Tag Archives: Movies

Safe Haven  (2013)    53/100

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Rating :   53/100                                                                     115 Min        12A

This is the latest film adaptation of one of Nicholas Sparks’ novels, which will justifiably see many self respecting men, and women, avoiding it like the plague. Like all his previous adaptations, this follows an identical template – the young lovers who could be together were it not for some exterior threat which gets in the way and leads to a confrontation at the end. Ever since ‘The Notebook’ (04), which was actually quite good, the stories have been going steadily downhill, but this isn’t too bad, with both leads, played by Josh Duhamel and Julianne Hough (‘Footloose’ {11}, ‘Rock of Ages’ {12}) proving likeable enough to at least hold some interest. Sparks now has his own production company which appears on the credits here, so we can look forward to seeing all of his stories turned into films with the same predictably nice locations, nice music, good looking actors and hollow drama for the perfection of his feel good, but largely flimsy, fare. Disappointingly, Lasse Hallstrom (‘What’s Eating Gilbert Grape’) directs – his work generally carries a lot of respect, but since this is his second Sparks adaptation (the other being ‘Dear John’{10}) one can’t help but feel they function as mere potboilers between his other projects. A sudden plot twist at the end also reveals Sparks has largely been taking the piss all the way through.

Broken City  (2013)    62/100

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Rating :   62/100                                                                     109 Min        15

Mark Wahlberg plays Billy Taggart, an ex cop working as a private eye who’s hired by the mayor of New York (Russel Crowe) to take snaps capturing the adultery of his wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones). It shapes up well, but ultimately begins to lose ground about half way through, with the twists and turns, and the interlinking of the characters with the story, feeling a little trite and forced. Wahlberg has carved out a niche for these kind of roles, and he fits them well with his incredulous looks of ‘are you kidding, this is seriously happening to me?’ as he stares off to the side before facing forward again to finish delivering his lines in his trademark stance. It’s a shame the promise of the first half isn’t matched by the second.

Arbitrage  (2012)    68/100

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Rating :   68/100                                                                     107 Min        15

Dictionary.com’s definition of the word arbitrage is “Finance. The simultaneous purchase and sale of the same securities, commodities, or foreign exchange in different markets to profit from unequal prices.” for those of you who, like me, were not entirely sure what the title of this film actually means. It can also mean to arbitrate between parties, but it’s the financial context that is implied here, loosely describing the business transactions of central character Robert Miller, played by Richard Gere. The successful head of a multi-million dollar company, one that also employs both his children, his ledgers aren’t all that they would seem, which produces a ticking time bomb as he struggles to dig himself out of an enormous economic crevice, and the growing pressure cracks begin to fracture other areas of his life in the process.

Gere has played many similar roles over the years and he does a very good job here, and overall it’s a pretty solid, interesting film. The story plays with shifting around our sympathies to a small degree, and seeing this explored further, as well as tweaking the supporting roles to make them more involving, could have added an extra degree of intrigue and complexity. As it is, it remains a drama worth going to see, with decent acting support from Susan Sarandon, Tim Roth, and up and comers Nate Parker (‘Red Tails’) and Brit Marling (‘Another Earth’). It is the first dramatic feature film to be written and directed by Nicholas Jarecki.

Stoker  (2013)    7/100

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Rating :   7/100                                                                         99 Min        18

Nothing about this film makes any sense. It’s trying to be a Hitchcockian version of Lolita, with some disgracefully gratuitous and out of place nods to that director so we get the point. India Stoker’s (Mia Wasikowska) father has just died under mysterious circumstances, enter the hitherto unmentioned uncle (Matthew Goode) who comes to stay with her and her mother (Nicole Kidman). We can tell instantly exactly what will unfold, and as it does there is little to no reaction from Stoker as events occur that would have anyone in their right minds dialling for the emergency services. What supposedly stops her, the charismatic allure of her uncle (the expected Dracula reference), doesn’t work as it hasn’t been justified at all by that point and Matthew Goode’s character is about as charismatic as a gangrenous ulcer. ‘Watchmen’ (09) is to date his only role that springs to mind as memorable, and here he manages to be both creepily omnipresent, and yet still entirely wooden.

Plot holes continue to open their cavernous mouths as the film progresses, and sadly I can’t go into any of them without giving things away, but look out for the freezer that is a country mile away from any sensible location, what’s in the freezer and the distinct lack of reaction to it, and, well, pretty much everything in the second half of the movie. It’s a massive disappointment as it is the first English language film from the South Korean director of ‘Oldboy’ (03), Park Chan-wook, who frenetically cuts out of sequence shots together and uses various camera tricks to try and keep us interested, but ultimately it comes as no surprise that he’s working with a debut script – one from ‘Prison Break’ actor Wentworth Miller, no doubt deciding to exorcise his sexual frustrations by putting them down on paper. Though Stoker is older (she has just turned eighteen) than the eponymous character in Nabokov’s classic novel, there are many parallels, with the onset of her sexual awakening being central to the story, partly represented by a CGI spider that can be seen crawling up her leg at one point. There was a study done years ago that found there was a huge rise in the fear of spiders in young girls at the onset of puberty. The theory to explain this was that there was a subconscious psychological match between the strange and perhaps disconcerting bodily change of hair appearing where once there had been none before, and the hair of the spider (this study was presumably not undertaken in Britain). Now, whether or not that conclusion was far fetched, I wonder if Mr Miller did not also come across it whilst writing his script.

It gets a rating of seven purely for the good performances of Kidman, Jacki Weaver in support, and, particularly, Wasikowska. As a sad afternote, the film was produced by Scott Free Films, and as such is the final film to have been produced by the veteran, and much loved, director Tony Scott, who took his own life by jumping off the Vincent Thomas Bridge in Los Angeles during the film’s production.

Hansel and Gretel : Witch Hunters  (2013)    62/100

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Rating :   62/100                                                                       88 Min        15

Gory fantasy violence as the traditional fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel gets a modern makeover. The original story was of course written by the Brothers Grimm, and indeed the look and feel of this film is very similar to Terry Gilliam’s ‘The Brothers Grimm’ with a lot of attention paid to the production design, including an animatronic troll, and complete with a very similar role for everyone’s favourite bad guy Peter Stormare. Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton play the titular two, grown into adulthood and battle hardened after many successful seasons of witch hunting, but now they face multiple child abductions in the same area, and a brush with their mysterious past. Famke Janssen makes an appearance, and you can expect lots of frenetic and gaudily over the top fight sequences with blunderbusses and magic. Ok, but instantly forgettable.

A brief look behind the cameras – look out for what must surely have been a painful blow to the midriff…

To The Wonder  (2012)    63/100

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Rating :   63/100                                                                     112 Min        12A

‘To The Wonder’ is the latest film from highly acclaimed director Terrence Malick, and of all his work to date it is closest to his last piece, ‘The Tree of Life’, in that it is for the most part a series of beautiful shots of nature and people, as part of the natural world, and the narrative, such that it is, is told via the character’s thoughts in poetic voice over. The pivotal character is played by Ben Affleck, Olga Kurylenko and Rachel McAdams play two of the women in his life, and Javier Bardem acts in support as the local priest with issues regarding his waning faith.

The story really focuses on the fidelity of Affleck’s relationship with girlfriend Kurylenko, and there is a sense of each character here suffering from sensory deprivation – the diligent priest who never stops working but gets no physical satisfaction, the wandering eye of Affleck, his bouncy joie de vivre girlfriend stuck with him in a dead end town, the oppressive weight of society’s expectations and limits contrasted with the wonderful landscape images of rolling hills and running streams. It is a reflective piece, and so interpretation is of course open, but there is an interesting sermon from the priest which mentions how a person can make a mistake and regret it, but hesitating and not acting is much worse. In a sense it’s a redemption for the darker moments of the film but I can’t help but wonder if perhaps Malick has not been thinking along the same lines himself, as the famously selective director, whose films to date are ‘Badlands’ (73), ‘Days of Heaven’ (78), ‘The Thin Red Line’ (98), ‘The New World’ (05) and ‘The Tree of Life’ (11), has suddenly gone into colossal creative overdrive with three full feature films currently in post production, one of which, ‘Voyage of Time’, is all about cosmology, and with his expertise in photography that really should be something special.

This is not going to be for everyone (about one third of the audience left before the end, and there were audible cries of delight when it did finish) and you have to be prepared for the majority of the film focusing on natural visuals – there is almost no character to character dialogue. It is in danger of being labelled pretentious, certainly it’s debatable whether or not he crosses the line here, where probably some of the earlier parts come off worse as we are introduced to the young lovers and it feels like we’re watching a twenty minute condom commercial. However, I think Malick is a director who takes his work very seriously and very personally (‘The Tree of Life’ for example is about a young family that very much mirrors his own upbringing) and over his films you can see his style evolving, and perhaps his confidence growing to the point where now he feels he can do a poetic film and not feel constrained by mainstream notions of story and dialogue. Feeding into this he has a very curious casting taste, usually casting the most beautiful people of both sexes that he can, indeed going for looks over acting quality – Brad Pitt, Colin Farrell, Ben Affleck, all known as male heart throbs but at times perhaps a little hit or miss on the acting front. Has he chosen them to try and match the perfection of his photography? Or for the bigger box office draw for what will be termed an art house film? There is almost a sense that the director is intensely shy and wants to be as far away from us as possible, and this film does suffer from a slight feeling of alienation that never quite goes away.

In the case of Affleck here, Malick very wisely gives him almost nothing to say for the entire film, he just sort of struts around looking brutish, and is rewarded for good behaviour by being allowed to break a wing mirror. He does have I think two, possibly three voice over bits of brief poetry, but then it really does sound hopelessly pretentious, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there were a lot more left lying on the cutting room floor. His lady friend speaks in French a lot of the time, and it’s fairly plain to see from the look on Affleck’s face he has no idea what she is saying. The one time he replies in French we know very well it has been dubbed with someone else’s voice, partly from him having his back to us and omitting a small shout a second later with a different audio quality, and partly because there is no way he would be able to produce such a convincing French accent. Interestingly, one of the love scenes in the film, often the most difficult thing to do and usually completely pointless in terms of the story or visual experience for the audience, was superbly done, brief, but showcasing the bodies of the protagonists in a way they will never have any reason to be shy about.

Having said that, the camera does seem to have a constant gravitation toward the breasts of the various females who feature in the film, which begins to feel a little perverse, unless of course Malick is saying they are a part of the wonderful, beautiful landscape of nature which, you know, I wouldn’t necessarily disagree with, or perhaps he intends the viewer to almost see through the eyes of Ben Affleck’s character. Art house film can justify almost anything. There is a trend generally in modern film with the fairly ubiquitous use of shaky or hand held cam, to various degrees, to have a sneaky extra dip with the camera – even yesterday whilst rewatching Les Mis there was a noticeable perv on Samantha Barks when she’s in the rain singing against the wall.

The film’s title is mentioned as the main couple visit Mont Saint-Michel in France (also reputedly one of the inspirations behind Minis Tirith’s design in Peter Jackson’s ‘The Lord of the Rings’ trilogy). I thought at one point there was something about the film that reminded me of ‘There Will be Blood’, which has a similar feel in terms of the landscape acting as a character for the first act of the movie, and sure enough the head of the art department on that film, Jack Fisk (also husband to Sissy Spacek), reprises that role here, being a long time colleague of Malick. With ‘Blood’ the technique worked really well because it was used in collaboration with the actions, if not initially the words, of an intense character played by Daniel Day Lewis, but here the characters are too flimsy and don’t really get interesting until later on, which is ultimately why this isn’t as good as his previous work. There does remain some very beautiful imagery throughout the film that it will be a pleasure to have endure in my memory, and overall I’d say I liked it despite its overly indulgent tendencies, though it would be interesting to know where exactly the division here exists between Malick, Fisk and the cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki. Not for the first time in his career, Malick has axed footage of other famous actors from the movie entirely, amongst them Jessica Chastain and Rachel Weisz. Perhaps Affleck’s character was getting too much action. Christian Bale was originally slated for the role that Affleck plays but he pulled out and will feature in Malick’s next two films instead.

One can imagine the casting…

MALICK :   Ok, Olga, love your limited work so far by the way, so we’d like to cast you so we can have you frolic around sensually showing off your body, and then have you lie down on some manky wet marshland, how does that sound, exciting yes?
OLGA :   Em, why?
MALICK :   There is no why …. Only beauty…
B.AFFLECK :   Hey Malick can I be your movie and then have it released around the time of the Oscars so I can say I was in an art house Terence Malick flick, and am therefore a SERIOUS GUY, and my torrid history bashopic ‘Argo’ can have better odds of winning best film?
MALICK :   Yes. But you may not open your mouth again for the entirety of the film. Unless it is in wonder at the beauty….
B.AFFLECK :   Well can I least take my shirt off?
MALICK :   Let me have a look. Beautiful, yes we can work together.

Argo  (2012)    31/100

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Rating :   31/100                                                                     120 Min        15

The sheer and unequivocal arrogance of this film is grotesque and abhorrent to say the least, as the filmmakers rewrite a now well documented piece of history giving the American authorities credit for other people’s bravery and work, and making cheap political digs at Iran’s expense in the process.

Leaving aside the factual debacle for the moment, the film follows the events surrounding the storming of the American embassy, and subsequent hostage taking of the diplomats, in Tehran in 1979 by a mob of angry Iranians (many of them students) over Jimmy Carter’s decision to allow sanctuary in the States to the deposed Iranian Shah. During the panic a small group of Americans managed to get away and find secret refuge with Canadian diplomats elsewhere in the city. CIA exfiltration expert Tony Mendes (Ben Affleck – also the director of the film) is hired to think of a way to get them out of the country, and comes up with the notion of passing them off as a Canadian film crew, location scouting for a new, fake, Sci-Fi film entitled ‘Argo’. The rest of the film follows that escape attempt.

The style and feel of the film is accessible and noteworthy, with a lot of attention being paid to the fashion and trends of the day, and a decent amount of humour has been sewn into the script for the first half of the film. The direction is also well paced and involving for the first half, music is well used throughout, and there exist a lot of nice touches, especially with the fake Sci-Fi movie, even if some of them feel a little too modern, such as the robot they create for it. It is perhaps easy to see why people in the industry love this film, as we get a glimpse of the behind the scenes world of Hollywood via Oscar winning makeup artist and CIA helper John Chambers (John Goodman) who aids the set up of Argo to look authentic, one of the few things it gets historically correct. There are more than one or two digs at Hollywood as an industry, and nods in the Academy’s direction with mention of multiple Oscar winners ‘Network’ and ‘Kramer versus Kramer’ (‘Argo’ itself is nominated for seven Academy Awards, including best picture).

The film suffers a severe problem with its marketing, in that if you’ve seen the trailer, you can pretty safely infer several key things about the film. With that in mind, a lot of the tension that Affleck tries to create feels entirely artificial. This is taken to the point of lunacy as, despite the fact they have been in hiding for seventy nine days, about four or five things converge at pretty much the exact moment in time in order to try and escalate the tension as much as possible, but to say it’s unbelievable would be like saying it’s a little chillier in space than it is here on Earth. At one point an Iranian guard has a huge rant in Farsi at a befuddled Affleck and co even though we’ve already been told these members of the military were likely educated in the west, and sure enough we later hear him speaking in English, all purely so the situation seems more extreme. It ends up being much the same as watching an action film where the hero escapes by always being one second faster than the hail of bullets and explosions dogging his shadow, and by the lack of any real intelligence in the bad guys.

Purely viewed as entertainment and ignoring history completely, I would rate this somewhere in the lower sixties. However, what this film has done with history simply cannot be ignored. Jimmy Carter has said himself in interview with Piers Morgan (something showing in itself a lack of political savvy) that ninety percent of the entire rescue operation was Canadian, whereas ‘Argo’ would have us believe that statistic belonged wholesale to the U.S. administration. A secondary great evil is that in the film it is stated very clearly that both New Zealand and The United Kingdom refused to give sanctuary to the American diplomats, something which is an outright disgraceful lie, both countries actively helped – one of those involved in the events, Bob Anders, said after seeing the film “They put their lives on the line for us. We were all at risk. I hope no one in Britain will be offended by what’s said in the film. The British were good to us and we’re forever grateful.” How in the name of hell do George Clooney and co. (he is one of the producers) think it is ok to rewrite history as they see fit? I mean, they have actually stated the very polar opposite of what actually happened, both here and generally (although Tony Mendez did come up with the Argo idea and did work for the CIA). Affleck has said that he lied about the other countries involvement as he wanted to show that these people had nowhere else to go, but since they ended up with the Canadians eventually, because everyone agreed it was becoming too dangerous everywhere else anyway, why in the name of bloody hell don’t they just tell the truth!!! The Red Dragon watches a good many films, and when it comes to history in the movies you learn to always take it with a pinch of salt, however even I, though I thought it strange, was inclined to believe them when they said sanctuary was denied because it is presented as fact, and it’s the sort of thing that you think well surely they wouldn’t make that up?

This is just the beginning of the gross make believe that was put into the film, indeed, almost everything in the second half is a complete fabrication. Including the Iranians forcing children in a sweat shop at gun point to reassemble shredded mug shots of the consulate staff – there were no mug shots, and consular documents were reassembled by the Iranian students who could read English. There are several ironies here too, one being when Alan Arkin’s character (another fiction by the way) bemoans the Canadians taking the credit for the operation, and another the efforts taken to make the actors playing those in hiding look like their real life counterparts as they show during the end credits – if they are going to go to those lengths for cosmetic details which do not matter ultimately why in the name of God not make the actual story accurate, or for that matter cast Affleck as Mendez who is in fact Mexican? Indeed, in reality it seems Mr Mendez, come the day of the actual exfiltration, slept in by half an hour, and had to actually be woken up by one of the New Zealand diplomats that the film claims turned the Americans away! See the Guardian article here for more details.

Another outrageous lie is delivered via a sinister choice of quote from Jimmy Carter, also as the end credits play, as he states “Eventually we got every hostage back home safe and sound, and we upheld the integrity of our country and we did it peacefully” – this is with regard to the remaining hostages who were the ones actually seized by the Iranians and properly held captive, whose fate ‘Argo’ makes no other reference too. Well, in reality the Americans attempted a military rescue which was a complete and unmitigated disaster, resulting in abortion half way through and the death of several American service men and one innocent Iranian civilian. It is generally thought to have been a major factor in Carter losing the presidency later that year, and indeed literally minutes after he had left office, Iran released all the hostages.

This film is an absolute disgrace, and it deserves to be lambasted, not rewarded as, unfortunately, it is in danger of being at the upcoming Oscars. Even its inclusion of a dilapidated Hollywood sign on Lee Hill is ironic as it had actually been repaired by the time of the events depicted, and the film itself represents Hollywood at its most careless. On the back of this we can look forward to Affleck’s next project about the Americans who invented ice hockey, and then his piece on the beginnings of the industrial revolution, in Philadelphia. His last two films (‘The Town’, ‘Gone Baby Gone’) were both great, but if you can’t make the truth work on film, to the point where you’re advocating and propagating a lie, then you have no right to be working in the medium.

Argo fuck yourself Ben Affleck.


Quotes

“’Hmm let’s see. Well, this one’s got an MA in English, she should be your screenwriter. Sometimes they go along on scouts, because they want their free meals. Here’s your director.’ {Chambers}
‘You can teach someone to be a director in a day?’ {Mendez}
‘You can teach a rhesus monkey to be a director in a day.’ {Chambers}” John Goodman/John Chambers and Ben Affleck/Tony Mendez

“So you want to come to Hollywood, and act like a big shot, without actually doing anything? You’ll fit right in.” John Goodman/John Chambers

“If he could act he wouldn’t be playing the minotaur” John Goodman/John Chambers

“Ok, you got six people hiding out in a town of what, four million people all of whom chant death to America all the live long day, you want to set up a movie in a week, you want to lie to Hollywood, a town where everybody lies for a living, then you’re gonna sneak 007 over here into a country that wants CIA blood on their breakfast cereal, and you’re going to walk the Brady Bunch out of the most watched city in the world…. Right. Look, I, I gotta tell you, we did suicide missions in the army that had better odds than this.” Alan Arkin/Lester Siegel

“Hi, I only got a couple of minutes, I’m getting a lifetime achievement award… I’d rather stay home and count the wrinkles on my dog’s balls.” Alan Arkin/Lester Siegel

“If I’m doing a fake movie, it’s going to be a fake hit” Alan Arkin/Lester Siegel

“Well, what can I say. Congratulations. But see, it kinda worries me when you say that, and let me tell you why. Couple of weeks ago I was sitting at Trader Vic’s enjoying a Mai Tai, when my pal Warren Beatty comes in, he wishes me well, we have a little chat. Seems he was attached to star in Zulu Empire, which was going to anchor that MGM slate, but Warren confided in me that the picture’s gone over budget because the Zulu extras want to unionise. They may be cannibals, but they want health and dental so the movie’s kaput, which means that the MGM deal ain’t gonna happen, and your script ain’t worth the buffalo shit on a nickel. So, the way it looks to me, through the cataracts I grant you, is that you can either sign here, and take ten thousand dollars for your toilet paper script, or you can go fuck yourself. With all due respect.” Alan Arkin/Lester Siegel

“Bad news, bad news. Even when it’s good news it’s bad news. John Wayne’s in the ground six months, this is what’s left of America.” Alan Arkin/Lester Siegel

“Fade in on a star ship landing. An exotic middle-Eastern vibe. Women gather offering ecstatic libations to the sky gods. Argo, science fantasy adventure.” Ben Affleck/Tony Mendez

“Hi, my name’s Kevin Harkins and, I’m going to get you home.” Ben Affleck/Tony Mendez

“This is what I do. I get people out. And I’ve never left anyone behind… My name is Tony Mendez, I’m from New York, my father worked construction, my mother teaches elementary school, I have a wife and a ten year old son. You play along with me today I promise you I will get you out tomorrow.” Ben Affleck/Tony Mendez

“Brace yourself, it’s like talking to those two old fucks on the Muppets.” Bryan Cranston/Jack O’Donnell

“This is the best bad idea we have sir, by far.” Bryan Cranston/Jack O’Donnell

Cloud Atlas  (2012)    59/100

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Rating :   59/100                                                                     172 Min        15

This isn’t actually all that bad. It is way too long at just under three hours, in fact I’m pretty sure an entire hour could have been axed from it somewhere in the middle. Half way through I couldn’t wait for it to end, but come the end I was actually quite enjoying it. The best way to think of this film is traditional adventure storytelling done in a multi-layered way, with each layer a different story in space and time over Earth’s history but each featuring the same actors playing multiple parts, ultimately trying to make the point that our actions, every crime or kind deed as the film puts it, can have repercussions for evermore, and forwarding the belief that life is both transient and ever renewing.

It features an ensemble cast including Jim Broadbent, Tom Hanks, Halle Berry (why does she always get all the worst lines? Does she improv them?), Ben Whishaw, Jim Sturgess and Hugh Grant to name some of the most familiar faces, all often wearing prosthetics and sporting different accents, to varying degrees of success. It’s adapted from the Booker prize nominated novel by David Mitchell and directed by the Wachowski brothers (or perhaps siblings is more correct since one of them has undergone a sex change, they are joined by Tom Tykwer {‘Run Lola Run’} on director duties) of ‘The Matrix’ fame, and just as in that series Hugo Weaving makes a marked appearance as the bad guy/assassin in most of the stories, and he clearly relishes being able to do so.

The script needed to be reworked as it’s pretty consistently terrible, featuring cartloads of cheese and an evolved future language that sounds altogether like gibberish, something made all the worse by the actors mumbling it as they attempt to deliver it to us. Some nice shots of Edinburgh, as well as a Scottish bar fight gag at the expense of some supposed English patrons, which went a long way toward warming the audience to the film….

Quotes

“You have to do what you can’t not do”   Halle Berry/Luisa Rey

Mama  (2013)    67/100

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Rating :   67/100                                                                     100 Min        15

Decent horror film with a few moments of palpable fear, exec produced by Guillermo del Toro (‘Pan’s Labyrinth’, ‘Hellboy’) after seeing director Andres Muschietti’s Spanish language short film of the same name. The eponymous mama appears in traditional tattered rags and multi-flex atrophied limbs, whereupon she decides to become the protector of two young girls, which is all well and good to begin with but eventually leads to relationship problems with other family members, and some much needed counselling. Many clichés, but also various successful attempts to avoid cliché – we end up with the buxom female (in this instance a convincingly gothed up Jessica Chastain) as the central adult focus, with ample cleavage as her most visible weapon, but as she avoids monstrous devourment (apparently, despite The Red Dragon using this for years, this is not a real word. It has to start somewhere though…) we are spared endless pointless chases, the ghost pretty much just gets on with it when it can be bothered, or rather when it is bothered. One of the hand drawn pictures in the girl’s bedroom is pretty scary, featuring some sort of creepy zombified Goofy. Hmm, yes try not to look at that actually (you can see it above).

Song for Marion  (2012)    63/100

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Rating :   63/100                                                                       93 Min        PG

Nice little film. Cancer patient Marion (Vanessa Redgrave) cajoles her moody husband Arthur (Terence Stamp) to allow her to indulge in a local singing group for retirees, taught by buoyant girl next door Elizabeth (Gemma Arterton). It starts off shakily, especially with the direction, but when the group performs outdoors and we hear the obviously pre-recorded sound of the backing choir play, suddenly Vanessa Redgrave takes the mike and performs a heart felt solo, live, and with no accompaniment. It’s a very brave move, and it lifts the tone of the whole film, with the two central performances (and good support from Arterton and Christopher Eccleston as their son) moulding what could have been humdrum into something more meaningful. Stamp has such an expressive face, he can go from growling thunder in one second to playful innocence in the next, it’s a shame that here more originality wasn’t put into the screenplay as, good performances aside, there’s nothing we haven’t seen many times before.