/100                                                                       93 Min        15

One can tell immediately from the trailer, which features married couple Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan off for a weekend trip to Paris, that this is going to be a reflective piece on the state of the protagonist’s marriage, probably interjected with sparse moments of comedy to lighten the mood, with the tensions of various unresolved issues rearing their ugly heads in order to tug at similar threads with as many audience members as possible, all before reaching some sort of cleansing and redemptive conclusion. This is exactly what is delivered, a formula which can work if done well – as in ‘Before Midnight’ for example, but here subtle errors make it difficult for the story to feel genuine, and ultimately it feels like the husband and wife, who are both well educated intellectuals perfectly capable of expressing themselves fluently, have barely ever had a conversation together.

Moreover, our sympathies are supposed to be equally divided between the two of them, but Lindsay’s character repeatedly comes across as a sort of caustic emotional corpse, with her to-ing and fro-ing between various states of half-life never really ringing true. The setting of Paris merely adds to the feeling of inherent pretension, and one can’t help but laugh when they climb the stairs of Sacré-Cœur, turn around to admire the view and exclaim ‘Who would want to live anywhere else?’ and the camera cuts to … a completely flat, overcast landscape. Really? They could surely have waited for a nicer day at least. I’m sure Paris has lots of lovely areas, but my overriding memory of the place is a heavily urbanised sprawl towered over by a great big rusty pylon. Indeed, the film is careful to only show the Eiffel Tower from a distance during the day. There are several irritations throughout the film as well – such as ‘a meal’ made of Broadbent’s character’s trait of eating with his mouth open, which is gross to say the least – but then we the audience are subjected to listening to it during more than one scene. PUKE!! With Jeff Goldblum popping up in support, and directed by Roger Mitchell. Who has at least improved on his last effort – ‘Hyde Park on Hudson‘.

Turbo  (2013)    63/100

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Rating :   63/100                                                                       96 Min        U

For youngsters, the smooth graphics, rich voice cast, and traditional tale of the underdog realising his dreams through determination and self belief will probably make this quite an enjoyable experience – for adult viewers it’s a little too simplistic and flat to really engage with.

Theo (Ryan Reynolds) and Chet (Paul Giamatti) are ordinary garden snails, ordinary, that is, except for Theo’s ambition to one day race in the Indy 500. Fortune smiles on the intrepid young mollusk when a freak accident effectively turns him into a miniature F1 car, allowing him the chance to fight for what he’s always wanted. With Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Peña, Luis Guzmán, Bill Hader, Snoop Dogg, Maya Rudolph, Richard Jenkins, Ken Jeong and Michelle Rodriguez in support, and an upcoming spin-off children’s TV series on Netflix due at the end of this year.

Not Another Happy Ending  (2013)    70/100

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Rating :   70/100                                                                     102 Min        12A

A Scottish romantic comedy completely sold by the natural charisma of its two leads – the lovely Karen Gillan and brooding Frenchman Stanley Weber. Gillan plays Jane Lockhart, a first time novelist enjoying the fruits of her labour despite the liberties taken by her publisher, Weber’s Tom Duval. When writers block strikes for the finale of her second novel, Tom decides the reason must be that she has become too happy and resorts to making her miserable as the only logical course of action.

Set in Glasgow, the film feels alive and accessible throughout and even features the good old British tradition of pub quizzing as a central plot device (the ultimate prize of a trip to Disneyland is not quite so traditional), though other plot devices such as a fictitious character coming to life in the mind of Jane feel a little bit superfluous. At times, there is a loose quality to the way scenes play out – rather like if you were to film something with your mates without rehearsing it much before hand, but this quality invites the audience in and gives the film a real and original feel to it. With Gary Lewis and rising stars Freya Mavor (‘Sunshine on Leith’), Amy Manson (‘Outcasts’) and Iain De Caestecker (‘Marvel – Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’) in support.

Machete Kills  (2013)    60/100

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Rating :   60/100                                                                     107 Min        15

I reeeeally wanted to like this more than I did. It suffers from over familiarity with the gag before the audience even goes in, and there is a pretty significant drag factor in the middle, but it does satisfy enough to justify the proposed sequel – ‘Machete Kills Again … In Space!’.

This is of course a comedy exploitation film from director Robert Rodriguez, the third of a trilogy starring Danny Trejo as the titular Machete (so called for his skill with his favourite weapon), a franchise which began as a fake trailer shown during Rodriquez and Tarantino’s ‘Grindhouse’ (07), much like ‘Hobo with a Shotgun’. Here the president of the United States (Charlie Sheen) asks Machete to tackle a credible threat to the safety of the entire nation. You can expect an overindulgence of blood soaked tongue in cheek violence and black humour as well as a raft of familiar faces and dazzling dames – including Mel Gibson, Antonio Banderas, Lady Gaga, Amber Heard, Michelle Rodriguez, Demian Bichir and Jessica Alba.

Best watched with your mates and combined with a drinking game.


Quotes

“Machete happens.”   Danny Trejo/Machete

The Fifth Estate  (2013)    70/100

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Rating :   70/100                                                                     128 Min        15

Telling the story of Wikileaks and its founder Julian Assange, with the title referring to the traditional four estates of the clergy, the commoners, the nobility and the press and the posited operation of individuals freely publishing online (riotous revolutionaries that they are …) as a fifth pillar of modern civilisation, this film attempts the impossible – to give us a historical account of the rise and machinations of both the online whistle blowing mouthpiece, and Assange himself.

Directed by Bill Condon (‘Gods and Monsters’ 98, the last two Twilight films) an attempt has been made to bring some of the technical side of things to life graphically, which doesn’t work as well as intended, but the essence of the story and its relevance for intelligence agencies, governments and the general public across the world, not to mention Assange himself who is still currently for all intents and purposes a political prisoner in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, couldn’t be more fascinating or relevant.

The screenplay is based on two different published books on the topic, but there is always going to be that irritation of not knowing just what to believe, especially since here we see a very traditional almost pantomime character portrayal of Assange, which may or may not be accurate, but is doubtless one of the reasons he has disowned the film (see the clip below). With Daniel Brühl, David Thewlis, Peter Capaldi, Laura Linney, Anthony Mackie, Stanley Tucci and Alicia Vikander in support, Benedict Cumberbatch gives one of the best performances of his already very impressive career as Assange, replete with a convincing accent and mannerisms, ones which those who worked with the Australian have described as impressively accurate.

Romeo and Juliet  (2013)    50/100

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Rating :   50/100                                                                     118 Min        PG

A conceptually lacklustre effort that strips Shakespeare’s play down to its bare bones, and exposes just how dreadful the story actually is. Suffering the leads trying to enact star crossed love is like watching two bricks smash continually into one another, as Romeo comes across as a pathetic and vain dolt abusing the hopeless naivety of young Juliet. They first meet during a masquerade (was it as such in the play? I can’t remember) and given it’s supposed to be love at first sight, it seems somewhat odd when they can’t actually see at least half of the others face. What would have been more interesting is if Romeo had unmasked Juliet and said “Hmm, actually I think I made a mistake, sorry love, where did that other one go. Rosaline!”

The only saving graces for the film are the old acting hands who do a pretty convincing job, especially Paul Giamatti, playing friar Laurence, continuing his penchant for scene stealing (that’s not to say Douglas Booth as Romeo and Hailee Steinfeld as Juliet don’t convince, they do – just not really until their final scene together … ) and the costumes and set design, although it does very much look like the marriage scene was done with the aid of computers for some reason. Director Carlo Carlei must take a large share of the blame here, who seems to have taken a leaf from Tom Hooper’s book and decided that whenever one of his freshly faced nubile actors are onscreen he will zoom right in until their noggin fills the entire frame, not so great when you have one dramatic scene all but ruined by the large nose hair waggling away in time with The Bard’s lyrical lines. That is, of course, if you can actually make out what those lines are – much of the first third of the film is either badly recorded or mumbled and the experience quickly goes from ‘What? What was that?’ to ‘Actually, I don’t care any more’ as everything becomes a droning phrssssssssss sound.

Kodi Smit-McPhee as Benvolio is easily the best here out of the newcomers, and will be the phoenix rising from the ashes of this film.