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.

Eye in the Sky

I saw the trailer for this film long before its release and got completely the wrong picture: I thought it was promoting an action thriller and wondered what stars of the calibre of Helen Mirren and Alan Rickman were doing in it. As a bizarre coincidence I think I saw the trailer the day that the news of Alan Rickman's death was released.

And then I read the reviews, was sorry that I'd missed it in its first run in the cinema and was delighted when we scheduled it to run earlier this month.

My anticipation of the film was entirely justified and even though i had a fairly good idea how the story would develop there were whole sections when i found myself on the edge of my seat and almost forgetting to breathe.

Here are my notes:

Eye in the Sky

UK 2015                      102 minutes

Director:                      Gavin Hood

Starring:                        Helen Mirren, Aaron Paul, Alan Rickman and Barkhad Abdi

Awards and Nominations

• One nomination for Best Narrative Feature at Palm Springs International Film Festival

“Here, the South African director Gavin Hood assembles an A-list ensemble cast (including Alan Rickman in his last on-screen role) for a provocatively tense thriller that negotiates the moral minefields of its thorny subject matter in crowd-pleasing fashion.”

Mark Kermode

Colonel Katherine Powell (Helen Mirren) is remotely commanding a drone operation to capture a group of dangerous terrorists in Nairobi. The mission suddenly escalates from a “capture” to a “kill” operation and the members of the military have to work with politicians and lawyers thousands of miles away from the action to gain their approval before they can strike.

The film has a complex production history, with Guy Hibbert’s screenplay being initially developed by BBC Films before Gavin Hood was appointed director and, subsequently, Colin Firth’s production company becoming involved to make the film. Firth himself planned to play the part of James Willett the UK Foreign Secretary, but the role was ultimately played by Iain Glen with Firth’s sole involvement being a credit as one of the film’s producers. Director Gavin Hood made the entire film in South Africa, but none of the four leading actors met up during the production: rather Hood filmed each of them alone to reflect their separate specific locations in the story. On its release the film received many positive reviews with critics commenting both on the cerebral spin it gave to the modern political thriller as well as the powerful acting of its cast.

Gavin Hood made his name with the South African drama Tsotsi (2005) which won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film before moving to the US where his more commercial films have included X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) and the science fiction epic Ender’s Game (2013).

 

Here's the trailer:

 

 

 

Woman in Gold

We screened this film at the beginning of October. After reading the reviews I was not expecting too much - inevitably I have to write notes on films I have not seen - but in the event I was impressed.

The background to the film is the major crime of the twentieth century, but the film managed to make it personal, as well as shining a light on to an aspect of the Holocaust that is perhaps generally forgotten, but which still has an impact today.

Here are my notes:

Woman in Gold

UK/USA 2015              109 minutes

Director:                      Simon Curtis

Starring:                        Helen Mirren, Ryan Reynolds, Daniel Bruhl, Katie Holmes and Tatiana Maslany

Maria Altmann was gracious and warm, the kind of woman referred to in another era as a grande dame. Her face was lined, but her bright brown eyes still held a gaze of wonder.

“It is a very complicated story. … People always asked me, did your aunt have a mad affair with Klimt? My sister thought so. My mother – she was very Victorian – said ‘How dare you say that?  It was an intellectual friendship.’ ”

Maria looked up at a reproduction of Adele’s portrait on the wall, regarding her face thoughtfully.

“My darling,” she said finally, “Adele was a modern woman, living in the world of yesterday.”

Anne-Marie O’Connor
The Lady in Gold

 

Sixty years after she fled from Nazi persecution in Vienna an elderly Jewish woman, Maria Altmann (Helen Mirren) begins legal action to retrieve possessions that the Nazis had sized from her family. These include the painting Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer (subsequently known as the Woman in Gold) by Gustav Klimt which after the war had been hung in an Austrian art Gallery. 

Maria Altman’s struggle to recover the Woman in Gold had already been told in a 2008 documentary film called Adele’s Wish as well as in a book called The Lady in Gold, and although inevitably there have been a few minor changes to the events of her life to make it work in dramatic terms the feature film has brought her story to a far wider audience.

Despite the success of Maria Altmann in the long and complex legal struggle depicted in the film even today in Austria the government is still displaying an irresolute attitude towards returning property stolen from their Jewish owners: Stephan Templ wrote a book that catalogued hundreds of Jewish-owned buildings seized by the Nazis that have never been returned to their rightful owners, and was subsequently found guilty of defrauding the state after omitting the name of an estranged aunt from a family restitution claim. His appeal against the sentence has received the support of 75 Holocaust historians from around the world against and an Austrian journalist who is also a Holocaust survivor commented:

“The only reason Templ was prosecuted is that he touched a nerve with his book, which reminded Austrians how they stole Jewish property”.

For Austrians Klimt’s painting of the Woman in Gold was part of their national identity, although other examples of his work in Austria did not survive the war. In1895 he had been commissioned to produce three massive paintings for the Great Hall of the University of Vienna, but a public outcry from political, aesthetic and religious groups meant that they were never displayed in this location, and in 1945 retreating SS forces destroyed all three paintings.

Hitchcock

Here are my notes for this week's screening:

Hitchcock

USA 2012                    98 minutes

Director:                      Sacha Gervasi

Starring:                        Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren, James D'Arcy, Jessica Biel, Michael Stuhlbarg, Scarlett Johansson, Toni Collette

Awards and Nominations

• BAFTA,  Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Best Actress Nominations for Helen Mirren
• 12 other nominations

 “Many people, including his studio, Paramount, had warned against this project [Psycho]: the material threatened to be nasty and gruesome, without Hitchcock’s urbane and attractive people – you couldn’t cast Cary Grant as Norman Bates (and I doubt Hitch could have brought himself to murder Grace Kelly).  The shower killing and the looming mother seemed like exploitation, or Grand Guignol, as well as trouble with the censor.  With his agent, Lew Wasserman, Hitchcock persevered.  So long as he worked cheaply, using the crew from his television show, and staying in black and white, Psycho could be set up in a deal to make more money for Hitch than he had ever known before.”

David Thomson: The Big Screen

After the great popular success of North By Northwest (1959) many critics claimed that Hitchock (Antony Hopkins) was losing his edge and growing old.  Determined to prove them wrong he decides to make Psycho and his wife Alma (Helen Mirren) acts as his chief adviser, censor and muse.

The film, with a script by John McLaughlin, is based on Stephen Rebello’s Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, a fascinating factual study of the film’s creation, with both Hopkins and Mirren having great fun with their roles.  However for legal reasons the film shows no footage from the completed film and the director was even forbidden to shoot any footage at the location of the Bates Motel, which still exists on a Hollywood back lot.

Psycho was an immediate international success, and despite the critical acclaim for Hitchcock’s other films (with Vertigo (1958) being voted first place in Sight & Sound’s 2012 poll of the greatest films of all times,  when it displaced Citizen Kane from the position it had occupied since 1962) it is arguably his best known film.  To date it has generated three sequels plus the pilot for a failed TV series in the 1980s.  More recently in 1998 Gus Van Sant made a version of Psycho in colour that was an almost shot-for-shot remake of Hitchcock’s original, and in 2012 a series called Bates Motel, set in contemporary Oregon and thus re-booting Hitchcock’s original story, was successfully screened in the US.

 

Here's one of the trailers:

 

 

 

 

And another one:

 

 

The 20 Best Films of all Time chosen by me - Part 3

And now we move on to thrillers.  Once again this is my own selection, and the only criterion is that I have to have seen any film I nominate.

1. The Lady Vanishes
I read some time last year that you could not consider yourself a serious film fan unless you had seen The Lady Vanishes.  I'd read about it many times but had never seen it - at least no consciously.  Fortunately a quick internet order remedied the deficiency: I really enjoyed it and it has an amazing vitality that belies its 1938 release date.

2. The Long Good Friday
I'd been a fan of Helen Mirren ever since O Lucky Man - I'd even watched her on Jackanory reading a story in an amazingly low cut Jacobethen dress - but this was the first time I'd seen her in a role that did justice to her talent.  Bob Hoskins is pretty good too (understatement) and the whole film really caught the zeitgeist.

3. Casablanca
I'm not sure if this is a thriller or a lovely story, but who cares.  It's a film I could see forever, and it was the film that my wife and I went to on our first date: a double bill with Play It Again Sam. We'll always have Casablanca.

4. Fargo
In our film society we try t show the best of releases, but several years ago we made an exception for Fargo - still one of the best films in a very strong field from the Coen brothers.  since I'd first seen it I'd actually visited Minnesota several times for work and recognised the accent, but fortunately all my trips were in the Spring or the Autumn.  And now I even have my own wood chipper.

5. Chinatown
I first saw this in my first year at university when I suddenly became aware of the big world of films that opened up around me. It's a brilliant homage to Hollywood of the 1940s as well as a key film of the 1970s - and several of the characters play key roles in David Thomson's brilliantly unsettling novel Suspects.

The Thatcher Era - in films

It was during the 1980s that for the first time in my life I had access to good cinemas and film clubs and thus had the chance to see most of the films I wanted to as they came out. 

Not many of them are overtly political, and looking back it is difficult to see too many unifying themes beyond the fact that they are good and merit re-watching.

In no particular order here they are:

1. The Company of Wolves (1984)
I'd been a lifelong admirer of Angela Carter's and Neil Jordan's tribute to Hammer, co-scripted by Carter did not disappoint:

2. Local Hero (1983)
Gregory's Girl was brilliant but parochial.  Local Hero with its environmental theme and music by Mark Knopfler was a well-deserved international hit.

 

 

3. The Long Good Friday (1980)



I'd been a lifelong fan of Helen Mirren since O Lucky Man!  Bob Hoskins gives a superb performance and the whole film is brilliant.

 

 

4. The Draughtsman's Contract (1982)

This is the complete antithesis to the social realist films that appeared in the 1980s but was a well-deserved success. The soundtrack by Micheal Nyman was a revelation and I've loved his music ever since.

5. The Ploughman's Lunch (1983)
The script is by Ian McEwan, the director is Richard Eyre and the lead actor is Jonathan Pryce.  For me this is the film of the 1980s that best sums up the Thatcher era.

Films for the Jubilee

Everyone seems to be getting excited about the Cultural Olympiad linked to the Olympic Games (apparently they're happening in London and other venues around the country during the summer).  But to date I've not seen much about any cultural events to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee.

Following her success in Elizabeth Cate Blanchett returned to the role in Elizabeth: The Golden Age, which was set at the time of the Spanish Armada.  Despite a number of inaccuracies and liberties with history I enjoyed it very much and it went down well when we screened it for our Film Society.  On this basis I wonder if there is any mileage in Helen Mirren returning to the role of Elizabeth II in a sequel to The Queen.  In the first film Michael Sheen was uncannily brilliant portraying Blair in his early pomp, but I'd be struggling to cast either Cameron or Clegg.

Here are my notes for The Golden Age:  

ELIZABETH: THE GOLDEN AGE

UK, 2007 (114 minutes)

Director:          Shekhar Kapur

Starring:          Cate Blanchett, Clive Owen and Geoffrey Rush

Awards and Nominations

Oscars

Won                            Oscar for Best Costumes
Nominated                  Cate Blanchett (Actress in a Leading Role)

BAFTAS                     Four nominations, including Cate Blanchett for Best Leading Actress

A further three wins and seven nominations

In 1585 Catholic Spain, the most powerful country in Europe, is plotting to invade England and overthrow the heretic Elizabeth (Cate Blanchett).  Philip II has built an Armada and the execution of Mary Queen of Scots gives him the excuse he needs to launch it.  A combination of the naval skills of Sir Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen), Spanish miscalculation and the English weather allow a numerically inferior English fleet to destroy the Armada and save both Queen and country.

 In the four centuries since her death Elizabeth I has become a chameleon figure who can reflect the cultural and political concerns of the age which chooses to portray her – especially in films and on TV.  In The Sea Hawk (1940) Flora Robson portrayed Elizabeth vigorously defending her Kingdom against foreign invasion, a situation with obvious parallels to the events of the Second World War; in the early 1970s Glenda Jackson gave a performance with a distinct feminist flavour in Elizabeth R; and in Shakespeare in Love (1998) Judi Dench transformed Elizabeth into a drama-loving deus (dea?) ex machina who resolved the complexities of the plot, while at the same time providing Shakespeare with an abundance of source material for his future plays.  Elizabeth I has also appeared memorably in both Black Adder and Doctor Who.

Cate Blanchett’s portrayal of Elizabeth in Elizabeth (1998) and Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007) offers a very different view of the queen, but one which again has similarities with our own recent history.  The first film shows the real dangers that Elizabeth faces both during the reign of her half-sister and after gaining the crown herself, when she has to overcome attempts to dethrone her by disaffected courtiers as well as defeating external rebellions, eventually realising that in order to consolidate her power and retain the throne she needs to remain unmarried.  In the later film Elizabeth is still receiving suitors from across Europe, but at the same time Catholic powers in Europe are plotting to overthrow her: she survives an unsuccessful assassination plot by religious zealots and then unites her subjects by portraying herself as a moderate who will defend English Protestants and Catholics against the fundamentalist practices of the Spanish Inquisition that would follow a successful invasion by the Spanish Armada.

Shekhar Kapur has rejected claims that his film is anti-Catholic; he sees it rather as a conflict between Philip who had no ability to encompass diversity or contradiction and Elizabeth who had a feminine ability to do precisely that.  This perspective compels him to interpret history with a significant degree of artistic licence: in 1585 Elizabeth was 52, although the film shows her still receiving suitors; Fotheringay Castle, where Mary Queen of Scots was beheaded, is situated on the flat plains of Northamptonshire rather than on the banks of a picturesque loch; and Sir Walter Raleigh played only a minor in the defeat of the Spanish Armada.  In Alan Bennett’s memorable phrase this is histrionics rather than history, but it follows in a glorious tradition that we can trace back to Shakespeare.  Did anyone ever expect Richard III to give an accurate picture of pre-Tudor history?

Here's the trailer:

State of Play

These are the notes for the film we screened last night:

State of Play

USA 2009 (128 minutes)
Director: Kevin Macdonald
Starring: Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Robin Wright Penn and Helen Mirren

Awards and Nominations
Won International Award Best Actor (Russell Crowe) at the Australian Film Institute
Two further nominations, including Kevin Macdonald as Best Director

Congressman Stephen Collins (Ben Affleck) is leading an investigation into PointCorp, a private defence contractor whose operations involve the supply of mercenaries, when he hears that that Sonia Baker, a lead researcher in his team has apparently committed suicide on the subway. Reporter Cal McAffrey (Russell Crowe) had been at college with Collins and as he investigates the death with his colleague Della Frye (Rachel McAdams) they begin to wonder whether Sonia Baker had been murdered.

The film is based on the six part TV drama by Paul Abbott first broadcast in 2003 which was set in London in the early days of New Labour. The film transposes the action to contemporary Washington under a Republican Administration, and the need to distill the core story into two hours means that what it loses in terms of character development it gains in terms of pace. Kevin Macdonald said that it was the complex blend of fiction with journalism and politics that had initially attracted him to the story, adding that he wanted to examine the ways that societies learn what is going on in the world and the extent to which people can trust what they read in the papers. He cited a series of key 1970s films – The Parallax View, Three Days of the Condor and especially All The President’s Men - as a major influence on State of Play.

The initial screenplay was by Matthew Michael Carnahan (who previously wrote the screenplay for Lions for Lambs (2007), Robert Redford’s most recent film as director) with further contributions from both Tony Gilray (scriptwriter for all three Bourne films and writer/director of Michael Clayton (2007) and Duplicity (2009)) and Peter Morgan, who wrote the screenplay for The Last King of Scotland (2006), Kevin Macdonald’s debut feature as a director, as well as the screenplays for The Queen (2006) and Frost/Nixon (2008). Despite Paul Abbott’s role as Executive Producer he had no involvement in the screenplay.

Brad Pitt had originally been cast as Cal McAffrey, but he left the production a week before production began as a result of differences over the script which could not be resolved due to the 2007-2008 Screenwriters Strike, and Russell Crowe took on the role at the last minute after a personal approach from Kevin Macdonald. This cast change delayed production and had the knock on effect of Ben Affleck taking over the role of Collins from Edward Norton, who had to leave due to scheduling conflicts. Fortunately Helen Mirren was able to adjust her own filming schedule to retain her key cameo role of Cameron Lynne, the editor of the Washington Globe - although some UK critics wondered why DCI Tennison had suddenly taken up a second career in journalism.