Best Films of 2014

This is the flipside of my previous post: the top five films of 2014:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culture-review-of-the-year/11287706/The-five-best-films-of-2014.html

Of these I've only seen 12 Years a Slave, but the rest are now on my "must see" list - more DVDs will be on their way soon.

The Five Worst Films of 2014

With the papers being full of "best of" lists, this makes a welcome change: the five worst films of the year:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culture-review-of-the-year/11287705/The-five-worst-films-of-2014.html

I'm pleased to record that I haven't seen any of them. 

It's at moments like this that I'm glad that I'm not a full time critic...

The Love Punch

After the sublime Casablanca we screened The Love Punch as our last show before Christmas.

It caught the zeitgeist with the corporate raid and the loss of pensions as the raison d'etre for the plot, the cast were excellent and despite it being obvious from the first scene how it was going to end on the whole I enjoyed it.

Here are my notes:

The Love Punch

UK 2013                      94 minutes

Director:                      Joel Hopkins

Starring:                        Pierce Brosnan, Emma Thompson, Timothy Spall, Celia Imrie

“It really is completely absurd, and yet writer-director Hopkins carries it along at a canter... The accomplished cast do their considerable best. Likable fun.”

Peter Bradshaw

Despite their divorce Richard (Pierce Brosnan) and Kate (Emma Thompson) have an amicable relationship.  Richard is about to retire and when he learns that his pension fund has been frozen as his investment company is under investigation for fraud he and Kate decide to recover the money some other way.  With the help of a friendly couple (Timothy Spall and Celia Imrie) they travel to the south of France and plan to steal the diamond that Richard’s employer had given to his girlfriend.

 

Joel Hopkins was born in London but moved to the US to study at University.  He made his name with Jump Tomorrow (2001) which received good reviews on its limited release and was nominated for two British Independent Film Awards: the Douglas Hickox award for debut filmmakers and the Award for Best Screenplay.  He also won the BAFTA Carl Foreman Award for Most Promising Newcomer.

He met Emma Thompson while he was being considered to direct Nanny McPhee (2005) for which she had written the screenplay as well as starring as the title character.  After seeing her in a play with Dustin Hoffman he was inspired to write a film that reflected their interpersonal chemistry: the resulting film Last Chance Harvey (2008) was well received by critics.

Here's the trailer:



Casablanca...

We are about to celebrate our 150th screening.  No one is quite sure when it actually is as we have not kept records of a few ad hoc events, so by unanimous decision it will be this week.

In honour of this magnificent occasion there is only one choice: Casablanca...

So we have booked a jazz bad, will provide a three course Moroccan buffet and our house is full of cases of prosecco which I will deliver to the Village Hall on Saturday.

And we will of course be screening a film.  I had great fun scouring the internet for articles, and found a great quote by Roger Ebert.  I also found the Umberto Eco quote in an article, but I have the book of essays from which it comes on my shelf.

Here are my notes:

Casablanca

USA 1942                    102 minutes

Director:                      Michael Curtiz

Starring:                        Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, Paul Henreid, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre and Dooley Wilson

Awards and Nominations

• Won three Oscars (Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay)
• Nominated for five more Oscars including Best Actor (Bogart lost out to Paul Lukas for Watch on the Rhine) and Best Supporting Actor (Claude Rains lost out to Charles Coburn for The More The Merrier)
• Ingrid Bergman was nominated as Best Actress for her role in For Whom the Bell Tolls

"Casablanca is The Movie. There are greater movies.  More profound movies.  Movies of greater artistic vision or artistic originality or political significance.  There are other titles we would put above it on our lists of the best films of all time.  But when it comes right down to the movies we treasure the most, when we are - let us imagine - confiding the secrets of our heart to someone we think we may be able to trust, the conversation sooner or later comes around to the same seven words:

"I really love Casablanca."

"I do too." "

Roger Ebert

The starting point for Casablanca was a script for an unperformed play called Everybody Comes to Rick’s: the inspiration for the play had been a visit that the writers made to a night club in the south of France where a black pianist played to entertain the French, Nazis and refugees although they set the play in Casablanca.  The official credits for the screenplay are for the Epstein brothers and Howard Koch, with uncredited contributions and rewrites from Casey Robinson as well as input from Michael Curtiz: the final result was a script where no one could remember who had written what.  Umberto Eco has highlighted this complex genealogy as one of the great strengths of the film:

“Thus Casablanca is not just one film. It is many films, an anthology.  Made haphazardly, it probably made itself, if not actually against the will of its authors and actors, then at least beyond their control.  And this is the reason it works, in spite of aesthetic theories and theories of film making.  For in it there unfolds with almost telluric force the power of Narrative in its natural state, without Art intervening to discipline it.

...When all the archetypes burst in shamelessly, we reach Homeric depths.  Two clichés make us laugh.  A hundred clichés move us.  For we sense dimly that the clichés are talking among themselves, and celebrating a reunion.”

 By 1955 Casablanca had earned $6.8 million, making it the third most successful of Warners wartime films, by 1977 it had become the most frequently broadcast film on US television, and in 1989 it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". 

Many later films have used elements of Casablanca: Bogart, Rains, Greenstreet and Lorre all appeared in Curtiz’s Passage to Marseille (1944), and To Have and Have Not (1944), with Bogart in it the lead, has many similarities to Casablanca.  In addition to Woody Allen’s Play It Again Sam (1972) in which Casablanca played a significant part, the film has also inspired many parodies, including the Marx Brothers’ A Night in Casablanca (1946) Neil Simon’s The Cheap Detective (1978), and a Looney Tunes cartoon version called Carrot Blanca (1995) in which Bugs Bunny plays the Bogart role.  Even the script has been a source of inspiration for artists: Michael Singer chose The Usual Suspects for his unwritten script as he thought it would make a good title, and David Thomson used the same phrase as the epigraph for his novel Suspects whose characters (among many from films of this period) include Ilsa, Rick and Captain Renault.

Everybody Comes to Rick’s was finally staged in London in 1992, when it ran for six weeks.

In case you haven't seen it, here's the trailer:

 

Stoker

We screened this last week.  Somehow I missed the film when it was on general release, and I when I started reading up on it to write my notes I thought it looked good.

I was not mistaken.

Here are my notes:

Stoker

USA 2012                    99 minutes

Director:                      Park Chan-wook

Starring:                        Mia Wasikowska, Nicole Kidman and Matthew Goode

Awards and Nominations

• Seven wins
• 25 nominations

“The South Korean director Park Chan-wook makes an eye-catching English-language debut with his outrageous quasi-remake of Alfred Hitchcock's 1943 thriller Shadow of a Doubt. Where Hitchcock's original injected a small drop of poison into picket-fence suburbia, Stoker stands proud as a full-blown gothic nightmare. ”

Xan Brooks

Following the death of India’s father, her uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode) who she never knew existed comes to live with her and Evelyn, her unstable mother (Nicole Kidman).  India (Mia Wasikowska) comes to suspect that this mysterious charming man has ulterior motives while at the same time becoming increasingly infatuated with him.

The script is by Wentworth Miller, best known as an actor in the TV series Prison Break (2005), although he submitted the script under a pseudonym, explaining later “I just wanted the scripts to sink or swim on their own”.  Miller described his story as “a horror film, a family drama and a psychological thriller”.   The title Stoker suggests a link to Bram Stoker, but in the context of the story Miller’s debt to Dracula lies more in the relationship between Charlie and India, echoing the corrupting influence that Dracula has on Lucy Westenra, rather than on any overt vampire references.  A more obvious source for Miller’s script is Hitchcock’s 1943 psychological thriller Shadow of a Doubt.   

In an interview Miller freely acknowledged this debt:  

"The jumping-off point is actually Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt. So, that's where we begin, and then we take it in a very, very different direction”. 

 

He emphasises the point by giving India’s uncle the same name as that of Joseph Cotten’s psychopathic killer in the Hitchcock film.

This film is South Korean Park Chan-wook’s first English language feature, after making his name in South Korea as the writer and director of Sympathy for Mr Vengeance (2002), Oldboy (2003) and Lady Vengeance (2005), the so-called Vengeance Trilogy.  Oldboy won the Grand Prix at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival where Quentin Tarantino, a great fan, lobbied hard for it to be given the Palme d’Or.

Here's the trailer:

 

The Lunchbox

I'm running a bit late with this: we screened The Lunchbox nearly a fortnight ago.

I'd been looking forward to it very much and realy enjoyed it: the Indian scenes were extremely atmospheric but the story itself is timeless: all I hope is that if there is an American remake then they do not give it a great big happy ending.

Here are my notes:

The Lunchbox (Dabba)

India 2014                    104 minutes

Director:                      Ritesh Batra

Starring:                        Irrfan Khan, Nimrat Kaur and Nawazuddin Siddiqui

Awards and Nominations

• Won Golden Rail (Critics Week Viewers Choice) at 2013 Cannes Film Festival, plus nominations for Golden Camera and Critics Week Grand Prize
• Nominated for Best Film at 2013 London Film Festival
• A further 21 wins and 30 nominations

 

“The Lunchbox is perfectly handled and beautifully acted; a quiet storm of banked emotions.”

Xan Brooks, The Guardian

The lunchbox that a young wife has prepared for her husband to bring romance back into their marriage is delivered by mistake to the wrong man, an elderly widower who is facing retirement.  The wife realises her mistake and sends the man a note to which he replies, and then they begin a regular correspondence through this unorthodox means of communication.

Ritesh Batra had started his career by writing and directing a series of short films, but in 2007 began to research the dabbawal, the famous Mumbai lunch delivery men, with the intention of making a documentary about them.  However the stories that they told him about their customers gave him the idea for this film and he started to write the script. 

The film was first screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 2013 where it received a standing ovation and won the Critics Week Viewers Choice Award.  After this Sony Pictures Classics picked up all North American rights for distribution, where it became 2014's highest grossing foreign film.  In India it was released on more than 400 screens and received widespread critical and commercial acclaim (and received many nominations and awards at Asian Film Festivals), but it unexpectedly failed to receive the Indian nomination for the Best Foreign Language Film for the 2014 Oscars.

 

Here's the trailer:

 

 

12 Years a Slave

This week we are screening 12 Years a Slave - one of the best films of 2013.

Here are my notes:

12 Years a Slave

 USA 2013                    133 minutes

Director:                      Steve McQueen

Starring:                        Chiwetel Ejiofor, Benedict Cumberpatch, Lupita Nyong’o, Michael Fassbender, Paul Dano and Brad Pitt

Awards and Nominations

• Won three Oscars  - Best Film, Best Adapted Screenplay (John Ridley) and Best Supporting Actress (Lupita Nyong’o), and nominated for six more, including Best Actor (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Best Supporting Actor (Michael Fassbender)
• Won two BAFTAs – Best Film and Best Actor (Chiwetel Ejiofor), and nominated for seven more including Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Michael Fassbender) and Best Supporting Actress (Lupita Nyong’o)
• A further 212 wins and 193 nominations

“While it is not the role of critics to tell people which films to see and which to avoid (audiences make those decisions for themselves), let me begin by saying that if you have any interest in cinema – or, for that matter, in art, economics, politics, drama, literature or history – then you need to watch 12 Years a Slave."

Mark Kermode

In 1841 Solomon Northrop (Chiwetel Ejiofor), an educated black man born free in New York State, is tricked, drugged and sold into slavery in the South.  Here he initially becomes the property of the relatively benign plantation owner Ford (Benedict Cumberpatch) but later is sold on to the sadistic Epps (Michael Fassbender).  After 12 years he is rescued and finally is able to return to his family.

Northrop published his memoir of his time as a slave in 1853, shortly after Harriet Beecher Stowe’s best-selling novel about Slavery, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and both books provided dramatic stories for the political debate over slavery that took place in the US in the years leading up to the Civil War.  Subsequently the book fell into obscurity until the 1960s when two historians researched Northrop’s story, retraced his journeys, and published a scholarly edition of the text that is still in print.

After the success of his film Hunger (2008) Steve McQueen had expressed an interest in making a film about “the slave era in America” with “a character that was not obvious in terms of their trade in slavery” but it was not until he was given a copy of Northrop’s memoir that he found his story:

“I read this book, and I was totally stunned. At the same time I was pretty upset with myself that I didn't know this book.  I live in Amsterdam where Anne Frank is a national hero, and for me this book read like Anne Frank's diary but written 97 years before – a firsthand account of slavery.  I basically made it my passion to make this book into a film.”

The film received almost universal acclaim from both critics and audiences for its acting, especially the performances of Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender and Lupita Nyong’o, as well as Steve McQueen’s direction, the screenplay by John Ridley and its faithfulness to Northrop’s original memoir.

Steve McQueen began his career in the UK as a Turner prize winning visual artist whose work included numerous short films.  His first feature film was Hunger (2008), starring Michael Fassbender about the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike, and in 2011 he made Shame, once again starring Michael Fassbender as a sex addict whose life is turned upside down when his estranged sister reappears in his life.

The Book Thief

Tomorrow is the first proper screening of our new season and we will be showing The Book Thief.  I've not read the novel , but it's a film I've wanted to see for a while - despite the less than enthusiastic reviews. 

After binging on WW1 history books recently I've now moved on to Nazi Germany and after finishing The Origins of the Third Reich, which covered German history from unification through to 1932/33, the second volume - The Third Reich in Power - covers the period up to war in 1939.  The final volume The Third Reich at War covers the period from 1939 to the end of the Third Reich, and that is next on my reading list.  The books are all masterpieces of research and writing and put the whole terrible history of the rise of Hitler and the Nazis into fascinating context.

Hence this film has come along at an opportune time.

As I could few reviews that could offer  positive headline quotes I've selected a few anti-Nazi (and anti anyone else who burns books for political or ideological reasons) quotations instead.

Here are my notes:

The Book Thief

USA 2013                    131 minutes

Director:                      Brian Percival

Starring:                        Roger Allam, Sophie Nelisse, Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson

Awards and Nominations

• Nominated for Oscar for Best Score (John Williams)
• 3 wins for Sophie Nelisse 
• A further 4 nominations.

“Wherever books are burned, human beings are destined to be burned too."

Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)

 “You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police.  Yet in their hearts there is unspoken - unspeakable! - fear.  They are afraid of words and thoughts!  Words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home, all the more powerful because they are forbidden.  These terrify them.  A little mouse - a little tiny mouse! - of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic."

            Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

In Nazi Germany Liesel (Sophie Nelisse), an illiterate young orphan is taken in by foster parents Hans (Geoffrey Rush) and Rosa (Emily Watson).  Liesel learns to read and after witnessing a Nazi book burning begins to steal books to read.  Her story is narrated by Death (Roger Allam) and he finally tells what happened to Liesel after she survived the war.

The film is based on the Young Adult novel of the same name by Australian author Marcus Zusak that was on the New York Times Best Seller List for more than four years.  However although a work of fiction the story is set against genuine historical events: from the time that it consolidated its seizure of power in 1933 the Nazis instituted book-burning campaigns against authors whose work was deemed subversive or which undermined Nazi ideology; Kristallnacht was a Nazi pogrom against Jews in both Germany and Austria in November 1938; and the Second World War broke out in September 1939.

Brian Percival started his career with the BBC where he directed several prestige projects including adaptations of North and South, The Ruby in the Smoke and The Old Curiosity Shop.  Since then he has worked for ITV where he has directed six episodes of Downton Abbey. The Book Thief is his first film. 

Here's the trailer:

And here's the sound track

 

Marketing Failure

We always plan to show a popular film for our AGM, but generally do not want to screen something tht would attract paying punters elswewhere in the season: hence we'd decided to replace Saving Mr Banks with The Book Thief, and when w discovered that this was not available we'd chosen Life of Pi - and I'd written the notes.

But no one had told our marketing guru and so we'd sent out a email advertising Saving Mr Banks.  We had a surprisingly good audience for a sunny June evening but we were  not sure what they'd turned out to see, and so we had a vote and Saving Mr Banks won. I enjoyed it very much and did not have to write any notes and if we do screen Life of Pi next season then I will have the notes ready.

Here's the trailer for Saving Mr Banks:

On a silly note, I also like the re-cut trailer for Scary Mary Poppins:

 

Life of Pi

And so we reach the end of another season and it's time for our AGM.  We generally try to choose a film that is going to be popular and this year our choice is Ang Lee's Life of Pi.

Here are my notes:

Life of Pi

USA 2012                    127 minutes

Director:                      Ang Lee

Starring:                        Suraj Sharma, Tabu, Gerard Depardieu and Rafe Spall

Awards and Nominations

• Won four Oscars including Best Director and Cinematography, and nominations for seven further Oscars including Best Film and Best Adapted Screenplay
• Two Golden Globe nominations including Best Film and Best Directior
• A further 52 wins and 70 nominations

“[Ang Lee’s] magnificent new film is a version of Yann Martel's Booker prize-winning novel, Life of Pi, adapted by an American writer, David Magee, whose previous credits were films set in England during the first half of the 20th century, Finding Neverland and Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day.  From its opening scene of animals and birds strutting and preening themselves in a sunlit zoo to the final credits of fish and nautical objects shimmering beneath the sea, the movie has a sense of the mysterious, the magical.  This effect is compounded by the hallucinatory 3D, and in tone the film suggests Robinson Crusoe rewritten by Laurence Sterne.”

Philip French

The film is based on the best-selling novel by Yann Martel, a fanatasy about an Indian boy called Piscine (“Pi”) Patel who survives 227 days after a shipwreck while stranded on a lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean with a Bengal tiger called Richard Parker as his companion.  The book became a global best-seller – although many of its readers must have thought it was unfilmable.

Several other directors had planned to direct the film before Ang Lee took on the project.  The initial plan was for M Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense) to direct, but after he chose to direct Lady in the Water, the studio discussed the project with Alonso Cuaron (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Gravity).  He passed on the opportunity in order to direct Children of Men, and there were subsequently discussions with Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Amelie and Alien Resurrection), who began work on his own screenplay but made no further progress.  In 2009 Fox Pictures finally hired Ang Lee to direct, and although the projected budget of $120 million caused a further delay, filming finally started in January 2011.

One of the costly elements of the budget was Lee’s decision to film in 3D.  He explained this choice in an interview:

"I thought this was a pretty impossible movie to make technically. It's so expensive for what it is.  You sort of have to disguise a philosophical book as an adventure story.  I thought of 3-D half a year before Avatar was on the screen.  I thought water, with its transparency and reflection, the way it comes out to you in 3-D, would create a new theatrical experience and maybe the audience or the studio would open up their minds a little bit to accept something different."

The film opened to widespread critical acclaim, with the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes stating:

 “A 3D adaptation of a supposedly ‘unfilmable’ book, Ang Lee's Life of Pi achieves the near impossible—it's an astonishing technical achievement that's also emotionally rewarding.”

Here's the trailer:

 

Cinematic Foreplay

I love the description of the time you have to wait before a director reveals the monster as "cinematic foreplay":

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/05/17/godzilla_2014_shows_the_monster_an_hour_in_does_it_work_the_data_on_how.html

Having recently watched Pacific Rim I agree with del Toro's comments about his film: it started with a climax and built up from there.

It's also good to see the mention of Night of the Demon. 

I'd read about this and had to hunt it down, but it was definitely worth the search.  I think it would have been far better if the monster had not appeared in the first scene: our imagination is always far more effective than anything a director can show - especially in a film that was made far before the pre-digital age.

The Woman in Black is another recent example where there is a significant delay before we see the monster/ghost - and the delay builds up the tension. 

It also occurred to me that the final sequence at the station might be a deliberate echo/tribute to Night of the Demon.

Cannes Film Festival

Seven years go I attended the Cannes Film Festival for the first time.  My then-employer was a major sponsor and each year there were a few tickets provided for employees.  In most years the tickets were handed out after a ballot of interested parties - so there was little chance of winning - but this year the company decided to set up a blogging competition.  I was one of the winners - and I haven't stopped yet.

The organising team were more keen to tell us about the logistics  for the trip, but they could not answer my first question: what screening were we due to attend?  So many films now regarded as masterpieces received their first screening at Cannes, but sadly what we saw was Les Chansons d'Amour:

I didn't manage to find a single review of it and inevitably it did not feature in any of the awards.

I still read all the reviews from Cannes avidly, and sometimes enjoy a good review of a bad film rather than a rave about a masterpiece.  This year Peter Bradshaw's description of Grace of Monaco featuring performances so wooden that they were a fire risk made me laugh our loud several times:

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/may/14/grace-of-monaco-cannes-review-nicole-kidman
 

Best Adaptations of Novels

I think it was Phillip Pullman who commented on the close relationship between novels and cinema, in that both genres have the ability to direct the viewer/reader to what the director/author wants to focus on - as opposed to the the theatre where the audience is free to concentrate on whatever it wants to.

Thus it's interesting to see such a range of novels in this list of the best adaptations:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/books-life/6166774/25-best-book-to-film-adaptations.html

It's difficult to argue with most of them, and I'm particularly pleased to see The Remains of the Day, which I thought was one of the best adaptations ever, on the list.  It's also good to see the Harry Potter films as well as The Lord of the Rings trilogy included: both of these were epic in every sense of the word.

the only addition I'd like to make is to propose Notes on a Scandal, which is a brilliant version of an excellent novel that at first reading seems impossible to adapt.

 

Are these the best shots in cinema?

I like the idea of someone collecting the best shots in cinema and have just followed Geoff Todd on Twitter:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/10807513/Are-these-the-15-best-shots-in-cinema.html

I have David Thomson's Moments That Made the Movies on my shelf and I dip into it from time - it's that kind of book.

His slection of films is eclectic, although it does include the usual suspects.  But what makes it intersting is the choice of image to represent each film.  Some of them are truly unexpected.  It's an excellent book

I enjoyed Star Wars, but...

I enjoyed Star Wars and the two sequels in the original trilogy, but Doctor Who has always been my favourite sci-fi/fantasy saga - and the Doctor would have sorted out Darth Vader in two 45 minute episodes.

I'd  read about the influence of Kurosawa on the story in previous articles and had also clocked the Casablanca reference (although I'd also thought there was a little of The Restaurant at the End of the Universe in it), but this fascinating article lists ten films that influenced George Lucas:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/star-wars/10817059/10-films-that-influenced-Star-Wars.html

I particularly liked the weird parallels with The Wizard of Oz - although I preferred Zardoz.

Philomena

And suddently it's the end of another season.  We've been saving the best until last, or rather we had to wait until Philomena was avilavble on DVD.

To boost our audience numbers we're serving Irish stew and cheeses, and hopefully a load of Guinness will arrive here tomorrow.  Meanwhile I've just finished my notes:

Philomena

UK 2013                      98 minutes

Director:                      Stephen Frears

Starring:                        Judi Dench, Steve Coogan and Anna Maxwell Martin

Awards and Nominations

• Nominated for four Oscars, including Best Film, Best Actress (Judi Dench) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Steve Coogan)
• Won BAFTA for Best Adapted Screenplay (Steve Coogan) and nominations for Best Actress (Judi Dench), Best Film and Best British Film
• A further 19 wins and 36 nominations

“Philomena is something yearned for and lusted after by film-makers and journalists alike – a really good story.  It's a powerful and heartfelt drama, based on a real case, with a sledgehammer emotional punch and a stellar performance from Judi Dench, along with an intelligently judged supporting contribution from Steve Coogan.  Yet the film's apparent simplicity and force come to us flavoured with subtle nuances and subtexts, left there by the people who brought this story to the public.”

Peter Bradshaw

 Following his unexpected defenestration as New Labour Director of Communications in 2002 Martin Sixsmith (Steve Coogan) is working as a freelance journalist when he comes across the extraordinary story of an elderly Irish woman called Philomena Lee (Judi Dench): as a teenage unmarried mother she had been placed in one of the Irish Republic’s notorious Magdalene Laundries (“Why do they call this heartless place Our Lady of Charity?”) and her son was put up for adoption by childless Catholic Americans, and now in her old age she wants to track him down.  Sixsmith then takes Philomena to America on a mission to America in search of her son.

The film received its premier at the Venice Film Festival where it received rave reviews, was nominated for the Golden Lion and won the award for Best Screenplay.  Judi Dench also won great praise for her performance, with Catherine Shoard in The Observer commenting:

"At 78, she skips through scenes, hitting a dozen bases a minute, raising laughs here, tears there, never breaking sweat. This might be the sort of thing she can do in her sleep, but Dench never gives anything less than full welly.”

However when it came to the awards season Judi Dench lost out in both the Oscars and BAFTAs to Cate Blanchett’s barnstorming performance as Jasmine in Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine.  Steve Coogan as Martin Sixsmith proves himself to be a good actor, but it is Dench who is the dramatic focus of the film and director Stephen Frears, in his best film since The Queen (2006), uses a steady hand to guide the two of them on their odd couple road trip around Ireland and America.


And here's the trailer:

 

Once

We'd agreed at the beginning of the season to schedule a chic flick - and then the male portion of the committee held its collective breath while the female portion decided what to screen.

Fortunately the final choice was a film that appealed to our entire demographic - and the provision of cupcakes and the sale of Prosecco meant that we attracted a good audience.  I'd already seen Once on DVD, but it was far better second time around on a big screen.  Also, while writing my notes, it was good to read a review by Roger Ebert again - he was a superb critic.

Here are my notes:

Once

Ireland 2006                 86 minutes

Director:                      John Carney

Starring:                        Glen Hansard, Marketa Irglova, Alistair Foley

Awards and Nominations

• Won Oscar for Best Original Song (“Falling Slowly”)
• A further 16 wins and 21 nominations

“I gave it my Special Jury Prize, which is sort of an equal first; no movie was going to budge Juno off the top of my list.  Once was shot for next to nothing in 17 days, doesn't even give names to its characters, is mostly music with not a lot of dialog, and is magical from beginning to end.  It's one of those films where you hold your breath, hoping it knows how good it is, and doesn't take a wrong turn.  It doesn't.  Even the ending is the right ending, the more you think about it.”

Roger Ebert

An unnamed Irish busker (Glen Hansard) meets a young Czech emigree (Marketa Irglova) on the streets of Dublin as he performs his music and they become friends.   He wants to go to London to find fame and meet up with his ex-girlfriend; she likes him and his music so she raises the money to help him achieve his ambition.

Once spent years in development with the Irish Film Board and finally, in a period when the Board had no chief executive, the board gave the film the go-ahead - but with a budget of just €150,000 rather than the higher budget originally requested.  This meant a the use of natural light and real locations, with the director’s friends and family performing as extras.   Originally Cillian Murphy (The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006), The Dark Knight (2008) and Inception (2010)) had been cast in the lead role, but he withdrew as he was unwilling to act against non-professional Marketa Irglova.  Glen Hansard’s only previous acting experience had been a minor role in The Commitments (1991) although he was a member of Frames, a band he had founded in 1990 and in which director John Carney had once played bass.  Hansard wrote all the songs that he performs throughout the film.

After initial screenings at the Sundance and Dublin Film Festivals (where it received the audience award from both) the film went on general release in the US where it grossed $9.5 million and more than $20 million in the rest of the world.

Following its worldwide success in 2011 Once was adapted for the stage as a musical.  After opening off Broadway it subsequently transferred to Broadway where it won eight Tony Awards including Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical and Best Actor in a Musical.  In 2013 a production of the show opened in London and is scheduled to run until 2015.

Here is the trailer:

 

 

And here's the amazing song:

 



 

Analysing Film as Film

I guess I fall into the category of the numerous bloggers who write about film, but hopefully vering to the more thoughtful end.

This is a fascinating review article about Mark Kermode's new book:

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/art-books/film-as-film/#.UyCwiiePM24

It's definitely one to add to my reading list and I still have some book tokens left over from my birthday.

Thoughts about the Oscars

This is a wonderful essay on the Oscars by Raymond Chandler:

http://memex.naughtons.org/archives/2014/03/02/19707

Even though this is, in Hollywood terms at least, pre-history, I could think of any number of current films that fall into the categories he mentions.

 

Captain Phillips

I'm a bit behind schedule here as we screened this last week and soon I need to get to work on my notes for Once.

Anyway the film was excellent, and even though I knew that Captain Phillips would survive (not only was he played by Tom Hanks but he's also written a book - a bit of a spoiler really) there were whole sections when I kept forgetting to breath.

Here are my notes:

Captain Phillips

USA 2013                    134 minutes

Director:                      Paul Greengrass

Starring:                        Tom Hanks, Barkhad Abdi and Catherine Keener

Awards and Nominations

• Nominated for six Oscars including Best Film, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actor (Barkhad Abdi).
• Won BAFTA for Best Supporting Actor (Barkhad Abdi) and nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay.
• A further 12 wins and 64 nominations.

“[Greengrass] has shown us once again that mainstream cinema can be both visceral and intelligent, grabbing the audience by the throat without ever cutting off the oxygen supply to their brains.”

Mark Kermode

 In 2009 Somali pirates attacked an American container ship, the Maersk Alabama, that Captain Richard Philips (Tom Hanks) is piloting on a 10 day around the Horn of Africa and into bandit country.   With the pirates holding the crew hostage and negotiations going nowhere the US Navy plans to mount a rescue attempt.

The film is based on the book A Captain’s Duty that Richard Phillips wrote after his ordeal, with Sony Pictures quickly optioning the film rights.  Tom Hanks joined the project after reading a draft of the screenplay from Billy Ray with Paul Greengrass subsequently joining as director.  Initially Ron Howard had intended to direct the film with Paul Greengrass scheduled to direct Rush, but the two directors swapped projects with significant rewards for both.  

In his career Paul Greengrass has specialised in the dramatisation of real life events as well as his use of hand-held cameras.  He began his career making films for World in Action before directing The Murder of Stephen Lawrence and Bloody Sunday for TV before making his cinema debut with The Bourne Supremacy (2004) with Matt Damon in the leading role.  He followed this with United 93 (2006) a film about the September 11 hijackings and  after The Bourne -Ultimatum (2007) made Green Zone (2010) about the Iraq War and once again starring Matt Damon.

On its release Captain Phillips received widespread critical acclaim both as a film and for the performances of the main actors.  In The Observer Mark Kermode claims that Tom Hanks gives the performance of his life Tom Hanks and comments on the “electrifying presence” of newcomer Barkhad Abdi.

 

Here's the trailer: