The true story of Eugene Allen – or at least it should have been. This is a heavily fictionalised account of Allen’s life, so much so they changed the central character’s name to Cecil Gaines (played by Forest Whitaker). I won’t list the principal story elements which were invented for the film as it will to no small degree ruin it, but their inclusion is ameliorated by the material at least arguably being representative of real experiences for African Americans at that time. In any eventuality, Allen served several of the American presidents, from Eisenhower in the 50’s right up to Reagan in the 80’s, as one of the White House’s butlers (Cuba Gooding Jr. and Lenny Kravitz play two of the others). With his occupation as an anchor for the story, what unfolds is an uncompromising reflection on the Civil Rights Movement in America, as we see the murderous brutality Gaines witnesses in the deep south as a child and the struggle his own son (played by David Oyelowo) goes through when he becomes an activist in the movement, mirrored with his unique employment and the very real effect he and his co-workers most certainly will have had on influencing the perspective, thoughts, and decisions of the presidents themselves.
It’s the latest film from talented director Lee Daniels, after last year’s ‘The Paperboy’, and it’s interesting that even the very difficult and harrowing brutality of racism, is still seemingly more palatable to audiences than the, ahem, touchy area of onscreen masturbation that was evident in that film (which I liked incidentally {the film that is, not John Cusack masturbating}), although some of the less effective after effects used there to make the film seem a little dated do also crop up here, giving early periods of the film a decidedly pallid feel to them. His latest movie is an emotive, strong piece that is well acted by its principal cast and its equally strong, and extensive, supporting cast members. I won’t spoil the long list of big name actors who appear as the various presidents throughout the film, although one was particularly surprising as he’s British, and another has played a president before … If so much of the screenplay hadn’t been mere invention, and if it wasn’t still being billed as a biography, then this would be a fantastic film – as it is, it’s still pretty good.
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‘.
A well shot and acted film that is both interesting and at times disturbing. It follows the true story of Linda Boreman, aka Linda Lovelace, who starred in one of the highest grossing and famous porn films of all time, ‘Deep Throat’ (72), and then all but disappeared from the public eye, only to publish a book many years later detailing the abuse she suffered from her then husband Chuck Traynor, whom she alleges forced her into making the film. The movie plays with different viewpoints, and is brought to life by Amanda Seyfried in the title role, Sharon Stone and Robert Partrick as her devoutly Catholic parents, Peter Sarsgaard as Chuck, and with Hank Azaria, Juno Temple and Chris Noth in support (and James Franco briefly as Hugh Hefner). It’s an uncompromising role for chick flick stalwart Seyfried who does a fantastic job and, ironically, I’d probably rather watch a couple of the scenes from this again than any from the entirety of ‘Deep Throat’ …
From acclaimed Danish director Susanne Bier and starring Pierce Brosnan and Trine Dyrholm, this is a very traditional tale about hardship and the redemption of finding rejuvenating love in the most unlikely of places. Brosnan’s son is marrying Dyrholm’s daughter in Italy, and the two of them meet when their cars collide accidentally in the Danish airport they are to depart from. One has an adulterous husband and lives with the threat of returning cancer (he cheated on her whilst she was undergoing chemotherapy no less), the other lost his wife many years ago in a tragic road accident and has allowed himself to be consumed by work ever since. Both central performances are extremely good, and indeed the pain in Brosnan’s eyes looks very real when he talks about the loss of his wife, so much so Red Dragon decided to do a little checking and sure enough, he sadly lost his first wife, actress Cassandra Harris, to cancer. Ever since he has been a vocal supporter of cancer charities (he is also an ardent environmentalist), including being the celebrity spokesman one year for the breast cancer fundraiser ‘Lee National Denim Day’, run by Lee Jeans and which reputedly raises more funds than any other annual one day event for the cause – you can find more details about it here. Interestingly, Cassandra Harris appeared in the Bond film ‘For Your Eyes Only’ (81) as Lisl, and visiting her onset Brosnan was introduced to Bond producer Albert R. Broccoli which, despite setbacks due to his ‘Remington Steele’ contract that allowed Timothy Dalton to take the reins for two films, eventually led to his casting as the fifth actor to play James Bond in the Eon series.
Despite the likeability of the central characters, it’s the supporting roles that drag this film into the realm of melodrama, and although it’s not insufferable, it does begin to fray the edges of its believability, with almost everyone else at the wedding having some sort of personal drama which will come to the fore, and which ultimately takes up too much screen time and detracts from the core of the film. The Mediterranean setting is picturesque, evoking Brosnan’s vocally challenged trip to Greece in ‘Mamma Mia’ (08), and there are a lot of beautiful landscape shots of the town they go to, indeed it would not have gone amiss to have cut them longer and extracted some of the soap opera to make room. Brosnan exists here as box office draw, but one cannot imagine this going down too well in Denmark as although his character is deemed to be fluent in Danish, the actor is most certainly not, and so the film constantly flits between English and subtitled Danish, purely to try and appeal to a wider market. A tactical ploy which appears to have been successful, with this screened more commercially than most of Bier’s previous work, although I wonder if something did not go awry with their marketing, as the only time I’ve seen a trailer play for this was a mere one day before it went on national release, and, equally, I wonder if a wider release would not have been secured anyway, given the success of her previous film ‘In a Better World’ (10), which took home the best foreign language film award from the Oscars (notably, against the wonderful ‘Dogtooth’).
A nice film worthy of a look in, even if the supporting story arcs hinder rather than help.
A film about one of the most iconic of Americans, directed by Steven Spielberg, and starring Daniel Day-Lewis, kind of had Academy Award nominations written all over it from its very inception (although, originally, Liam Neeson was due to take on the lead role). Happily, it deserves all twelve of the ones it has received for next month’s ceremony. Day-Lewis plays the man himself of course, sixteenth president of the United States Mr Abraham Lincoln, and the entirety of the film is focused on the last few months of the American Civil War and the politics surrounding Lincoln’s attempt to have the thirteenth amendment (concerned with anti-slavery) officially written into the constitution. As such, there is almost no fighting in the film, instead we are treated to an intricate courtroom drama and character portrayal of the president, and if you are unfamiliar with the exact history of the moment this will certainly put it into an enlightening context.
And who better to play Lincoln than Daniel Day-Lewis. The Red Dragon considers him to be unquestionably the finest actor of his generation, who’s fanatical devotion to method acting each role is legendary, famously living off the land in the forest before shooting ‘The Last of the Mohicans’ (92) and flitting between Italian and English with cast and crew on ‘Nine’ (09 – he actually worked as a shoemaker for a while in Italy, for 2002’s ‘Gangs of New York’ Scorsese and DiCaprio reputedly had to track him down and go visit him personally there to persuade him to take part in the film). In an interview Gary Oldman once remarked, upon someone suggesting that everyone has a couple of bad movies, ‘hmm, I’m not aware of Daniel Day-Lewis ever having done any!’.
Here, he completely embodies the character once again with an entirely convincing accent and set of mannerisms to boot, aided by some wonderful cosmetics. He really is something special to watch, and my only, slight, criticism would be that the last ten minutes or so could have perhaps been a little more enigmatic, and it does seem unlikely that Lincoln’s advisers would be quite as surprised as they are by his machinations, but rather they are so in the film in order to make him seem all the more grand. It could be this is consistent with the source material – Doris Kearns Goodwin’s ‘Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln’ published in 2005. In any case, this is Day-Lewis’s fifth best actor nomination at the Academy Awards and if he wins, and he certainly deserves to, then he will make history as the only male actor to ever have won more than two Oscars for lead roles.
Despite the dialogue heavy nature of the movie I enjoyed it just as much, perhaps even more so, the second time around. The cast is enormous, perhaps a little distractingly so as it’s easy to spend time thinking ‘hmm, what is that actor’s name again…’ but they unanimously do a great job. In particular Tommy Lee Jones as Thaddeus Stevens, a combative, long time proponent of slavery abolition, and Sally Fields as Mary Todd Lincoln, both of whom are up for awards themselves, and also Lee Pace and Peter McRobbie playing the Democratic opposition. The set design looks rich and authentic, and is aided by Spielberg’s decision to film a lot of scenes with bright light streaming in from the exterior, much like Ridley Scott did with ‘Blade Runner’ (82), which helps to give everything the sense of a sort of schoolboy nostalgia, something that feels well suited for one of the most iconic and oft mentioned personages, not to mention lasting legacies, of the nineteenth century.
Fascinating and well made, this is one of Spielberg’s finest.
A tremendous rendition of the stage musical that achieved that rarest of things in the cinema – a rapturous round of applause, a perhaps even more impressive feat given the viewing in question was a matinée. A lot of the music has been echoing with increasing vigour around the scaly skull of The Red Dragon since that viewing and, with no sign of this abating any time soon, I feel somewhat mysteriously compelled to go and invest further in the onscreen majesty of the ensemble cast.
It opens boldly, in France 1815 with the imprisoned Jean ValJean (Hugh Jackman) and his fellow members of a chain gang hauling a huge ship in to dock, all under the watchful eye of Javert (Russel Crowe). These two begin as the protagonists: one a desperate and unjustly punished man looking to begin again, the other a relentless hunter serving a law that is above questioning. They mirror divides in French society at the time, and the story fleshes out around the conflict between the two of them and, eventually, the other characters that come into their lives – leading ultimately to a youthful band of would-be revolutionaries and the fates that befall them in their struggle to uphold the ideals of liberty.
It is, of course, the film adaptation of the enormously popular and successful stage show first shown in Paris in 1980, with music from Claude-Michel Schönberg, itself based on Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel of the same name. Schonberg composed an entirely new song for the film, ‘Suddenly’, and the whole shoot was done with live performances from the cast rather than lip synching to a pre-recording, which no doubt adds to the fresh and emotional feel of the film and is extremely rare in a made for cinema musical, a decision which has been unanimously praised by the cast.
The quality of the singing is high generally, with Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway (who plays Fantine, a young mother out of luck, rather like all of the characters which can be somewhat inferred from the title) both garnering themselves Oscar nods for their performances. Just as she did with ‘The Dark Knight Rises’, Hathaway proves her detractors wrong by becoming one of the best things about the film, indeed the movie is now a hot contender to take the best film Oscar in February just as she is to take best supporting actress. The role sees her real hair cut off during one scene, and scenes with actresses having their hair removed are generally pretty memorable for the raw emotion they evoke (Natalie Portman in ‘V for Vendetta’ 05, as another example).
Russel Crowe might surprise a few given the overwhelmingly negative reception of his singing, as although he doesn’t have the range of some of the others, and I think at least twice in the film doesn’t reach, nor carry very well, the note he’s going for, and it is noticeable, he uses the range he does have to good effect, and it matches his character perfectly. After all, most of the cast, including Jackman, have their comically off moments, but the whole film gels together nicely, and is it really necessary to have your rugged, bloodhound lawman singing perfectly like an angelic canary? Before appearing in TV and film, he began his performing career on the stage in musicals such as ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ and ‘Blood Brothers’, even fronting his own band ‘Russ Le Roq’, and here he gives a solid, commanding performance, so good on director Tom Hooper and co. for not casting someone who may have demoted Javert to the detestable, and yet popular, realms of a dilettante boy band/X factor contestant, although casting someone who had played the role successfully onstage would probably have been a better idea.
Some of the actors from the West End production, though, have happily made it into the film, one of the most impressive of whom is Samantha Barks, who plays Eponine the daughter of local crooks, and not only has a wonderful singing voice, and is drop-dead gorgeous, but appears to be able to act too. Also worthy of note is Aaron Tveit playing Enjolras, friend and comrade in arms to love interest Marius, played by Eddie Redmayne. Tveit seems to be a very natural singer, and would have been much better cast as Marius as, although Redmayne’s singing is pretty skilful, he at times looks like he’s going to explode with the effort it exacts from him, compared to the completely relaxed Tveit beside him.
This leads to the film’s biggest downfall, Redmayne himself, who was entirely the wrong person for the role athough he definitely puts his whole heart into it, and the introduction of the love story arc between Marius and Cosette. There is a large presumption on the part of the narrative, in that Marius and Cosette glimpse one another briefly on the street and instantly fall head over heels for each other, and we are expected to invest in this relationship as the light of hope in an otherwise bleak and ‘miserable’ landscape. We don’t, of course, as it’s nonsense. It needed one, or a few more scenes outwith the normal musical to make it more believable onscreen and perhaps to dramatise a little more of the politics going on; eg. Marius is brought to his lowest point, whether through despair or violence in his fight against the oppressive state, whereupon, as if heaven sent, Cosette appears to help him out, and she should physically do something not just bat her eyelashes at him, and thus, spirit rekindled and perhaps life saved, when he now fights he fights for her. Something along those lines.
The set design suffers slightly here too, as the film leads towards a fight on the streets of Paris the stage is set for a bloody climax and yet it looks just like that – a stage. From the grandeur and vision shown so far, we suddenly feel like we are in a theatre watching the stage production. Although they use the set well for what it is, I wonder if a further injection of artistic largesse would not have gone amiss, though the street set with the purpose built elephant that opens and closes the final act is perfect.
The young rebels do a very good job, especially so for young Daniel Huttlestone playing Gavroche, but when it comes to Redmaynne, well, the camera doesn’t exactly love him in this, but my goodness does it try to. I’ve seen the movie three times now, and each time I am determined to try and change my mind about his performance, and each time I get a little further in before I finally can’t take anymore. It is perhaps the occasion or inexperience showing, but he is massively not helped here by Hooper, who favours having the camera close to his cast throughout but with Redmayne he practically has the lens strapped to his face throughout several scenes. I’ve never seen anything quite like it, and unless you have a particular hankering for Redmayne flesh you may find yourself being forced to avert your eyes, especially if you are sitting near the front of the auditorium.
This could, and should, have been an absolute powerhouse of a movie. As it is, it’s still very good. Make sure you sit in the sweet spot in the cinema for the best of the sound system (especially important for this film, as is the quality of the system the cinema screen is using {it sometimes varies between screens}) and be aware it’s one of those films where everyone will have a different opinion about performances and casting choices, especially so with Tom Hooper’s style of fairly up-close and personal filming, whereby if you’re not taken with one of the cast you’re about to get a fairly severe eyeful of them for the better part of three hours. It will be a major upset if Anne Hathaway doesn’t win for best supporting actress at the Oscars – victory isn’t quite so assured for Jackman. With powerful music that will bury itself deep into your grey matter, this is, in general, a superbly stylish and heartfelt interpretation that will rekindle fond memories for fans, and deservedly make some new ones along the way.
“I’d never been on a film like this where we were doing something that had never been done before, there’s so much expectation, and a hell of a lot of fear, that really bonds people. We had nine weeks of rehearsals so by the first day of shooting we all knew each other really well, and it was the closest I’ve ever had to the feeling of the theatre, and the ensemble you get with the theatre, in a film experience. We were very together.” Hugh Jackman on shooting ‘Les Misrables’ taken from an interview with ‘Facebook Chat’
The clip below shows how some of the cast warmed up before shooting – look out for the rather unique (and cute) technique from Samantha Barks…
A visually rich and remarkable tale with more philosophy to it than is immediately apparent. The visuals had to be great for this to really succeed, featuring as it does our young hero Pi (played by Suraj Sharma doing a very good job for his very first acting role) trapped on a lifeboat with a tiger, adrift somewhere in the Pacific ocean. Maybe about two thirds of the story take place on the lifeboat, so there is a certain drag element, and the film could have done with a little more trimming perhaps losing around fifteen-twenty minutes or so. This is made all the more problematic by the fact that we know Pi will survive this ordeal as he himself is retelling it to us, via the acting talent of Bollywood superstar Irrfan Khan.
Despite all this, the mystery over what the movie may be trying to tell us (we are told that it is a tale that will make us believe in God) together with the central performance and the abundance of wonderful cinematography, should be enough to stave off the occasional pang of boredom and bring the audience, mostly awake, to the author and director’s conclusion. Based on the Man Booker price winning novel from Yann Martel, and directed by Oscar winner Ang Lee (he won for 2005’s ‘Brokeback Mountain’), ‘Life of Pi’ has been nominated for several Oscars itself, including best picture, and best director again for Lee. Interestingly, at one point in the story the lifeboat comes ashore on an island which has a wondrous pool that fills with a deadly acid at the onset of night – this may seem fantastical, but there are colourful pools in the Galapagos Islands that are indeed full of acid, whether or not they function as the ones in the story is another matter…..
In all honesty, the trailer featuring Rebecca Hall gaudily showing lots of flesh was what first attracted The Red Dragon’s attention to this film. Wondering if this was quite merit enough for him to sit and watch it, he was further intrigued by the fact that her accent and entire demeanour were both entirely contrary to anything she has done before. It’s from director Stephen Frears (‘Dangerous Liaisons’ 88, ‘High Fidelity’ 2000, ‘The Queen’ 06) and Ms Hall plays the central character of Beth Raymer, whose autobiographical novel of the same name the film is based on. It follows her story, from casual sex industry dabbler in Florida to professional bookie in Vegas and Central America.
Hall’s performance is a very convincing one and she deserves a lot of credit for daring to take on the role in the first place. Her American accent is unwavering and markedly different from her natural English one, as she fully inhibits the free spirited and talented with numbers Ms Raymer. Indeed, her performance would by itself rate very highly, although some may be put off by the character and the film’s heavy and unfair reliance on her to carry the whole, as it meanders through the story in a fairly messy way. We aren‘t really invited to invest in her as a character as, right from the offset, too much emphasis is placed on her as an object of sexual attraction, almost to the point where she‘s cinematically fetishised. Interesting that this follows on the back of Frear’s ‘Tamara Drew’ (10) and there too a highly sexualised main character, played by Gemma Arterton.
The film does pick up a bit, before degenerating into dull, dangerously close to day time soap opera territory. Bruce Willis is OK in support, and Catherine Zeta-Jones gives a much needed injection of comedy and drama. Indeed, perhaps making more of her character would have added something of more interest to that of the film. In general very average, and probably best left for fans of Rebecca Hall and/or Stephen Frears.
