Before I Go To Sleep

I'd not read the book that this film was based on, and it would have been interesting to see how the novelist managed to conceal some of the more incongruous elements of the story.  As it was, the film was very entertaining g, with a real shock coming from the two male leads who were very definitely cast against type.

Here are my notes:

Before I Go to Sleep

USA 2014                    92 minutes

Director:                      Rowan Joffe

Starring:                        Nicole Kidman, Colin Firth, Mark Strong and Anne-Marie Duff

“...an enjoyable shaggy dog story with a twist that will leave you with the strange feeling that you've seen all this before, even if you can't quite remember where.”

 

Mark Kermode

Christine (Nicole Kidman) is a middle-aged woman who wakes each day with no memory of her life from her mid-20s onward, so every morning Ben (Colin Firth) has to tell her that he is her husband, she was in an accident, and as a result of this she is suffering from amnesia.  But one day while Ben is at work a call from Dr Nasch (Mark Strong) informs Christine about a camera on which she has been keeping a secret video diary.

The film is based on the recent bestselling novel by S J Watson, but the subject of amnesia has long been popular with film makers:  Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945) is a classic Hollywood film while more recently in Memento (2000) Christopher Nolan tells the story of his amnesiac hero by interspersing black-and-white sequences that tell a chronological story with colour sequences in reverse chronological order (the DVD allows viewers to restructure the film so that they can see it with a conventional chronology). 

In his perceptive review of Before I Go to Sleep Mark Kermode also notes key similarities with the plot of Wolfgang Petersen’s Shattered, another film about an amnesiac:

“I don't know whether Joffe is familiar with Petersen's 1991 oddity but his film certainly seems to remember it well.”

Rowan Joffe is the son of director , best known for The Killing Fields (1984) and The Mission (1986), and the actress Jane Lapotaire.  After winning awards for his screen writing he directed his first film The Shooting of Thomas Hurndall for TV which won a BAFTA in 2009.  He followed this with his own adaptation of Brighton Rock (2011).  His other screenplay credits include 28 Weeks Later (2007) and the George Clooney vehicle The American (2010).

 Here's the trailer:

 

 

 

20 Feet from Stardom

I'm not sure what happened to January: I went back to work, we screened two films and now it's February.

20 Feet from Stardom was a great revelation and a brilliant film.  The subject of backing singers is rich for exploration, and it would have been possible to have constructed any number of dramas from the characters who appeared in it.

It was a worthy winner of the Oscar for Best Documentary.

Here are my notes:

20 Feet from Stardom

USA 2013                    90 minutes

Director:                      Morgan Neville

Awards and Nominations:

• Won 2014 Oscar for Best Documentary
• A further 17 wins and 18 nominations

“Such a great idea for a documentary, and such a surprise to realise that it has never been done before.  Morgan Neville's Oscar-winning film is about the backing singers who have lent their musical talents to many a star name's pop record.  Sometimes they have been acknowledged and appreciated, and sometimes not.  Sometimes they have been content with a supporting role, and sometimes not.  But once you accept the backing-singer role, it is very difficult to break out.”

Peter Bradshaw

Morgan Neville’s film received its premiere at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival where it was acquired for nationwide release by Radius – The Weinstein Company and was also screened at many film festivals.  The film received nearly universal positive reviews with Rotten Tomatoes giving it an approval rating of 99%.

Morgan Neville began his career as a journalist before turning to film production in 1993.  He made a series of documentaries about various musicians and was nominated for three Grammys and followed these by the award-winning The Cool School about the birth of modern art in Los Angeles. 

Here is the trailer: