Jackie

I'm a little out of sequence, as we screened this before Their Finest. I'd read the reviews and wanted to see this very much, so I was delighted when we decided to screen this and in no way disappointed when I saw it.

Here are my notes:

Jackie

USA 2016        100 minutes

Director:          Pablo Larrain

Starring:            Natalie Portman, Peter Sarsgaard, Greta Gerwig, Billy Crudup and John Hurt

Awards and Nominations

• Three Oscar Nominations including Natalie Portman (Best Actress) and Mica Levi (Best Original Music)
• Three BAFTA Nominations including Natalie Portman (Best Actress) and Mica Levi (Best Original Music)
• A further 39 wins and 146 nominations

“…an astonishing, inside-out revision of the Kennedy mythos that can instantly be filed among the greatest of all White House biopics. Examining and cross-examining Jacqueline Kennedy in the days following JFK’s assassination, it’s at once a skin-grazingly intimate study of a glittering facade’s wrecked interior, and a wider, more searching consideration of how historical legacies are built, maintained and potentially dismantled. Assisted by the icy, stealthy gaze of Larrain’s camera and the eerie, keening strings of Mica Levi’s score, Portman’s unabashedly heightened portrayal redesigns an icon as an alien.”

Guy Lodge

 

In a series of interviews with an unnamed journalist (Billy Crudup) Jackie Kennedy (Natalie Portman) tells of her experiences of life in the White House with President Kennedy, the events of his assassination in Dallas, and the subsequent period as Lyndon B Johnson took over the presidency.

The film was initially conceived as TV mini-series covering the four days between Kennedy’s assassination and burial, with Steven Spielberg as producer. When this fell through the script was reworked screenplay for a feature film with Rachel Weisz in the title role and Darren Aronofsky as director. This lapsed when the two ended their relationship, and it finally went into production with Aronofsky as producer, Natalie Portman (who had won an Oscar for her performance in Aronofsky’s Black Swan) as Jackie Kennedy, and Pablo Larrain as director after Aronofsky had admired his award-winning Spanish film The Club (2015).

Pablo Larrain is an award-winning Chilean film maker whose work has included both TV series and feature films; among the latter Tony Manero (2008) was screened at the Cannes Film Festival to rave reviews, No (2012) received an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, and El Club (2015) won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. Jackie is Larrain’s first English-language film, and although he had no experience of directing a biopic and did not have any history or knowledge of President Kennedy’s assassination he stated that he had connected with Jacqueline Kennedy. To him her life after the assassination “had all the elements that you need for a movie: rage, curiosity and love”.

The film received its world premiere at the 2016 Venice Film Festival and was subsequently also screened at the Toronto Film Festival. After it was released in the US to positive reviews it was nominated for three Oscars, including Best Actress and Best Original Score.

John Hurt’s role of the Priest in this film was his last performance released before his death in January 2017.

Here's the trailer:

 

Their Finest

The less "official" work I have to do, the more my day seems to fill up with other urgent matters: hence there is less time for me to keep this blog up to date.

Thus although we have finished our screenings for the Christmas period I am behind with posting my notes, so here we go with the first catch-up session.

Their Finest was my recommendation after having seen it at the cinema. It was good to see that it went down well, I enjoyed it even more at a second viewing and I was delighted to see that Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian has nominated the screenplay as one of the best of the year.

Here are my notes:

Their Finest

UK 2016          117 minutes

Director:          Lone Scherfig

Starring:            Gemma Arterton, Sam Clafin, Bill Nighy, Jack Huston and Paul Ritter

Awards and Nominations

• Nominations for Best Debut Screenplay (Gaby Chiappe) and Best Effects at the British Independent Film Awards
• One other win and one other nomination

“You’d need a heart of stone and a funny bone of porridge not to enjoy this sweet-natured and eminently lovable British film – a 1940s adventure, with moments of brashness and poignancy. It’s all about the love that flowers in the ruins of blitz-hit London and in the dusty offices of the Ministry of Information’s film unit as various high-minded creative types use the magic of cinema to keep the nation’s pecker up.”

Peter Bradshaw

 

During the London Blitz Catrin Cole (Gemma Arterton) is recruited by the Ministry of Information to write scripts for propaganda films that the public will like, and investigates a story of two young girls who supposedly piloted a boat to help with the evacuation at Dunkirk. The story turns out to be not entirely true but it provides the basis of a feature film that the MoI team decide to make. They cast veteran actor Ambrose Hilliard (Bill Nighy) in a supporting role and as the film goes into production they constantly have to revise the script to meet government requirements, including the unexpected addition of an American character to the beaches of Dunkirk so that the film will help the appeal to the US to join the war on the Allied side.

The film is one of several recent releases – Dad’s Army (2016), Darkest Hour (2017), Dunkirk (2017) and Churchill (2017) – that cover an earlier period in British history which involved certain difficulties relating to events in mainland Europe. Perhaps this focus on Europe reflects current political pre-occupations, although the government’s approach to the Brexit negotiations seems to be far closer to the Home Guard of Walmington-on-Sea rather than to Churchill, as depicted in Darkest Hour, who as a newly appointed Prime Minister in the summer of 1940 used his eloquence to persuade the Cabinet to continue to fighting Hitler and the Nazis rather than seek some form of negotiated settlement; this was the decisive event which saved the country and which Simon Schama has rightly described as “the first great battle of the Second World War”.

In his enthusiastic review of the film Peter Bradshaw focuses on the filmmaking part of the story rather than its historical context and compares the film with Truffaut’s La Nuit Americaine (1973):

“It’s a film unashamedly and cheerfully in love with the conjuring tricks and artifice of cinema. There’s a showstopping matte shot of massed troops on the Dunkirk beach, painted on to glass, and a demonstration of how dubbing and editing can create an illusion of physical presence. Truffaut talked about la nuit americaine – here’s a film about la nuit britannique, a very British kind of film magic. In an earlier scene, Amanda Root plays an actress wearing a hat that recalls Celia Johnson in Brief Encounter, and later there’s a scene next to a mocked-up third-class railway carriage.”

Lone Scherfig began her career in Denmark before making her name internationally with the Oscar-nominated An Education (2009). Her subsequent work has included One Day (2011), an adaptation of the novel by David Nicholls, and The Riot Club (2014), a filmed version of Laura Wade’s play Posh.

 Here's a link to the trailer:

 

 

 

August: Osage County

We take it in turns to propose the films that we screen and then the rest of the committee gives its consent - sort of. The only definite rule is that someone has to have seen the film...

I'd not seen this film, although what I'd read made me add it to my "interesting film to see sometime" mental list, and so was looking forward to the screening.

The whole cast gave good performance, and I can see why the ensemble got such good reviews, but somehow the whole film was less than the sum of its parts. the film was based on a successful stage play and that came across in the adaptation: a series of set pieces set in and around the family house with no opportunity to broaden the location. I'm not sure if a better director could have handled it better, although I think the structure of the screenplay added this constraint.

It was good to see for the performances, but it's definitely not a classic and not one that I'd like to watch again.

Here are my notes

August: Osage County

USA 2013        121 minutes

Director:          John Wells

Starring:            Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Ewan McGregor, Chris Cooper, Abigail Breslin and Benedict Cumberbatch

Awards and Nominations

• Oscar nominations for Best Actress (Meryl Streep) and Best Supporting Actress (Julia Roberts)
• BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actress (Julia Roberts)
• A further 15 wins and 61 nominations

“…Wells's adaptation is notable primarily for its A-list ensemble cast, all of whom relish the chance to sink their teeth into Letts's bilious dialogue. Top of the heap is Meryl Streep, as the poisonous (and poisoned) matriarch Violet Weston, whose scattered clan descend upon her godforsaken home when her alcoholic poet husband mysteriously goes missing. It turns out he's the lucky one; after a few days of incestuous infighting and bloody backstabbing, it's easy to see why anyone trapped in this domestic hell-hole would rather drown themselves than sit down to family dinner.”

Mark Kermode

The film is an adaptation by Tracy Letts of his Pulitzer Prize winning play of the same which ran on Broadway for over a year and was also staged briefly at the National Theatre in London. The film reduces the running time of the play by about an hour, which results in the adaptation offering a series of theatrical set pieces rather than opening the story out by rethinking the play in cinematic terms. Nonetheless the A-list ensemble cast work well together, with particular praise being given to Meryl Streep as the matriarch and Julia Roberts as her daughter who while being the only person strong enough to face her is terrified of turning into her.

Letts trained as an actor but has also made his name as a writer for both stage and screen: two of his earlier plays have been successfully filmed from his own screenplays and a third has been adapted into a TV series. As a TV actor he played a supporting role in two seasons of Homeland as well as appearing in minor roles in many other programmes, while as a stage actor he has appeared in many US productions, with his most notable role being George, in a production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf on Broadway, for which he received the Tony Award for Best Actor.

John Wells made his name as executive producer and showrunner of a number of high profile US TV series including ER, The West Wing, and Shameless. He made his debut as a director of feature films with The Company of Men (2010) for which he also wrote the screenplay. He subsequently produced and co-wrote the screenplay for Love & Mercy (2014), a biographical drama about the Beach Boys, and has since directed Burnt (2016) a drama about a chef which despite its award-winning cast received mixed reviews.

 Here's a link to the trailer:

 

 

Hidden Figures

Several of the committee had seen this film an were unanimous in scheduling it.

While researching it to produce my notes I discovered how low budget it was, and that for a weekend its takings even overtook those from Rogue One.

Having watched it again I retained my original enthusiasm for a film which manages to cover so many complex issues so well. It's a shame it did not too well at the Oscars.

Here are my notes:

Hidden Figures

USA 2016        127 minutes

Director:          Theodore Melfi

Starring:            Taraji P Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monae, Kevin Costner and Kirsten Dunst

Awards and Nominations

·         Nominated for three Oscars (Best Film, Best Supporting Actress (Octavia Spencer) and Best Adapted Screenplay)

·         Nominated for two Golden Globes including Best Supporting Actress (Octavia Spencer)

·         Nominated for BAFTA for Best Adapted Screenplay

·         Won Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture

·         A further 35 wins and 74 nominations

“The genius of Theodore Melfi’s film is not in the originality of the script – as far as prestige pictures go, its dramatic and comedic beats are easy to anticipate – but in the novelty of the story and the liveliness of the performances.”

Simran Hans

The film tells the hitherto untold story of Katherine Johnson (Taraji P Henson), Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae), three African-American women who worked at NASA and were involved with early stages of the US/USSR space race, culminating in the launch into orbit of the astronaut John Glenn.

The women’s story first came to national attention in Margot Lee Shetterly’s 2016 book Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold story of the Black Women Who Helped Win the Space Race which reached the top of the New York Times Non-Fiction Best Sellers list. The subject had clear cinematic potential but for the purposes of the film the script had to simplify the complex history.

In an interview Shetterly confirmed her understanding of this requirement:

“For better or for worse, there is history, there is the book and then there's the movie. Timelines had to be conflated and [there were] composite characters, and most people [who have seen the movie] have already taken that as the literal fact. ... You might get the indication in the movie that these were the only people doing those jobs, when in reality we know they worked in teams, and those teams had other teams. … Even though Katherine Johnson, in this role, was a hero, there were so many others that were required to do other kinds of tests and checks to make [Glenn's] mission come to fruition. But I understand you can't make a movie with 300 characters. It is simply not possible.”

The production budget of the film was USD 25 million and initially it received only a limited release in the US.  This was subsequently expanded to 2,471 screens and for its nationwide opening weekend the film’s takings exceeded those of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016). Based on its gross US takings the film was the highest grossing Best Picture Nominee at the 2017 Academy Awards as well as being in the top twenty of the most profitable releases of 2016.

Here's a link to the trailer:

 

Viceroy's House

For the first film of our new season we chose this film: it fulfilled the basic selection criteria in that several of the committee had seen and enjoyed it. The added bonus was the presence in the cast of Hugh Bonneville: and we ended up with the best attended film since Mamma Mia - quite a few years ago.

The audience was thirsty so the bar had healthy takings and the film went down very well.

Here are my notes:

Viceroy’s House

USA 2016        103 minutes

Director:          Gurinder Chadha

Starring:            Hugh Bonneville, Gillian Anderson, Manish Dayal, Huma Qureshi and Michael Gambon

 “…I found myself increasingly gripped by Chadha’s handsome period drama – impressed by the accessibility of its history-primer narrative, entertained by its warm wit and occasionally boisterous charm, and moved by its melodramatic contrivances, which turn out to be more rooted in fact that one might imagine.”

Mark Kermode

In 1947 Lord Louis Mountbatten (Hugh Bonneville) has been given the task of bringing about the transition of India from its role as the jewel in Britain’s imperial crown to an independent state. As he and his wife Edwina (Gillian Anderson) oversee the complex process, clashes between the conflicting political and religious forces are resolved only by the partition of the country into two separate states; as a result of this there is a massive displacement of refugees who have to risk everything to seek sanctuary within their newly defined homelands.

Chadha’s objective for her screenplay was to tell the story of the shared history of India and Pakistan in the style of the British historical epic: thus she placed the Viceroy’s House at the centre of the story. Her plan was for an Upstairs, Downstairs approach that looked at life both in the state rooms and the servant’s quarters; for her it was important that the Indian characters were not marginalised, and thus she ensured that they would have equal screen time with the white members of the cast. Initially she was annoyed that Downton Abbey reached the screens while she was still planning her film, although its subsequent global success popularised her chosen genre and also gave her Hugh Bonneville to play the key role of the Viceroy. Chadha’s own family was affected by the partition of India and she reveals the details of their history in an epilogue to the film.

In addition to its dramatization of the complex politics of partition and its impact on the population the film also uses recent research that revealed Churchill’s responsibility for the chaos that resulted from his promotion of the establishment of a separate Pakistan as a strategic counter-balance to a left-leaning India. From a British perspective this division allowed Britain to retain influence in Karachi, an important port on the coast of the Arabian Sea and the capital of a country strategically located on the borders of Afghanistan, thus making it a vital counter to any threat of Soviet expansion southwards.

Gurinder Chadha was born in Kenya before moving to the UK with her family while still a young child. Her early work explored the lives of Indians living in Britain and drew on her own experience: her first film was the BAFTA nominated Bhaji on the Beach (1993) and she made her name internationally with her second feature, Bend It Like Beckham (2002), which also made a star of Keira Knightley. She followed this with Bride and Prejudice (2004), a Bollywood version of Jane Austen’s novel, which opened at Number One in both the UK and India. Viceroy’s House received its first screening at the Berlin Film Festival and has recently been dubbed into Hindi for release in India.

 Here is the trailer:

 

 

100 Greatest Comedies

At the current bleak moment in history - Brexit and Trump happening in the same year - it's good to be reminded of the better - and funnier - side of life.

Thus this survey of the 100 greatest comedies of all time is to be warmly welcomed:

http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20170821-the-100-greatest-comedies-of-all-time

The list of those consulted gives a broad perspective and it's difficult to argue with the films on the list, although it might be possible to question some of the positioning.

I think the top ten is pretty good and Some Like It Hot is an excellent choice for number one. I've seen and enjoyed many of the films in the top twenty but although I really enjoyed Young Frankenstein I would not have placed it above The Producers.

 

How we select the films we screen

One of the most difficult tasks we face in running a film society is actually deciding the films that we will screen. When we started the society we planned a whole season of "classics" and then abandoned it as our audience told us it was too esoteric for a village society. Even if a film has been commercially and critically successful it might not work if it has "language" in it: thus despite Ben Kingsley in a lead role Sexy Beast did not go down well.

In order to make our decisions now we have developed the idea of a "Highclere Film", i.e. a film that will appeal to our demographic. Thus anything with Dames Judi Dench, Maggie Smith or Helen Mirren will go down well. Likewise most films that are adaptations and/or period drama; on this bas Love and Friendship was a double whammy.

The only other criteria is that someone on the committee has to have seen the film: we all still bear the scars of 35 Shots of Rum: the film won many awards and had been well reviewed, but we were more than 10 minutes into the screening before we realised that we had not switched on the subtitles.

Thus a first step in the selection process is always to read review, and on this basis the following was a salutary warning:


https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2017/jul/03/the-house-film-flop-mariah-carey-will-ferrell-amy-poehler


This is definitely not a film for us to screen.

Lion

It was our AGM last night and we decided to screen Lion. Usually we hold the AGM earlier, but it was just as well that we had to slip things this year to fit in with committee holiday plans as the Village Hall is also used as a polling station. It was also useful that the hall had black out curtains as the sun did not set until well after 9.00pm.

I'd seen Lion at the cinema earlier in the year and had enjoyed it very much. However I found it far more rewarding on a second viewing, noting especially the subtle way in which recollections of his Indian life slow come back into Saroo's mind as he starts searching for his past.

Here are my notes:

Lion

Australia 2016  118 minutes

Director:          Garth Davies

Starring:            Sunny Pawar, Dev Patel, Rooney Mara, David Wenham and Nicole Kidman

Awards and Nominations

• Nominated for six Oscars, including Best Film, Best Supporting Actor (Dev Patel), Best Supporting Actress (Nicole Kidman) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Luke Davies)
• Won BAFTAs for Best Supporting Actor (Dev Patel) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Luke Davies) and three BAFTA nominations including Best Supporting Actress (Nicole Kidman)
• A further 30 wins and 67 nominations  

“There are films against which one’s head puts up a fight until, finally, the heart simply wants what it wants. Lion is one. This sweeping, sun-baked account of a life fatefully divided in childhood between two countries and families risks applying a glib National Geographic gloss to a unique existential crisis, until its sheer blunt force of feeling takes hold and the tear ducts are unlocked. Its opening stages, vividly conveying young Saroo Brierley’s accidental separation from his Indian family and subsequent Australian adoption, are unimprovable, its terror and compromised relief written in the extraordinary gaze of eight-year-old Sunny Pawar.”

Guy Lodge

After falling asleep on a train Saroo (Sunny Pawar), a five year old Indian boy, finds himself lost on the streets of Calcutta, and after being adopted by an Australian couple (Nicole Kidman and David Wenham) he moves to Australia to begin a new life with them. Twenty five years later the adult Saroo (Dev Patel) begins searching for his birth family in India.

The film is based on the book that Saroo Brierley wrote about his adoption and subsequent rediscovery of his birth family. The first half of the films follows the increasingly desperate life of the young Saroo after he finds himself lost in Calcutta while the second half covers the adult Saroo’s search for his family from Australia using Google Earth to locate landmarks that he could remember. This unusual structure to the screenplay departs from the traditional “three acts” of setup, confrontation and resolution, although given the nature of the story it is difficult to see how else it could have worked so well. The critical acclaim for the film reflected this with Luke Davies’s screenplay, amongst its other successes, winning a BAFTA for Best Adapted Screenplay and a nomination for an Oscar in the same category (it lost to Moonlight (2016)).

Salman Rushdie commented on the film’s Oscar nominations: "I would like it to win in every category it’s nominated for and in most of the categories it isn’t nominated for as well”. He admitted that he had wept “unstoppably” while watching it and added that he was "frequently suspicious of Western films set in contemporary India, and so one of the things that most impressed me about Lion was the authenticity and truth and unsparing realism of its Indian first half. Every moment of the little boy’s journey rings true – not an instant of exoticism – and as a result his plight touches us all. Greig Fraser’s cinematography portrays the beauty of the country, both honestly and exquisitely.”

Lion is Garth Davis’s first feature film as director. He started his career as an award-winning director of commercials and short films before moving into television where he directed several episodes of Jane Campion’s Emmy and BAFTA nominated series Top of the Lake (2013). Following the global success of Lion, it was announced that his next film will be a biopic based on the life of Mary Magdalene.

 

Here is the trailer:

 

An additional benefit of us having screened the film is that I'm currently enjoying the box set of Top of the Lake. I  missed it while it was on TV but read the reviews, and after seeing two episodes I can see why it was so well received.

 

 

Cannes Film Festival

It was a shock to realise recently that it was actually ten years ago that I went to the Cannes Film Festival. my former employer was a major sponsor of the festival and the trip was the main prize in a film blogging competition.

It was the first time that I had tried blogging, but once I started I could not stop...

The prize included entry to one of the festival screenings: the event itself was quite amazing, in terms of black ties, long dresses and red carpets, but unfortunately the film we saw was not that good and did not appear in any of the critics' tips for an award.

However there was time t wander around some of the other events and I enjoyed a trip around an exhibition hall in which various films - presumably many of them unmade - were being heavily promoted. Clearly some things never change and in today's paper there was a big article about the current crop of wannabees:

 https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/may/26/tsunambee-clowntergeist-and-haunted-airplane-bad-cannes-films-posters

Julieta

The last few weeks have been pretty busy, so this is an attempt to get up to date before the holiday period.

The clocks went forward at the end of March and experience of past seasons has shown that the audience for our screenings declines rapidly once the evenings get lighter: hence we scheduled one final screening for the last day of March. We had chosen Julieta the first subtitled film we have screened this season, and as we set up we wondered if anyone other than the committee would turn up. In the event there was no need to worry as we had an audience of more than 20...

I was pleased to finally catch up with the film as it had been on my "to see" list since I read the reviews. I've not read any of the stories by Alice Munro on which it is based so cannot comment on the authenticity - or otherwise - of the adaptation, but I very much enjoyed the film and thought that the unresolved ending was brilliant.

Here are my notes:

Julieta

Spain 2016       99 minutes

Director:          Pedro Almodóvar Pedro

Starring:            Emma Suarez, Adrian Ugarte, Daniel Grao, and Inma Cuesta

Awards and Nominations

• Nomination for Palme d’Or at 2016 Cannes Film Festival
• BAFTA Nomination for Best Foreign Language Film
• A further nine wins and 45 nominations

“Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar’s latest, his most moving and entrancing work since 2006’s Volver, is a sumptuous and heartbreaking study of the viral nature of guilt, the mystery of memory and the often unendurable power of love. At times, the emotional intrigue plays more like a Hitchcock thriller than a romantic melodrama, with Alberto Iglesias’s superb Herrmannesque score … heightening the noir elements, darkening the bold splashes of red, blue and white.”

Mark Kermode

Antia abandoned her mother Julieta without warning 12 years ago and has not spoken to her since. As a result of a chance encounter which gives her news of her daughter, Julieta returns to her former home to look for Antia while at the same time reviewing the events that led to their estrangement.

The film is an adaptation of three short stories from the book Runaway by Nobel Prize winning author Alice Munro in which the same character appears at different stages of her life. Almodóvar is a great fan of Munro’s writing and earlier in his career had been interested in adapting the stories as his first English language film. He had discussed making the film in Vancouver, where Munro had based her stories, with Meryl Streep playing the main character at 20, 40 and 60 years old, but abandoned the project  as he was unhappy about filming outside of Spain and was uncomfortable about writing and filming in English. Years later he revisited the script but, at the suggestion of his production team, the film would be made in Spanish and set in Spain. He had originally intended to call the film Silence, the title of one of the short stories, but changed this to avoid confusion with Martin Scorsese’s historical drama Silence which was released in 2016.

 After the socio-political satire of I’m So Excited (2013) Almodóvar explained that Julieta was a return to drama and his “cinema of women”, but that the tone was different to his other feminine dramas such as The Flower of My Secret (1995) All About My Mother (1999) and Volver (2006). Despite the proposed involvement of Meryl Streep in his earlier attempt to film the stories Almodóvar now decided to cast two actresses to play the younger and older versions of the film’s protagonist. Almodóvar has often been inspired by classic Hollywood and European films and the double casting in Julieta is a homage to Bunuel’s That Obscure Object of Desire (1977) in which two actresses play younger and older versions of the same character. The influence of Hitchcock is also visible in the film and its soundtrack has deliberate echoes of the Bernard Herrmann’s classic soundtrack for Vertigo (1958).

The film received its international premiere at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, where it was received warmly but did not win any awards. It subsequently received a BAFTA nomination for Best Foreign Language film (losing out to Son of Saul) but, somewhat controversially, was omitted from the shortlist for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2017 Academy Awards in Hollywood.

Here is the trailer:

 

A Street Cat Named Bob

This was a bit of a surprising choice for our most recent screening, as the reviews of the film, while respectable, had not pointed to anything exceptional in it. However I had not realised how successful the book had been and in the event we had one of our best audiences so far this season.

I've not read the book, but apparently the film makers made significant changes to some of the minor characters.  Nonetheless it worked well, and Bob, playing himself, was brilliant. From the credits I noticed that in total five cats played Bob: this was not immediately obvious, but there were a few scenes in which his ginger tabby markings seemed to move around a bit.

Here are my notes:

A Street Cat Named Bob

UK 2016          103 minutes

Director:          Roger Spottiswood

Starring:            Luke Treadaway, Joanne Froggatt, Anthony Head and Bob the Cat

“Dogs are plucky, loyal, lifelong companions. With cats, it’s sometimes just enough to make it through the night without getting our faces clawed off. That said, Bob, who appears as himself in this film (alongside six other ginger feline lookalikes), is a particularly gorgeous specimen. And Bob’s weapons-grade cuteness is almost enough to power this slight but warm-hearted film by Roger Spottiswoode (a veteran of the animal/human buddy movie genre, he also directed Turner and Hooch).”

Wendy Ide

 James Bowen (Luke Treadaway) is recovering from drug addiction and is trying to earn his living as a busker. When he finds an injured ginger cat (Bob the Cat) in his flat he takes it to an RSPCA vet for treatment and from that point on their two lives become intertwined.

The film is based on the book of the same name by James Bowen and Garry Jenkins. Bob used to accompany Bowen as he worked as a busker and videos of them appeared on YouTube, which led to an article about them in the Islington Tribune. The article was read by a literary agent who had been responsible for the UK publication of Marley and Me; she saw the potential in the story and introduced Bowen to the writer Garry Jenkins. Their subsequent book has sold over a million copies in the UK alone and has been translated into 30 languages.

Roger Spottiswoode began his career as a trainee editor and edited several early films by Sam Peckinpah. In the 1980s he moved into directing and in addition to Turner & Hooch (1989) his most notable films have included Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), with Pierce Brosnan as James Bond, and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s science fiction action thriller The 6^th Day (2000).

Here is the trailer:

 

The Girl on the Train

Our most recent film only came out on DVD this week. It was based on a popular best-selling novel, which I had not read, and so we had a good audience for the screening, including several people we had not seen before.

While researching the film in order to write my notes I'd read the plot and so knew roughly what was going to happen. However the fragmented storyline muddied the water sufficiently to keep me on the edge of my seat. My only complaint was that one key flashback was subsequently (and crucially) proven not to have happened: thus I felt a bit cheated because of this.

Here are my notes:

The Girl On The Train

USA 2016                                111 minutes

Director:                                  Tate Taylor

Starring:                                    Emily Blunt, Rebecca Ferguson, Haley Bennett, Justin Theroux and Luke Evans

Awards and Nominations

• BAFTA Nomination for Best Actress (Emily Blunt)
• A further three wins and five nominations

“In the end, however, the whole movie rests upon the shoulders of Emily Blunt, and she holds it all together brilliantly, even as her character is falling apart. From the intimacy of My Summer of Love, through the “hangry” sorcerer’s apprentice of The Devil Wears Prada to the sci-fi action heroine of Edge of Tomorrow and the blindsided FBI agent in Sicario, Blunt has proved herself to be a mesmerising presence in a range of genres. In Rachel’s fractured personality, we see echoes of Blunt’s previous screen lives, refracted through a prism of self-destruction that somehow never alienates the audience. Retaining the British accent that makes her even more of an outsider in this scary New World, Blunt convinces completely as a drunken fish out of water. This train may not be bound for glory, but her disruptive company is worth the price of the ticket.”

Mark Kermode

Rachel Watson (Emily Blunt) becomes infatuated by the sight of a seemingly perfect couple visible from her daily commuter train. On one day she sees something that shocks her, and driven on by intrigue and obsession she starts to uncover the truth of what has happened.

The film is based on the best-selling thriller of the same name by Paula Hawkins, although for the purposes of the film the action has been relocated from London to New York. The conceit of the book echoes the classic Agatha Christie detective novel 4.50 from Paddington (filmed as Murder She Said (1961) with Margaret Rutherford playing Miss Marple for the first time), but the dark themes of the story in its cinematic version carry distinct echoes of the work of Hitchcock, especially in films such The Lady Vanishes (1938) and Rear Window (1954).

Emily Blunt began her career on the stage in the UK before moving into TV where she won an award for Most Promising Newcomer for her role in My Summer of Love (2004). She won a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress in the TV film Gideon’s Daughter (2006) and shortly afterwards made her Hollywood debut in the comedy The Devil Wears Prada (2006), for which she received both BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations for Best Supporting Actress. Since then she has demonstrated her versatility as a performer with roles in many different genres including historical drama (The Young Victoria (2009)), science fiction (The Adjustment Bureau (2011)), and a musical (Into The Woods (2014)). She is currently filming Mary Poppins Returns in which she has been cast in the title role.

Director Tate Taylor also began his career as an actor with roles for both TV and cinema before making his name as a director with The Help (2011) (for which he also wrote the screenplay). He followed this with Get On Up (2014) a biography of the musician James Brown and currently has various projects as director in development.

 

Here's the trailer:

 

 

The History Behind Denial

There is no such thing a coincidence, and the day after my post on Denial there was a long interview with Richard J Evans in The Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/feb/14/richard-evans-interview-holocaust-denial-film

It was interesting to see that focus of the film had to be on Lipstadt to make it work as a drama, but it was the three years of detailed work that Evans and his team carried out made it clear to Lipstadt's team that they had probably won the case before it started: what remained to be decided was the scale of the victory.

I also read that Richard Evans had locked horns in exchanges with Michael Gove over the teaching of history in schools. I've read his Third Reich Trilogy and am currently reading The Pursuit of Power, his new history of Europe in the 19th century: all have been excellent and I will certainly read more of his work.

Denial

I'd wanted to see Denial ever since I'd read an interview with David Hare about the writing his screenplay for the film. I'd known about the subject matter of the film in general terms but had not been aware of the details. The film seems to have had a relatively limited release but I managed to catch up with it and was very impressed: in an age when a government spokesman can talk of  "alternative facts" and politicians can question the value of "experts" it was a timely reminder of the value that an eminent historian can bring to the real world.

For obvious reasons the exchanges in the court scenes were lifted verbatim from the official transcript, but what was not clear until I did some research on line at home was the timescale of events: Richard J Evans and his team took three years reviewing Irving's published work and tracking his quoted back to their original sources: it was their work which proved the truth of the statement about David Irving in Lipstadt's book . Evans subsequently wrote a book - Telling Lies About Hitler - about his role in the case which I am currently reading and it is both fascinating and horrifying in equal measure.

Evans dismisses Irving's key document that supposedly exonerates Hitler from culpability for the extermination of the Jews is absolutely damning:

This supposed key document in Irving's arsenal of alleged documentary proof of Hitler's lack of culpability for the extermination of the Jews had long been regarded by professional historians as nothing of the kind. He could only present it as such by ignoring the logical contradictions in his reading of the document, by ignoring is immediate context and by suppressing all the uncertainties with which it was associated.

This is definitely one for us to screen at our film society.

Here is the trailer:

 

Bridget Jones's Baby

This is our most recent screening. there was some debate, ie a quick chat, about whether it was too "popular" for our society, but there have been requests in the past for more "female friendly" films - I still remember Mama Mia with a shudder, although it was a profitable evening on the bar - so we went ahead with it.

I'd enjoyed the film at the cinema and found it even better on a second screening: there were some filthy lines I'd not picked up, knowing how the film was going to end made it possible to see the misdirection that the production team had carefully applied at key points, and I'd completely missed that Darcy's middle name was "Fitzwilliam".

I'm pleased to record that just about everyone enjoyed it - and once again we had good takings on the bar.


Here are my notes

Bridget Jones’s Baby

UK 2016                                  123 minutes

Director:                                  Sharon Maguire

Starring:                                   Renee Zellweger, Colin Firth, Patrick Dempsey, Emma Thompson, Jim Broadbent and Gemma Jones

“This is a better Bridget than the last movie, The Edge of Reason, because it doesn’t feel the need to indulge shark-jumping setpieces like zipping off to Thailand. We stick in her old London manor of Borough and she’s still in the same old scuzzy flat, still working for a cable TV news company, where she has now improbably become a producer. This is pretty broad comedy we’re talking about: not Mrs Brown’s Boys-broad, but broad nevertheless. Yet the effect is achieved in the same way as the first movie. Basically, Bridget presides over a kind of coalition government of very good supporting turns which on aggregate enforce their chaotic comic rule over the audience. Just about.”

 Peter Bradshaw

Shortly after her forty-third birthday Bridget Jones (Renee Zellweger) discovers that she is pregnant but is only 50% sure who the father is: after getting drunk at a music festival she sleeps with a handsome stranger (Patrick Dempsey), and at the christening of a friend’s child she meets Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) again and they subsequently spend the night together. As her pregnancy progresses Bridget makes increasingly desperate efforts to obtain DNA samples from each man to confirm which of them is the father.

It is a truth universally accepted that a globally successful film must be in want of a sequel (or two). Thus the 2001 film of Bridget Jones’s Diary, from Helen Fielding’s bestselling novel was followed in 2004 by a looser adaptation of her novel Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, with a screenplay by a team that included both Andrew Davies (whose work includes the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice that made Colin Firth’s name) and Richard Curtis. This too was globally successful and from 2009 there was discussion of a third film. Although Renee Zellweger and Colin Firth soon committed to the project, despite protracted negotiations over the screenplay Hugh Grant declined to take part. Thus the film finally went ahead without Daniel Cleaver and the screenplay, by a team that includes Fielding and Emma Thompson (who created a superb role for herself), goes back to Helen Fielding’s original columns in The Independent to produce a new story that introduces Jack Quant (Patrick Dempsey) as a rival love interest to Mark Darcy. Somewhat confusingly Helen Fielding has also just published a new novel Bridget Jones's Baby: The Diaries in which Daniel Cleaver, Hugh Grant’s character, plays a significant part.

On its UK release the film became the most successful romantic comedy ever. In terms of its overall performance in 2016 in the UK and Ireland it was the third most successful film of the year, being beaten only by Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. All three films are either sequels or spin-offs; this is perhaps indicative of the risk averse attitude of producers of big budget films.

 

Here's the trailer:

 

 

Suffragette

This film came out last year and I missed it, so I was delighted when we chose to screen it in January and it turned out to be well worth seeing.

I remember while I was studying A Level History the BBC screened a series about the Suffragettes called Shoulder to Shoulder. I'd already found the period interesting and so was hooked on the series. Inevitably the constraints of a feature film disallow extended narratives, so the story focuses on a fictional character, with the real figures in supporting roles.

I thought it worked really well, although it was a little unfair to Asquith's government as it did not mention any of the other pressures it faced nor any of its achievements (let alone the approach of war in 1914). Disclosure: if I had gone through to the second round of Mastermind my specialist subject would have been the life of  H H Asquith.

But enough of me: here are my notes...

Suffragette

UK 2015                                  106 minutes

Director:                                  Sarah Gavron

Starring:                                   Carey Mulligan, Anne-Marie Duff, Helena Bonham Carter, Brendan Gleeson and Meryl Streep

Awards and Nominations

• Won Best Actress (Carey Mulligan) and Best Supporting Actor (Brendan Gleeson) at the British Independent Film Awards plus nominations for Best Supporting Actress for Helena Bonham Carter and Anne-Marie Duff
• A further 12 wins and 12 nominations

“While Abi Morgan’s script for The Iron Lady parked politics in favour of personal appraisal, this altogether more polemical work provides a solidly researched and at times surprisingly grim primer on the years leading up to Emily Wilding Davison’s still contested act of self-sacrifice in 1913… Morgan intertwines socioeconomic detail with domestic melodrama as Maud [Carey Mulligan] leads us from the fringes of the fight to the firing line, her composite character providing a thumbnail sketch of collective oppression into which Mulligan breathes admirable individuality. Meryl Streep provides a fleetingly aloof cameo as Emmeline Pankhurst, rallying the troops from the balcony before disappearing into the night, but the real firebrand is Helena Bonham Carter as chemist Edith Ellyn, who provides the movement’s combustible spark.”

Mark Kermode

In 1912 Maud Watts (Carey Mulligan), a laundress becomes involved in the Suffragette movement led by Mrs Pankhurst (Meryl Streep), and after taking part in a protest is sent to jail. Her increasing involvement in the movement leads to the end of her marriage, and Maud takes part in further demonstrations culminating in a planned protest at the Derby in 1912, as a result of which Emily Davison (Natalie Press) is knocked down and killed by the King’s horse.

The film is based on historical events and although Maud Watts and her family are fictional it also portrays some historical characters. In 1903 Mr Pankhurst and her daughters had set up the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) to promote its aims of women’s suffrage through highly visible public campaigns. Asquith’s government had refused to allow a vote on the issue so the WSPU initiated a campaign of violence to publicise its aims, although many historians including Asquith’s biographer Roy Jenkins agree this “clearly damaged the cause”. The campaign led to jail sentences for many of those who took part and as a response the government passed the Cat and Mouse Act in 1913, to allow the release of those whose hunger strikes had made them ill, in an attempt to prevent the suffragettes from gaining public sympathy. This led to an effective stalemate and it was only the outbreak of war in 1914 that made Mrs Pankhurst end the campaign of militancy in order to support the government’s stance against the “German Peril”.

In 1916 the Speaker of the House of Commons set up a conference to examine electoral reform and in 1917 presented its report which included a recommendation for limited women’s suffrage. As Prime Minister Asquith had opposed women’s suffrage, but after being ousted by Lloyd George he now supported the idea. In1918 Lloyd George’s government gave the vote to women over the age of thirty and it was Asquith’s earlier reforms to the House of Lords during the struggle to pass the People’s Budget in 1909 and 1910 that helped its passage through Parliament.

Screenplay writer Abi Morgan started her career by writing for TV before moving into film where her work includes the screenplays for Brick Lane (2007), The Iron Lady (2011) and Shame (2011). Sarah Gavron started her career making documentaries, but kept return to narrative filmmaking because of her desire to tell stories. Her first feature film was Brick Lane (2007).

Suffragette is the first film to be shot on location in the Houses of Parliament.

 Here is the trailer: