Green Book

We chose to screen this as our AGM. I'd missed it at the cinema and was keen to see it as in terms of awards it had proved to be a bit of a sleeper. Having seen it I can report that I enjoyed it, but felt that there were other films that were more deserving of the Oscars for Best Film and Best Original Screenplay.

Here are my notes:

Green Book

USA 2019        130 minutes

Director:          Peter Farrelly

Starring:            Viggo Mortensen, Mahershala Ali and Linda Cardellini

“It’s easy to discount the simplicity of Green Book in a way that many similarly and unfairly did when Hidden Figures broke out in 2016, sighing at the broad strokes used to tell a vital true story. But there’s a necessity in using a film of this scale to recreate a time not too long ago when black people were being regularly dehumanised and devalued in ways that were upheld by the law. Yes, this is entertainment pitched at a wide audience and is constructed in the most easily digestible way possible but it still serves a significant purpose to remind white audiences of the difficulties faced by those of colour.”

Benjamin Lee

Award and Nominations:

• Won Oscars for Best Film, Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor (Mahershala Ali) plus Oscar nominations for Best Actor (Viggo Mortensen) and Best Editing
• Won BAFTA for Best Supporting Actor (Mahershala Ali) plus nominations for Best Film, Best Original Screenplay and Best Actor (Viggo Mortensen)
• A further 49 wins and 85 nominations

In 1962 the African American classical and jazz pianist Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali) toured the Deep South of the USA with Italian American bouncer Frank “Tony Lip” Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen) as his bodyguard and driver. In view of the segregation and discrimination policies still in force at that time the pair use The Negro Motorist Green Book which details services and places relatively friendly to African Americans.

The screenplay for the film is co-written by Nick Vallelonga, son of Frank Vallelonga and is based on his interviews with his father and Shirley as well as letters that his father wrote to his mother. Nick Vallelonga did not speak to surviving members of Shirley’s family who were critical of Shirley’s portrayal in the film although Shirley himself had told him not to speak to members of his family and had himself approved both what Vallelonga included and excluded in terms of his life. Similarly some critics had an issue with the film’s depiction of race in that it seemed to propose a “white saviour” narrative, although director Peter Farrelly countered this by explaining that the film was:

"about two guys who were complete opposites and found a common ground, and it's not one guy saving the other. It's both saving each other and pulling each other into some place where they could bond and form a lifetime friendship.

In real life Vallelonga and Shirley remained friends until they both died within months of each other in 2013.

Director Peter Farrelly made his name by working with his brother Bobby to direct quirky comedies such as Dumb and Dumber (1994), There’s Something About Mary (1998), Me, Myself and Irene (2000) and Shallow Hal (2001). In addition to the films he has co-directed for cinema he has also written extensively for television and published two novels.

Green Book was initially given a limited release in the USA but following its Oscar nominations and other success during the awards season it was given a far wider screening which led into a significant increase in it takings, although Farrelly himself did not receive an Oscar nomination for Best Director. The film was also a surprise hit in China where its takings meant that it was the second highest grossing Oscar winner for best film after Titanic (1997). It was also recognised as one of the top ten films of the year by the American Film Institute.

Here is the trailer:

Bohemian Rhapsody

I'd read the bad reviews about this film and then I'd seen the numerous awards that it picked up - mostly by Rami Malek for his performance - so I was genuinely interested finally to see it.

I enjoyed it, but thought  that it offered a sanitised version of Freddie Mercury's life: it would take someone with the talent of Derek Jarman even to come close to a more authentic version, although I don't think that such a film would have received the approval of the rest of Queen let alone the finance needed to produce it.

Bohemian Rhapsody

USA 2018        134 minutes

Director:          Bryan Singer

Starring:            Rami Malek, Lucy Boynton, Gwilym Lee and Ben Hardy

“We can stipulate a few things about Bohemian Rhapsody. We can stipulate that it’s not a great movie. We can stipulate that, in many ways, it’s not even a very good movie. As a trite, often laughably clichéd biopic of Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, an enterprise that should have been as daring and flamboyantly theatrical as its subject winds up being bowdlerized, Wiki-fied, distortingly compressed and unforgivably conventional.

And yet.

We can also stipulate that, despite the myriad shortcomings of its parts, the sum of Bohemian Rhapsody winds up being giddily entertaining, first as an exercise in so-bad-it’s-funny kitsch, and ultimately as something far more meaningful and thrilling. Every now and then, a film comes along that defies the demands of taste, formal sophistication, even artistic honesty to succeed simply on the level of pure, inexplicable pleasure. Bohemian Rhapsody is just that cinematic unicorn: the bad movie that works, even when it shouldn’t.”

Anne Hornaday, Washington Post

Award and Nominations:

• Won four Oscars including Best Actor (Rami Malek)
• Won two BAFTAs including Best Actor (Rami Malek) plus five other nominations
• A further 27 wins and 56 nominations

In London in the early 1970s aspiring musician Farrokh Bulsara (Rami Malek) learns that the lead singer of a band called Smile has left and so he auditions to take on the role: subsequently Bulsara changes his name to Freddie Mercury, the band renames itself Queen and the group begins its rise to global success. In the 1980s Freddie Mercury leaves the band to work on solo albums, but they reunite to perform triumphantly at the 1985 Live Aid concert. Prior to their performance Mercury reveals to his bandmates that he has contracted the HIV virus and intertitles at the end of the film state that he died from AIDs-related pneumonia in 1994.

Brain May and Roger Taylor were both co-producers of the film which had a long and complex production history involving, among other issues, a struggle over whether the film should focus on the story of the band or should be a more adult story focused on the life on Mercury. Initially both Sacha Baron Cohen and Ben Whishaw had been linked to the role of Mercury with Dexter Fletcher (whose previous work as director includes the musical Sunshine on Leith (2013) and the comedy Eddie the Eagle (2016)) to direct from a screenplay by Peter Morgan. In November 2015 Anthony McCarten, who had written the screenplays for both The Theory of Everything (2014) and Darkest Hour (2017), was commissioned to produce a new screenplay from Morgan’s outline and the film finally went into production in 2016. In addition to the complexities of its production history the film’s screenplay generated some controversy as a result of its depiction of some key events in the history of Queen in the wrong order, especially Mercury’s HIV diagnosis: it is generally accepted that he discovered that he had been infected between late 1986 and Spring 1987, and in reality he did not make the other band members aware of this until late in 1989.

Bryan Singer is credited as the film’s director although he was fired from the production with less than two weeks of principal photography left. Dexter Fletcher was recalled by the producers to finish the photography and complete the film although the credits list only Singer as director, with Fletcher’s role being relegated to that of Executive Producer. Fletcher is currently working on Rocketman, a biography of Elton John which has the tagline of being “based on a true fantasy”, a statement which hopefully will ensure that it escapes criticism for any elements that do not reflect the historical record.

Here is the trailer:

Some Like It Hot

Each season we aim to include one "classic" film that has a significant anniversary, and this year we selected Some Like It Hot: it was a unanimous decision.

I'd actually seen the film on a big screen once before where it reinforced my belief that you do not really appreciate a film until you see it on a big screen. It was good to have this opportunity to re-acquaint myself with this true classic.

Some Like It Hot

USA 1959        116 minutes

Director:          Billy Wilder

Starring:            Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon

Award and Nominations:

• Five Oscar nominations including Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor (Jack Lemmon) Best Director, Best Cinematography (Black and White) and one Oscar win (Best Costume Design, Black and White)
• BAFTA award for Best Foreign Actor (Jack Lemmon)
• A further eight wins and eight nominations

“Some Like It Hot is effortlessly fluent, joyous and buoyant: a high-concept comedy that stays as high as a kite, while other comedies flag. ‘Nobody’s perfect’ is the last line. Wilder, Lemmon, Curtis and Monroe come pretty close.”

                                                                                                            Peter Bradshaw

Joe (Tony Curtis) and Jerry (Jack Lemmon) are musicians in Chicago, and when they accidentally witness a gangland killing they board a train bound for Florida disguised as Josephine and Daphne, the most recent recruits of an all-girl jazz band. Their cover is perfect until Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe) falls for Josephine and an elderly playboy (Joe E Brown) takes a shine to Daphne.

The idea of two men disguising themselves as women to join an all-girl band was borrowed from a 1951 German film called Fanfares of Love (Fanfaren der Liebe) which itself was a remake of a 1935 French comedy called Fanfare of Love (Fanfare d’amour). However Billy Wilder and his co-screenplay writer I A L Diamond had the inspired idea to add a gangster subplot to the main story both as motivation to keep the musicians on the run as well as allowing themselves as filmmakers to make witty references back to Hollywood gangster films of the 1930s. On its re-release in 2014 Peter Bradshaw hailed the film as “the best remake in movie history” and the screenplay received an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.

The casting of the main roles is superb and from the perspective of today it is difficult now to imagine other actors in the roles, but at one time Wilder had hoped to cast Frank Sinatra in the film and earlier on had even thought about a double act of Bob Hope and Danny Kay. Additionally with Marilyn Monroe in great personal distress during the making of the film Wilder had Mitzi Gaynor on standby to take over the role, but without Monroe the chemistry of the central roles would have worked nowhere near as well.

The film opened to positive reviews, with eminent critic Dilys Powell praising all the performances and also commenting on the transgressive subject matter, describing it as “a farce blacker than is common on the American screen [that] whistles along at a smart, murderous pace”. The film subsequently received six Oscar nominations (and won one) and since then has never fallen out of favour with either the public or critics. In 2000 the American Film Institute selected it as the top comedy in its 100 Years… 100 Laughs poll, a BBC poll of 253 films critics in 2017 chose it as the best comedy of all time and in 2005 the BFI included the film in its list of the 50 films you should see by the age of 14.

In recent times it has been possible to identify the transgressive nature of the story more clearly. In Have You Seen, his epic introduction to 1000 films, eminent film historian David Thomson highlights this new perspective:

“I suspect, literally, that no one knew that the film was a gay breakthrough. If they had guessed, they would have taken fright. But here is another film from the late fifties that blows up every convention it can see and discloses miracles in the explosion. Everybody’s perfect.”

The overwhelming and ongoing success of Some Like It Hot is considered to be one of the final nails in the coffin of the Hays Code which since 1930 had defined what was acceptable content for films produced in the USA, although the code itself was finally abandoned only in 1968, a year which saw the release of films as diverse as The Producers, Rosemary’s Baby and Barbarella.

Here is a link to the trailer:

The Little Stranger

I'd seen this film at the cinema and suggested that we screen it, and it definitely went down well. I think that anyone who saw it expecting a ghost story would have been disappointed, but in terms of atmosphere, pace and performance it was superb.

The Little Stranger

UK 2018          111 minutes

Director:          Lenny Abrahamson

Starring:            Domhnall Gleeson, Ruth Wilson, Will Poulter and Charlotte Rampling

“The haunts of childhood are revisited in this oppressively macabre ghost story, set in the miserable austerity of late-40s Britain and in some ways a metaphor for the nation’s complex sense of sacrificial loss. … The Little Stranger is fluently made and really well acted, particularly by Ruth Wilson, though maybe a bit too constrained by period-movie prestige to be properly scary.”

                                                                                                            Peter Bradshaw

In the summer of 1947 Dr Faraday (Domhnall Gleeson) is called to visit a patient at Hundreds Hall. He knows the place well as his mother once worked there as a maid but now the place is in decline and its three inhabitants - Mrs Ayres (Charlotte Rampling), her daughter Caroline (Ruth Wilson) and son Roderick (Will Poulter) - feel that the house is haunted by the ghost of Mrs Ayres’ first daughter who had died in childhood.

The film is based on the Booker-nominated novel by Sarah Waters. Despite the theme of her story Waters had not initially intended to write a ghost story: rather her intention had been to explore the rise of socialism how the fading remnants of the gentry dealt with losing their legacies. In this regard her decision to set the story in 1947 is crucial: the Labour landslide of 1945 allowed Attlee’s government to launch the NHS in July 1948. However both novel and film, which Mark Kermode accurately described as a “ghostly story” rather than a “ghost story”, carry echoes of classic ghost stories of the past including The Turn of the Screw by Henry James and The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson; other critics have also commented on their debt to novels (and films) as diverse as Rebecca, Brideshead Revisited and even The Great Gatsby.

All of Sarah Waters’ novels have historical settings and, with the exception of the most recent (The Paying Guests), have been adapted for either television or film. Fingersmith, a complex crime novel set in Victorian England, was memorably adapted by the BBC with a cast that included Sally Hawkins and Imelda Staunton; more recently award-winning South Korean director Park Chan-wook created a critically acclaimed and commercially successful film adaptation of the same book called The Handmaiden in which he transferred the action to colonial Korea in the 1930s.

Lenny Abrahamson is an Irish film director who began his career making commercials before directing independent films about people living on the fringes of Irish society. His film Frank (2014) (which also starred Domhnall Gleeson) a road movie set in Britain, Ireland and the USA received its premier at the Sundance Film Festival and he followed this with the film adaptation of Emma Donoghue’s novel Room (2015) which received Oscar nominations for Best Film, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and for Brie Larson as Best Leading Actress, although during the ceremony only Larson won an award.

Here is a link to the trailer:

La Ch'tite Famille

This film was a complete surprise to me - and  very pleasant one.

I'd borrowed the DVD to watch the film before we decided to screen it and for a moment was surprised to notice several of what I took to be typos in the subtitles: it took me several minutes to realise that the subtitles were trying to replicate the bizarre accents of the Ch'tite family.

La Ch'tite famille

France 2018     107 minutes

Director:          Dany Boon

Starring:            Dany Boon, Line Renaud, Laurence Arne and Valerie Bonneton

“Picard is a langues d'oïl dialect of the Indo-European language family spoken in the northernmost part of France and southern Belgium. … Picard is referred to by different names as residents of Picardy simply call it Picard, but it is more commonly known as chti or chtimi in the more populated Nord-Pas-de-Calais (Romance Flanders around the metropolis of Lille and Douai, and northeast Artois around Béthune and Lens). … As of 2008, Picard native speakers amount to 700,000 individuals. Since its daily use had drastically declined, Picard was declared by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) a "seriously endangered language".”

                                                                                                            Wikipedia

Valentin Duquenne is a famous and successful designer of furniture who claims to be an orphan as he is too ashamed to admit that he is the son of working-class scrap metal dealers from northern France. When his family arrive in Paris, on the pretext of wanting to celebrate his elderly mother’s birthday with him, his true identity is revealed and then, after a traffic accident causes him to lose his memory, the Ch'ti in him returns.

Dany Boon is a French comedian and a film maker who has appeared successfully on both stage and screen. His native region is the Nord-Pas-de-Calais and after he had made his name through his sketches and one man shows in 2003 he made a whole show in the dialect of ch’ti which although subtitled became a bestseller throughout the whole of France. In February 2008 he released Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis, a comedy based on prejudices held about the region, which became the highest grossing film of all-time at the French box office.

La Ch'tite famille is not specifically a sequel to Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis: Boon’s own description is that it is “closer to a spin-off project”. On its opening weekend in France it topped the French box office and grossed $16,739,183. 

Here is a link to the trailer:

The Bookshop

This film was an unexpected pleasure. I'd not read the book but I'd seen the reviews, wanted to see the film, but it disappeared from general release before I managed to catch it.

The presence of Bill Nighy in a film always brings in an audience, although some people are still in recovery from having seen The Limehouse Golem.

Here are my notes:

The Bookshop

UK 2017          113 minutes

Director:          Isabel Coixet

Starring:            Emily Mortimer, Bill Nighy and Patricia Clarkson

Awards and Nominations:

• 14 wins including Best Film, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor (Bill Nighy) and Best Actress (Emily Mortimer)
• A further 32 nominations

“The Spanish film-maker Isabel Coixet brings an interesting, unsentimental detachment to this odd tragicomedy of provincial life. She refuses the familiar grace notes of comedy and sugary romance in favour of something more awkward and angular.”

Peter Bradshaw

In 1959 Florence Green (Emily Mortimer), a young widow, decides to risk everything by moving to a sleepy seaside town where she opens its first bookshop. By stocking novels like Lolita and Fahrenheit 451 she opens the eyes of the local residents to the best of modern literature and gains the support of reclusive bachelor Edmund Brundish (Bill Nighy) but her actions incur the wrath of the influential and ambitious Mrs Gamart (Patricia Clarkson) who plans to use the bookshop premises to set up an arts centre. The uncredited narration is by Julie Christie.

The film is an adaptation of Penelope Fitzgerald’s 1978 novel which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The almost twenty year chronological gap between the setting of the novel and its composition allowed Fitzgerald the perspective to create a story driven by the conflict between small town nostalgia fixated on heritage and an emerging metropolitan liberal progressiveness that in terms of bookselling would culminate several years later in the prosecution and acquittal of Penguin Books for publishing Lady Chatterley’s Lover. However looking at the film at the current moment it is possible to see the story from another perspective, this time political, in that many Brexit supporters espouse a nostalgia for a past that never existed while many Remainers share a liberal and Eurocentric mindset.

Coixet directed the film from her own screenplay, and in an interview about her work to date she declared that she helps “untangle films from their national context, … clearing the path for thinking about national film from different perspectives”; in this case she has changed the perspective of the story by using locations in Northern Ireland to represent Fitzgerald’s fictional Suffolk coastal town. Throughout all her films she identifies recurrent themes of “emotions, feelings, and existential conflict” although both the setting and time in which The Bookshop is set ensured that for this film her characters repress their emotions and button down their feelings.

All of Coixet’s films have a distinct visual style (she works as her own camera operator), she works in both Spanish and English and she has also acted as a producer for films directed by others; as such within Spain she is regarded as a Catalan auteur. She began her career in advertising where her clients included such global brands as BMW, Renault and Ikea before moving into cinema, although continuing to make commercials through her own production company. On its release in Spain The Bookshop received both a positive critical response as well as great public success. The film received it premier outside of Spain at the 68^th Berlin International Film Festival.

Here is the trailer:

The Wife

I wanted to see this film from the moment I read the review; I was not disappointed and enjoyed every minute. but then seeing it again, once you appreciate the full extent of the story allows you to appreciate it even more, especially the subtle brilliance of Glenn Close's performance.

Here are my notes:

The Wife

USA 2017        99 minutes

Director:          Björn Runge

Starring:            Glenn Close, Jonathan Pryce, Max Irons and Christian Slater

Awards and Nominations:

• Oscar Nomination for Best Actress (Glenn Close)
• Won Golden Globe for Best Actress (Glenn Close)
• BAFTA nomination for Best Actress (Glenn Close)
• A further 11 wins and 16 nominations

““There’s nothing more dangerous than a writer whose feelings have been hurt.” The speaker is Joan Castleman, the charming, enigmatically discreet and supportive wife of world-famous author and New York literary lion Joe Castleman. It is a fascinating and bravura performance from Glenn Close, in this hugely enjoyable dark comedy from director Björn Runge, adapted by Jane Anderson from the novel by Meg Wolitzer. Perhaps it’s Close’s career-best – unnervingly subtle, unreadably calm, simmering with self-control. Her Joan is a study in marital pain, deceit and the sexual politics of prestige. It’s a portrayal to put alongside Close’s appearances in Dangerous Liaisons and Fatal Attraction. This is an unmissable movie for Glenn Close fans. Actually, you can’t watch it without becoming a fan – if you weren’t one already.”

Peter Bradshaw

Joan Castleman has spent her adult life sacrificing her own talent and literary ambition to support her husband Joe. She has ignored his numerous infidelities and excuses since they first met when she was his student and she has endured his bad behaviour for years, but when they learn that Joe has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature Jean has to confront the biggest sacrifice of her life.

The film is based on the 2003 novel by Meg Rosoff which tells the story as a first person narrative from Joan’s perspective. The screenplay by playwright, screenwriter and director Jane Anderson tells the story in a similar nonlinear fashion, interspersing scenes of the Castlemans’ journey to the award ceremony in Stockholm (including their attempts to avoid a writer who is keen to write a biography of Joe), with flashback scenes depicting their early life together and the beginnings of Joe’s literary success. In the flashback scenes Joan is played by Annie, Stark, Glenn Close’s real life daughter, and Joe is played by Harry Lloyd.

The Wife was screened at film festivals in 2017 but it was reported that it had been held back from general release until 2018 in order to give Glenn Close a better chance to win an Oscar nomination (which she subsequently did; she also has a BAFTA nomination and recently won the Best Actress Award at the Golden Globes). The critics were unanimous in their praise for Glenn Close’s performance, but many also gave credit to Jonathan Pryce for his supporting role. Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian included both Close and Pryce in his shortlist of the best performances of 2018.

Director Björn Runge is himself Swedish and in his native country he has worked as a director, screen writer, playwright and author; his films have won many awards in Sweden as well as receiving international acclaim, with Daybreak (2003) winning the Silver Bear and the award for Best European Film at the Berlin Film Festival. Despite the US and Swedish locations of the film much of it was shot in Glasgow and Dumfries in Scotland.

Here's the trailer:

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again

We chose this film to start the New Year as we thought that we'd need something cheerful after the end of the Christmas festivities - and we were right.

I'd not been too impressed with the original Mamma Mia! when we screened it as it was essentially a filmed version of the stage show - although the Abba songs made it bearable. However the genius of this film was to engage Richard Curtis to produce the screenplay: freed from the constraints of the stage show he was able to produce a superb screenplay that combined elements of both prequel and sequel, which also somehow managed to bounce off each other.

When you start looking at the smaller details the story becomes entirely implausible, but for the 114 minutes of its screen time it isgreat fun.

Here are my notes:

UK 2018          114 minutes

Director:          Ol Parker

Starring:            Lily James, Amanda Seyfried, Meryl Streep and Cher

“Watching the original Mamma Mia! in 2008, I had something approaching an out-of-body experience. One minute I was a miserable critic; the next, everything had gone pink and fluffy. As I said at the time, never before had something so wrong felt so right. A decade later, this sequel-prequel hybrid (a surprisingly smart combination) produces similarly head-spinning results.”

Mark Kermode

Ten years after the events of Mamma Mia! The Movie Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) is pregnant and will have to take risks in order to reopen the hotel that her mother Donna (Meryl Streep) had started. Meanwhile in a series of flashbacks the young Donna (Lily James) graduates from Oxford and sets off on a tour of Europe that will end up in Kalokairi where she decides to open a hotel.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a film that broke many box office records must be in search of a sequel, although in this case the search took ten years to reach the screen, although the chronological gap has allowed some significant events to have affected many of the main characters and to provide enough of a story to carry a further selection of ABBA songs (with Bjoern Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson having cameo roles in two of the musical numbers). The screenplay is by director Ol Parker (who had previously written The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011) and both wrote and directed its sequel) from a story by Richard Curtis (writer of Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), Notting Hill (1999) and Love Actually (2003)) using characters created by Catherine Johnson for the original stage musical.

Clearly the extensive flashback sections of the screenplay need to be consistent with Donna’s back story about Sophie’s paternity from the initial film, but by setting the opening sequences at an Oxford graduation ceremony the screenplay firmly establishes Donna as an inhabitant of Richard Curtis’s rose-tinted version of England that provided the background to his film world. However in the sequences set in the present day the recent economic problems of Greece appear momentarily, albeit only as a plot device to bring most of the cast together at the reopened hotel for the final section of the film (although inevitably Cher flies in by helicopter).

The film enjoyed far more critical acclaim than its predecessor, with Mark Kermode giving it a five star review and commenting:

“Much has changed in the 10 years since Mamma Mia! challenged my ideas of “good” and “bad” film-making. I have certainly mellowed, and perhaps my critical faculties have withered and died. But I simply can’t imagine how Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again could be any better than it is. I loved it to pieces and I can’t wait to go again!”

On its release in the UK the film grossed $12.7 million on its opening weekend, making it the fourth biggest opening for a film in 2018. It was a global success, repeating the performance of its predecessor in Australia and Germany while also being successful in France, Poland, Switzerland and Croatia (where its location scenes were filmed). To date the film has a total gross of $393.7 million against a production budget of $75 million. 

Here's the trailer:

Goodbye Christopher Robin

I've had a soft spot for Winnie the Pooh ever since I red a brilliant article by Angela Carter that forensically summed up the differences between him and Paddington Bear. However until I'd seen the film (and then read up about AA Milne to prepare these notes) I had not been aware of his extensive career beyond Pooh.

Since this film came out I've also seen Tolkien and apart from their shared experience of the Battle of the Somme it's interesting to note how both writers, albeit in very different ways, used their writing to create a vision of a mythical wonderland.

Goodbye Christopher Robin

UK 2017          107 minutes

Director:          Simon Curtis

Starring:            Domhnall Gleeson, Margot Robbie and Kelly Macdonald

“With its bittersweet interweaving of fact and fantasy, youthful innocence and adult trauma, this tale of the creation of a children’s classic could have been called Saving Mr Milne. Like Mary Poppins, Winnie-the-Pooh occupies a sacred space in our hearts and anyone wishing to co-opt some of that magic must tread very lightly indeed. Director Simon Curtis’s movie could easily have tripped (like Piglet) and burst its balloon as it evokes a dappled glade of happiness surrounded by the monstrous spectres of two world wars. Instead, it skips nimbly between light and dark, war and peace, like a young boy finding his way through an English wood, albeit one drenched with shafts of sugary, Spielbergian light.”

Mark Kermode

Awards and Nominations

• Best Supporting Actress Nomination for Kelly Macdonald at the British Independent Film Awards
•  A further two wins

After his experiences at the Battle of the Somme A A Milne (Domhnall Gleeson) finds it difficult to resume his writing career. He moves his wife Daphne (Margot Robbie) and their son Christopher Robin to a house in the country where he plans to write an anti-war book, but while taking his son for walks in the surrounding woods he begins to make up stories about the boy’s animal toys. The books are a great commercial success, but all this has a detrimental effect on Christopher Robin Milne who rejects his family and the earnings from his father’s writing and then enlists in the army during the Second World War.

Milne read Mathematics at Cambridge but while he was there also edited a student magazine, and after graduating made his living as a writer: he became a regular contributor to Punch (where he met the cartoonist E H Shepherd who was to provide the definitive illustrations for his children’s books) and his other literary output included at least 18 plays (including a stage adaptation of The Wind in the Willows), three novels as well as several screenplays for the early British Film industry. However despite their success at the time all this work has been entirely overshadowed by the success of the two books of stories for children about Winnie-the-Pooh and two associated books of nursery rhymes When We Were Very Young and Now We Are Six; in 2002 Forbes magazine ranked Winnie-the-Pooh as the most valuable fictional character and in 2005 Winnie-the-Pooh generated revenue of $6 billion from sales of merchandising products.

The production team for Goodbye Christopher Robin bring some very different backgrounds to the film. The screenplay is by Frank-Cottrell-Boyce who among his other work for cinema has written five screenplays for Michael Winterbottom including Welcome to Sarajevo (1997) and 24 Hour Party People (2002); he also wrote the 2012 Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony, several award-winning novels for children and two recent episodes of Doctor Who. The soundtrack is by Carter Burwell who has worked extensively with both the Coen brothers and Martin McDonagh, and who among many awards and nominations has received Oscar nomination for the soundtracks he wrote for Carol (2015) and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017). Director Simon Curtis began his career as a stage director at the Royal Court where he worked as an assistant to Danny Boyle before moving into television where he made his name with the BBC adaptations of Cranford and Return to Cranford (2009). He made his cinema debut with My Week with Marilyn (2011) and followed this with Woman in Gold (2015).

Here is a link to the trailer:

http://21stcenturyfilmbuff.blogspot.com

The Post

I saw this film first at the cinema and there was no doubt that we should screen it at our club. The sight of the old hot metal printing presses give the film a specific historical link, but the story itself seemed depressingly contemporary.

The Post

USA 2017        116 minutes

Director:          Steven Spielberg

Starring:            Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Sarah Paulson, Ben Odenkirk and Tracy Letts   

“For all its period detail, however, this is an urgently contemporary tale, with Spielberg taking a break from preparing his forthcoming effects-heavy sci-fi thriller Ready Player One to turn The Post around in double-quick time. Hitting our screens as the current White House incumbent raves about news media being “the enemy of the American people”, The Post offers a reminder that “the founding fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfil its essential role… to serve the governed, not the governors”. The film-making may hardly be groundbreaking, but this story is more relevant than ever, and it is told with wit, precision and understated passion.”

Mark Kermode

Awards and Nominations

• Oscar nominations for Best Film and Best Actress (Meryl Streep)
• Golden Globe nominations for Best Film (Drama), Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor (Tom Hanks), Best Actress (Meryl Streep) and Best Score (John Williams)
• A further 18 wins and 92 nominations

Katherine Graham (Meryl Streep) is the proprietor of The Washington Post and Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks) is its editor. When Bradlee obtains the Pentagon Papers, classified documents revealing the true picture of 30 years of US involvement in the Vietnam War, he and Graham have to fight attempts by Nixon’s White House to prevent their publication.

The screenplay for The Post by first time screenwriter Liz Hannah appeared on the annual Hollywood Black List of most liked screenplays not yet produced, and was picked up by a producer who assembled the team of Spielberg, Streep and Hanks for the project, the first time that all three had worked together. Spielberg then brought in Josh Singer, who won an Oscar for his screenplay for Spotlight (2015), a film about journalists on the Boston Globe investigating the cover up of sexual abuse by Catholic priests, to work with Hannah as he had the on-set writing experience that she lacked. Spielberg himself halted pre-production work on another project after a casting setback and decided to direct the The Post himself, commenting "when I read the first draft of the script, this wasn't something that could wait three years or two years — this was a story I felt we needed to tell today”.

The film is essence a prequel to All the President’s Men (1976) about the exposure by Woodward and Bernstein of Nixon’s involvement in the Watergate scandal, and in the final minutes of the film it explicitly acknowledges the link with a brief radio news report of the initial burglary at the Watergate Building. Bob Woodward has subsequently written books about every US President since Nixon and Fear, his book on Trump’s presidency, became a global bestseller on its publication. The events portrayed in the film are generally true, although the screenplay does downplay the role that The New York Times had in breaking the story while emphasizing The Washington Post’s subsequent involvement: it was The New York Times that first published the Pentagon Papers, set the stage for the legal battle between the press and the US government and then won a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for its work.

The Post was named as one of the top ten films of the year by both Time and the American Film Institute.

This is the trailer:

The Limehouse Golem

I have always enjoyed Peter Ackroyd's books, but for some reason I had never read Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem. I saw the film at the cinema and then read the book, and was hugely impressed by the way the adaptation converted a novel with such a complex structure into such a superb film.

When we screened it we attracted a number of Bill Nighy fans, but they were somewhat surprised to see him, for once, in a dramatic role.

The Limehouse Golem

UK 2016          109 minutes

Director:          Juan Carlos Medina

Starring:            Bill Nighy, Olivia Cooke and Douglas Booth

“All the world’s a bloody stage in this gothic Victorian East End melodrama, splendidly adapted from a 1994 novel by Peter Ackroyd. A tale of theatrical murder drenched in the rich hues of classic-period Hammer, this gaslit treat sets Bill Nighy’s Scotland Yard detective on the trail of a grisly killer in 1880s London. Swinging between the ghoulish gaiety of the music hall and the grim stench of the morgue, the second feature from Insensibles/Painless director Juan Carlos Medina is a deliciously subversive affair, nimbly adapted by super-sharp screenwriter Jane Goldman and vivaciously played by an impressive ensemble cast.”

Mark Kermode

Awards and Nominations

• Three nominations including Best Film and Best Actor (Bill Nighy)

There is a serial killer – known popularly as the Limehouse Golem – who leaves notes written in his victim’s blood on the loose in Victorian London. Scotland Yard appoints Inspector Kildare (Bill Nighy) to investigate the case whose suspects include music hall star Dan Leno (Douglas Booth), Karl Marx (Henry Goodman), writer George Gissing (Morgan Watkins) and playwright John Cree (Sam Reid). When John Cree is poisoned and his wife Lizzie (Olivia Crooke) is accused of his murder Kildare believes that identifying Cree as the Limehouse Golem will save Lizzie from the gallows.

Screenwriter Jane Goldman has reconfigured the story of Peter Ackroyd’s novel to make it a police procedural and has elevated the role of Kildare, mentioned only briefly in the novel, into the central character but as in so many of Ackroyd’s books, both novels and non-fiction, London is also a major character. Ackroyd anchors this story in the reality of London’s history with its reference to the Ratcliff Highway murders, two attacks on separate families in 1811 that resulted in seven deaths: Thomas de Quincey famously wrote about the murders and Ackroyd has his murderer leave a series of clues in the text of this work in the British Museum. Beyond the British Museum are the streets of London and the world of the music hall and the film contrasts the washed out streets teeming with opium addicts and prostitutes with the brilliant and colourful world of the music hall which provides Londoners with a temporary escape from the drudgery of their lives. But within the world of the music hall nothing is quite as it seems as Dan Leno made his name as a female impersonator, Lizzie Cree performs dressed as a man, and love and death are always in close proximity. 

There had been plans to film the book for many years and the diverse list of potential previous directors includes James Ivory, Terry Gilliam and Neil Jordan. Originally it had been planned that Alan Rickman should play Kildare, but his illness forced his withdrawal and replacement by Bill Nighy, who plays a rare dramatic role. The film is dedicated to Alan Rickman.

Juan Carlos Medina made his name with the Spanish horror film Painless/Insensibles (2012). Since The Limehouse Golem his work has included two episodes each of the TV series Origins and A Discovery of Witches

Here is a link to the trailer:

Finding Your Feet

I'd missed this film at the cinema, but it was pretty good fun and went down well with the members: presumably a significant number are fans of Strictly Come Dancing.

Finding Your Feet

UK 2017          111 minutes

Director:          Richard Loncraine

Starring:            Imelda Staunton, Timothy Spall, Celia Imrie, David Hayman, John Sessions and Joanna Lumley

“This film could not court the grey pound more aggressively if it handed out free Saga holidays with every ticket. And yet, cynical as it undoubtedly is, there is a certain creaky charm to this tale of late-life second chances and senior dance classes. That charm is largely deployed by a game veteran cast. Headed up by Imelda Staunton as Sandra, the wife who discovers her husband’s infidelity just as she was hoping to enjoy their Ocado-delivered retirement, and Celia Imrie as Bif, her pot-smoking bohemian sister, the cast also includes Timothy Spall and a gloriously vampy Joanna Lumley. Spall and Staunton, in particular, are tremendous.”

Wendy Ide

Awards and Nominations

• Won Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature at the Palm Springs International Film Festival

When Lady Sandra Abbott (Imelda Staunton) discovers that her husband (John Sessions) is having an affair she takes refuge with her bohemian sister Bif (Celia Imrie). Bif persuades her to join her dance class and here Charlie (Timothy Spall), Jackie (Joanna Lumley) and Ted (David Hayman) show her that her divorce might just give her a whole new lease of life and love.

Richard Loncraine studied at Art College before moving on to Film School and in his subsequent career he has worked extensively both in television and cinema. For the BBC his early work included Blade on the Feather (1980) and Brimstone and Treacle (1982), both by Dennis Potter and later on he directed the TV movies The Gathering Storm (2002), about the life of Winston Churchill (Albert Finney) in the years before the outbreak of war in 1939 and The Special Relationship (2010), from a screenplay by Peter Morgan, about the relationship between Tony Blair (Michael Sheen) and US Presidents Clinton and George W Bush.

For the cinema Loncraine’s films have been wide-ranging in style and include the period comedy-drama The Missionary (1982) which was written by and starred Michael Palin in his first post-Python film, Richard III (1995) a filmed adaptation of Richard Eyre’s National Theatre production set in the 1930s with Ian McKellen in the title role, and Wimbledon (2004), a romantic comedy set during the annual tennis tournament.

Here's a link to the trailer:  

Phantom Thread

The past twelve months have been busy and I have been involved in various other projects which have been time-consuming. The Film Club has continued and has gone from strength to strength, but I have been remiss in posting copies of the notes I produce on to this blog.

Over the next weeks I intend to get back to where we are now as we have just started our 2019-2020 season.

So to start with I am posting this almost a year late... Nonetheless the film was superb and I have subsequently bought the soundtrack which I listen to regularly.

Phantom Thread

USA 2017        130 minutes

Director:          Paul Thomas Anderson

Starring:            Daniel Day-Lewis, Lesley Manville and Vicky Krieps

  

“Paul Thomas Anderson’s best film since Punch-Drunk Love is another cracked romance with a masochistic streak and a strong fairy-tale underpinning. Set in post-war London, amid the insular world of 50s haute couture, Phantom Thread is an oedipal gothic romance, a tale of lost mothers and broken spells, with secret messages (“never cursed”) sewn into its gorgeously cinematic cloth. A swooning score, crisp visuals and paper-cut-sharp performances combine to conjure a poisoned rose of a movie, inviting you to prick your finger on its thorns and succumb to its weird, dark magic.”

Mark Kermode

Awards and Nominations

• Won Oscar for Best Costume Design plus Oscar nominations for Best Actor (Daniel Day-Lewis), Best Supporting Actress (Lesley Manville), Best Film, Best Director and Best Soundtrack
• Won BAFTA for Best Costume Design plus BAFTA nominations for Best Actor (Daniel Day-Lewis), Best Supporting Actress (Lesley Manville) and Best Soundtrack
• A further 46 wins and 85 nominations

In 1950s London designer Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) and his sister Cyril (Lesley Manville) are at the centre of the British fashion industry of the period. Woodcock designs dresses for royalty movie stars, heiresses and debutants, and has had relationships with a string of women who have passed in and out of his life, but when he meets Alma (Vicky Krieps), a young waitress who becomes both his muse and his lover, he discovers that she has the potential to disrupt his entire carefully managed life.

Phantom Thread is the first feature film that Anderson has directed that is set outside of his native USA and his screenplay is an original story, although the character of Woodcock is loosely based on the British designed Charles James. The style of the film reflects the work that Alfred Hitchcock and Powell and Pressburger made during the period in which it is set and composer Jonny Greenwood, who has scored all of Anderson’s films since There Will Be Blood, reinforces the period feel with his soundtrack that has echoes of David Lean’s British films of the 1940s, especially Richard Addinsell’s work for The Passionate Friends (1949) and the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto that figures so memorably in Brief Encounter (1945).

Anderson started making films using a Betamax video camera at the age of 12. He spent two terms studying English at University before dropping out to begin his career as a production assistant on TV. He subsequently decided to make a short film as his “college”; the resulting short was successfully screened at the Sundance Film Festival and he later expanded it into Hard Eight (1996) his first full length feature. Anderson’s breakthrough film which won him both critical and commercial success was Boogie Nights (1997) set in the world of porn in the 1970s and 1980s. In 2007 he directed the critically acclaimed historical drama There Will Be Blood which among its many awards and nominations won Oscars for Daniel Day-Lewis in the leading role and Best Cinematography as well as being named as the best film of the current century by several critics.

Here's a link to the trailer: