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:

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:

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:

 

 

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:

 

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:

 

 

Florence Foster Jenkins

It's the beginning of our new season tomorrow. We always try to select a film that will be popular with our target audience so that they will come along and join for the year, and this time we have selected Florence Foster Jenkins.

Over the period that we have been running our club we've screened several earlier films by Stephen Frears including The Queen and Philomena. Our audiences enjoyed both of these very much and both screenings were well attended. Thus all being well we will have a large audience tomorrow.

I wrote my notes earlier today, and here they are:
 

Florence Foster Jenkins

UK 2016                      110 minutes

Director:                      Stephen Frears

Starring:                        Meryl Streep, Hugh Grant, Simon Helberg and Rebecca Ferguson

“As Les Dawson proved with such precision, any fool can play the piano badly, but it takes real skill to play it brilliantly badly. Similarly, Morecambe and Wise knew that the perfect way to mangle “Grieg’s piano concerto by Grieg” was to play “all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order”. Now, to the august list of superbly maladroit comedic musicians we may add Meryl Streep, who takes centre stage in this very likable, frequently hilarious, yet still poignant tragi-comedy from director Stephen Frears.”

 

Mark Kermode

Despite her generally poor singing ability Florence Foster Jenkins (Meryl Streep) aspires to become an opera singer with the help of her husband St. Clair Bayfield (Hugh Grant) and her pianist Cosme McMoon (Simon Helberg).

 Florence Foster Jenkins became a prominent cult figure in New York City musical circles from the 1920s to the 1940s, with eminent musicians as varied as Cole Porter and Enrico Caruso as her fans. She had initially trained as a pianist, but after an injury to her arm put an end to this she decided to use a substantial inheritance to resume her musical career as a singer. Initially she performed small recitals with attendance only by personal invitation and with music critics specifically excluded, but in 1944 she gave a public recital at Carnegie Hall.  The reviews of the performance were scathing and sarcastic, and shortly afterwards she had a heart attack and died.

Given the strange events of Florence Foster Jenkins’ life it is not surprising to find that it has provided inspiration for a number of plays and films. The most widely produced play is Glorious! which initially ran in the West End starring Maureen Lipman and which was nominated for an Olivier Award for Best Comedy; it has since been performed in more than 40 countries worldwide. The award-winning 2015 French Film Marguerite was also loosely based on the life of Florence Foster Jenkins although the main character was called Marguerite Dumont, a tribute to Margaret Dumont who had initially trained as a singer before becoming a comic foil to the Marx Brothers in so many of their films.

Recent films from by Stephen Frears have included The Queen (2006) starring Helen Mirren and Philomena (2013) starring Judi Dench. Both films were artistically successful, especially The Queen with Helen Mirren winning an Oscar and BAFTA among numerous other awards in the title role. Florence Foster Jenkins has only just been released in the US but it is reasonable to assume that it will appear prominently in the nominations during the forthcoming awards season.

 

Here's the trailer:

 

And here is Margaret Dumont:

 

Julie & Julia

I've just completed my notes for this week's screening:

Julie & Julia


USA 2009 123 minutes

Director: Nora Ephron

Starring: Meryl Streep, Amy Adams and Stanley Tucci

Nominations and Awards

• Oscar nomination for Best Actress (Meryl Streep)

• BAFTA nomination for Best Actress (Meryl Streep)

• A further 10 wins and 12 nominations


“...the two lives hang together and the experiences of their heroines placed alongside each other offer revelations about social and cultural change over the past 60 years, from the staid age of the telex and the manual typewriter to the ubiquity of the personal computer and the mobile phone.”

Philip French

In 2002 Julie Powell (Amy Adams), a young writer with an unpleasant day job in New York decides to enjoy herself by cooking every recipe in Mastering the Art of French Cooking (1961) by Julia Childs while blogging to document her progress. In a parallel story set in Paris in the 1950s Julia Childs (Meryl Streep) attends Le Cordon Bleu to learn about French cooking and begins work on a book about this for American housewives. After a mention of her blog in an article in The New York Times Powell is courted by a succession of journalists, literary agents and publishers, culminating in the publication of a best-selling book.

It was Streep who received the majority of the nominations and awards for her acting, but the performance of all three actors in the main roles was central to the success of the film, and these carry echoes of other films the actors have appeared in.  Julie begins to regard Julia as a mother figure and a source of inspiration to her, a relationship that echoes their roles in Doubt (2008) where Streep played the Mother Superior and Amy Adams the young nun.  In a similar happy accident of casting, Stanley Tucci as Julia’s humorous and considerate husband Paul, also played the devoted gay associate of Streep’s fashion magazine editor in The Devil Wears Prada (2006).

In a career of more than 25 years Nora Ephron, initially as scriptwriter and subsequently as director, has been responsible for many successful films from Silkwood (1983) (starring Streep), Heartburn (1986) (once again with Streep) and When Harry Met Sally (1989) to Sleepless in Seattle (1993) and You’ve Got Mail (1998). Several of these films focus on people leading parallel lives, but for Julie & Julia she takes this plot structure to a different level by having them live in different periods and never meet, a structure that Stephen Daldry used for dramatic rather than comic effect in The Hours which followed the lives of three women (played by Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore and Meryl Streep again) whose only link was Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway.

Streep received her sixteenth Oscar nomination for her performance in this film. Her next performance will be as Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady with Phyllida Lloyd, who previously directed Streep in Mamma Mia! (2008), as director and also starring Anthony Head as Geoffrey Howe and Richard E Grant as Michael Heseltine.