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:

 

The Girl on the Train

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

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

Here are my notes:

The Girl On The Train

USA 2016                                111 minutes

Director:                                  Tate Taylor

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

Awards and Nominations

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

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

Mark Kermode

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

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

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

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

 

Here's the trailer:

 

 

Pride

This was our first screening after the New Year: a delayed posting after some unexpected functionality in Windows 10 managed to disable my keyboard for several days. Fortunately I was able to resurrect my old lap top to produce the notes in time.

Pride

 UK 2014                      120 minutes

Director:                      Matthew Warchus

Starring:                        Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton, Dominic West, Paddy Considine and Andrew Scott

 Awards and Nominations

• Golden Globe nomination for Best Picture – Musical or Comedy
• BAFTA Award for Best Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer plus Nominations for Best British Film and for Imelda Staunton as Best Supporting Actress
•  BIFA awards for Best British Independent Film, Best Supporting Actress (Imelda Staunton) and Best Supporting Actress (Andrew Scott) plus four further nominations
• Winner of Queer Palm at Cannes Film Festival
• A further three wins and nine nominations

“OK, so it may not have the toughness of Brassed Off or the fleet-footedness of Billy Elliot, but what it does have is spine-tingling charm by the bucket-load. I laughed, I cried, and frankly I would have raised a clenched fist were both hands not already occupied wiping away the bittersweet tears of joy.”

Mark Kermode

During the miners’ strike in the 1980s a group of gay and lesbian activists decide to raise money to support miners’ families. The National Union of Miners is unwilling to accept the group’s support as it does not want to be openly associated with a gay group, so the activists decide to take their donation directly to a mining village in Wales. There is surprise in the village when the activists arrive, but ultimately the two communities build a strong alliance.

Like Brassed Off, The Full Monty and Billy Elliot the film is set against the context of consequences of Britain’s industrial troubles in the 1980s, but unlike the former three films the story of Pride is based on real events.   Many of the individuals in the large cast of characters were real people, with Imelda Staunton in particular receiving excellent reviews for her portrayal of Hefina Headon, being described by one critic as “part Mother Courage and part Hilda Ogden”.

Matthew Warchus is best known as a stage director: he has worked extensively in both the UK in the UK where he has directed both classic and contemporary plays as well as the musical Matilda.  He has directed several plays at the Old Vic in London, including Speed-the-Plow (a superb satire on Hollywood that starred Kevin Spacey and Jeff Goldblum) as well as Alan Ayckbourn’s The Norman Conquests trilogy. In 2014 it was announced that he would succeed Kevin Spacey as Artistic Director of the Old Vic and that he would be working with the team that produced Matilda to direct a musical version of Groundhog Day as part of his first season.

Boyhood

I still have to see this: I missed our screening, but have bought the DVD as the reviews made it look too good to miss.

Here are my notes:

Boyhood

USA 2014                    165 minutes

Director:                      Richard Linklater

Starring:                        Ellar Coltrane, Patricia Arquette, Lorelei Linklater, Ethan Hawke

 

Awards and Nominations

• Nominated for six Oscars, including Best Film, Director, Original Screenplay, Supporting Actor (Ethan Hawke) and Supporting Actress (Patricia Arquette)
• Won two BAFTAs (Best Film, Director and Supporting Actress) and nominated for Best Supporting Actor and Original Screenplay
• A further 138 wins and 119 nominations

“Like the fabled Jesuit, Richard Linklater has taken the boy and given us the man. In so doing, he's created a film that I love more than I can say. And there is hardly a better, or nobler thing a film can do than inspire love.”

Peter Bradshaw

Over a period of 12 years, from 2002 to 20014 Boyhood depicts the adolescence of Mason Evans, a young boy growing up in Texas.  His parents are divorced: Mason and his sister live with their mother (Patricia Arquette) who subsequently remarries while, initially at least, their father (Ethan Hawke) is just an occasional presence in their lives.

Richard Linklater had long wanted to make a film that told the story of family relationships from the perspective of a boy over an extended period of time and without a completed script: for Boyhood he knew the basic plot points for each character as well as the ending, but otherwise wrote the script for each year’s filming to reflect the changes he saw in each character. He only filmed for three or four days each year, but the production team spent two months in pre-production and one month in post-production each year.  Once he had finished filming in 2013 Linklater named the film 12 Years, but then changed it to Boyhood to avoid any confusion with 12 Years a Slave.

In the 12 year shooting schedule for Boyhood Richard Linklater also directed eight other feature films that ranged from the directly commercial (Bad News Bears (2005)) to literary adaptation (Me and Orson Welles (2008)).  More significantly, he directed Before Sunset (2004) and Before Midnight (2013) completing a trilogy starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy that had begun with Before Sunrise in 1995 and which revisited the same two central characters at different points in their lives, a common theme in many of his films.

Boyhood received its premier at the Sundance Film Festival and it was also entered in the Berlin Film Festival where Richard Linklater won the Silver Bear for Best Director.  On its commercial release the film received almost unanimous acclaim from critics from around the world and Sight & Sound, after polling more than 100 international film critics named it as the best film of 2014. The film also appeared on more “best of” lists for 2014 than any other film: it appeared on 536 lists and was in first place on 189 of them.

Here's the trailer:

 

The Grand Budapest Hotel

This is one of the few films we've shown this year that I actually saw in advance of our screening.  I'd missed it at the cinema and caught up with it on DVD - but it definitely repaid a second look, especially on our big(gish) screen.

Here are my notes:

The Grand Budapest Hotel

USA 2014                    100 minutes

Director:                      Wes Anderson

Starring:                        Ralph Fiennes, Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe and Tony Revolori

Awards and Nominations

• Nominated for nine Oscars, including Best Film, Director and Original Screenplay, and won four Oscars
• Won BAFTAs for Best Original Screenplay, Best Soundtrack, Costumes and Production Design and nominated for six more including Best Film, Director, Leading Actor (Ralph Fiennes), Best Supporting Actor and Original Screenplay
• A further 95 wins and 110 nominations

“In some hands, this convoluted, labyrinthine narrative would end up a sprawling mess, but such is Anderson's storytelling discipline – informed and sustained by the precision of the cinematography and set design – that it never gets away from him. As Gustave skips from hotel lobby to prison camp, from railway carriage to drawing room, the architecture of this picaresque remains entirely lucid."

Andrew Pulver

 In its 1930s glory days the Grand Budapest Hotel, located in the Central European Republic of Zubrowka, is presided over by Gustave H. (Ralph Fiennes), the hotel’s devoted concierge.  Among his many other duties Gustave H. courts a series of elderly women, including Madame D (an almost unrecognisable Tilda Swinton), who flock to the hotel to enjoy his “exceptional service”.  Following the death of Madame D. Gustave H. attends her funeral: he suspects that she has been murdered and learns that she has bequeathed him a valuable painting in her will, but her family want it and her son Dmitri (Adrien Brody) will stop at nothing to get it back.

Wes Anderson wrote the screenplay from an original story he had co-written, but it was inspired by the writings of Stefan Zweig, an Austrian novelist, playwright and journalist.  In the 1920s and 1930s Zweig was one of the most popular writers in the world but now he is best known for his novel Letter from an Unknown Woman, filmed in Hollywood by Max Ophuls in 1948.  Anderson’s inspiration for his story was Zweig’s 1927 novella Twenty Four Hours in the Life of a Woman (filmed in 1952 and remade twice since) as well as his 1939 novel Beware of Pity, filmed in Britain in 1946.

 

The film had its premier at the 2014 Berlin Film Festival where Wes Anderson received the Grand Jury Prize.  On it general release the film received excellent reviews with many critics commenting particularly on the performance of Ralph Fiennes (in a role written originally written for Johnny Depp) as Gustave H.  In a recent profile of Fiennes Anne Billson reviewed his film career to date and with regard to The Grand Budapest Hotel commented:

 

“His Gustave H., in Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel, is probably the most likeable character he has ever played.  Amid the film's colourful assembly of caricatures, his fey but ferociously efficient concierge is full of regretful nuance, provides the film with its moral backbone, and heartbreakingly embodies the values of a lost epoch. It's a lovely performance.”

The Love Punch

After the sublime Casablanca we screened The Love Punch as our last show before Christmas.

It caught the zeitgeist with the corporate raid and the loss of pensions as the raison d'etre for the plot, the cast were excellent and despite it being obvious from the first scene how it was going to end on the whole I enjoyed it.

Here are my notes:

The Love Punch

UK 2013                      94 minutes

Director:                      Joel Hopkins

Starring:                        Pierce Brosnan, Emma Thompson, Timothy Spall, Celia Imrie

“It really is completely absurd, and yet writer-director Hopkins carries it along at a canter... The accomplished cast do their considerable best. Likable fun.”

Peter Bradshaw

Despite their divorce Richard (Pierce Brosnan) and Kate (Emma Thompson) have an amicable relationship.  Richard is about to retire and when he learns that his pension fund has been frozen as his investment company is under investigation for fraud he and Kate decide to recover the money some other way.  With the help of a friendly couple (Timothy Spall and Celia Imrie) they travel to the south of France and plan to steal the diamond that Richard’s employer had given to his girlfriend.

 

Joel Hopkins was born in London but moved to the US to study at University.  He made his name with Jump Tomorrow (2001) which received good reviews on its limited release and was nominated for two British Independent Film Awards: the Douglas Hickox award for debut filmmakers and the Award for Best Screenplay.  He also won the BAFTA Carl Foreman Award for Most Promising Newcomer.

He met Emma Thompson while he was being considered to direct Nanny McPhee (2005) for which she had written the screenplay as well as starring as the title character.  After seeing her in a play with Dustin Hoffman he was inspired to write a film that reflected their interpersonal chemistry: the resulting film Last Chance Harvey (2008) was well received by critics.

Here's the trailer:



Silver Linings Playbook

Another week and another screening: this time it's Silver Linings Playbook - a rom com with a difference.

Once again this is a film that has been on my "want to see" list, so it's good to be able to catch it at last.

Here are my notes:

Silver Linings Playbook

USA 2012                    122 minutes

Director:                      David O Russell

Starring:                        Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert de Niro and Jackie Weaver

“Silver Linings Playbook has a suitably upbeat title and several of the key ingredients for a standard Hollywood "feelgood movie" – an oddball hero returning home to make peace with his family, an encounter with a kookie girl whom he ends up chasing through the festive, snow-flecked streets at Christmas, a couple of public contests (a dance and a football game) on the results of which the future depends.  And indeed the movie does make you feel quite good about humanity as the final credits roll.   But this is a David O Russell movie, his sixth since 1994, and for him feeling good is the reward for completing an emotional assault course.”

Philip French

Awards and Nominations

• Won Oscar for Best Actress (Jennifer Lawrence) plus seven further nominations including Best Film, Director, Actor, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress and Adapted Screenplay
• Won BAFTA for Best Adapted Screenplay and two further nominations (Best Actor and Actress)
• A further 60 wins and 58 nominations

Pat (Bradley Cooper) a former school teacher has just spent eight months in a psychiatric hospital suffering from bi-polar disorder following a violent incident with his now ex-wife.  On his release he meets Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence) a young widow and despite his initial plan for a reconciliation with his ex-wife Tiffany persuades him to be her partner in a community dance competition and their relationship develops.

Throughout his career David O Russell has maintained an oblique approach to the world as well as a strong interest in dysfunctional families.  He made his debut with Spanking the Monkey (1994) a comedy about a middle-class lad who develops an incestuous desire for his attractive invalid mother, and made his commercial breakthrough with Three Kings (1999) a thriller set in the Gulf War.  His previous film was The Fighter, a biopic of the welterweight boxer Micky Ward and his rough Irish-American background, with the film receiving an Oscar nomination for Best Film and with both Christian Bale and Melissa Bale winning Oscars for their supporting roles.

 His most recent film is American Hustle, again starring Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper as well as Christian Bale.  The film was well received and has just received 10 Oscar nominations including ones for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress.

Here's the trailer:

Argo

We'd decided to end our season once the clocks went forward, as the lighter evenings meant that people were less likely to turn up to see a film, even one so carefully chosen as those we try to screen.  However we'd had so many requests to screen Argo and had already booked the Village Hall for last Thursday, so we went ahead with our screening. 

There was a slow trickle of people to start with, but we needed with one of our biggest audiences of the season - and we were all rewarded with an excellent film: we know in advance what the outcome would be, but the film was real edge-of-the-seat stuff.

Here are my notes:

Argo

USA 2012                    120 minutes

Director:                      Ben Affleck

Starring:                        Ben Affleck, Alan Arkin, Christopher Denham, John Goodman, Tate Donovan and Victor Garber

Nominations and Awards

• Won three Oscars (Best Film, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Editing) and nominations for four Oscars
• Won three BAFTAs (Best Film, Best Director and Best Editing) and nominations for four BAFTAs (Best Actor (Ben Affleck), Best Supporting Actor (Alan Arkin), Adapted Screenplay and Best Music)
• A further 54 wins and 53 nominations

“The craft in this film is rare.  It is so easy to manufacture a thriller from chases and gunfire, and so very hard to fine-tune it out of exquisite timing and a plot that’s so clear to us we wonder why it isn’t obvious to the Iranians.  After all, who in their right mind would believe a space opera was being filmed in Iran during the hostage crisis?  Just about everyone, it turns out.  Hooray for Hollywood.”

 

Roger Ebert

In 1979 six American officials managed to escape from the US embassy just as it was being overrun by a pro-Ayatollah mob that held the remaining personnel hostage.  The six escapers hid in the Canadian embassy from where they were exfiltrated by Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck), an unorthodox CIA agent, who claimed to be a Canadian movie producer scouting locations for a sci-fi film called Argo.

 

The film is based on The Master of Disguise by Tony Mendez and magazine article by Joshuah Berman called The Great Escape in which Mendez exposed this startling piece of declassified secret history to the world.  There is no official corroboration to the story, but it is so incredible that it somehow compels belief. 

Ben Affleck first came to attention as an actor in Kevin Smith’s films such as Mallrats (1995) and Chasing Amy (1997).  As a writer he won an Oscar and a Golden Globe for the screenplay of Good Will Hunting (1997) which he co-wrote and starred in with Matt Damon.  Subsequently he starred in a series of films including Armageddon (1998) and Pearl Harbor (2001) which were box office successes despite receiving negative critical reaction.  Subsequent films including Gigli (2003) and Surviving Christmas (2004) were critically panned box office flops and in 2007 Affleck turned to directing, with Argo being his third film as director.  All of his films have been thrillers, with Gone Baby Gone (2007), involving a conspiracy of honourable public servants, and The Town (2010) depicting a heist by likable boson crooks, with Affleck co-wring the screenplays for both films.    

On its release Argo received widespread acclamation from US critics, with Roger Ebert choosing it as his film of the year. The film received seven Oscar nominations, although to the surprise of many Ben Affleck did not receive a nomination as Best Director.  Entertainment Weekly commented on this controversy as follows:

Standing in the Golden Globe pressroom with his directing trophy, Affleck acknowledged that it was frustrating not to get an Oscar nod when many felt he deserved one.  But he's keeping a sense of humor.  "I mean, I also didn't get the acting nomination," he pointed out.  "And no one's saying I got snubbed there!"

Here's the trailer:

Walk the Line

This is from the archive: we screened Walk the Line way back in 2007.

WALK THE LINE

USA 2005, 136 minutes

Director:          James Mangold

Starring:          Joaquim Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon

Awards and Nominations include: 

Oscars

Win                 Reese Witherspoon (Best Actress in a Leading Role)

Nominations    Joaquim Phoenix (Best Actor in a Leading Role)     

                      

Golden Globes

Win                 Reese Witherspoon (Best Actress in a Leading Role – Musical or Comedy)

Win                 Joaquim Phoenix (Best Actor in a Leading Role – Musical or Comedy)

BAFTA

Win                 Reese Witherspoon (Best Performance by Actress in a Leading Role)

Nominations    Joaquim Phoenix (Best Performance by Actor in a Leading Role)   

Total of 28 wins and 24 nominations

Walk the Line follows the life of American country music legend Johnny Cash from his dirt-poor childhood in rural Arkansas up to the high spot of his career in 1968 when he performed a live gig at Folsom Prison California.  The film begins with the preparations for the Folsom Prison gig and the story then unfolds in an extended flashback as Cash fingers a circular saw in the prison workshop: Cash was traumatised by the tragic death of his elder brother as a result of an accident with a circular saw and was made to feel guilty over it by a bitter father who denied him affection, respect and encouragement.

 

The main theme of the story is Cash’s gradual discovery of his talent as an artist, from buying his first guitar whilst in the US air force until he finally takes up a musical career after switching from gospel singing to county music.  However there is also a powerful secondary theme about Cash’s lack of self-esteem and his need to prove himself in order to impress his unyielding father, and it is this that leads to degradation and despair resulting from his drinking, drug-taking and womanising.  Finally Cash is saved by the love of a good woman, June Carter, whose whole life had been spent in the country music business.  Cash and Carter were married in 1968 and remained together for the rest of their lives: they both died in 2003.

 

It was not until film-makers started searching for an “authentic” America in the 1960s that Hollywood started taking country music seriously.  There was country music on the soundtracks of both Bonnie and Clyde and Five Easy Pieces, and in the 1970s Robert Altman’s Nashville used the country music scene to cast a critical eye over the country as it prepared for its bicentennial.  Since then there have been biopics of both Loretta Lynn (Coalminer’s Daughter) and Patsy Kline (Sweet Dreams).  However neither Lynn not Kline ever enjoyed the success or achieved the iconic status of Johnny Cash.

Here's the trailer:

Skyfall

I missed Skyfall at the cinema, so I'm very much looking forward to seeing this: somehow it doesn't seem quite right watching a James Bond film for the first time at home on TV.

Here are my notes:

Skyfall

 UK 2012                      143 minutes

Director:                      Sam Mendes

Starring:                        Daniel Craig, Judi Dench, Javier Bardem, Ralph Fiennes, Ben Whishaw and Naomie Harris

Awards and Nominations

• Won two Oscars (including Best Original Song for Adele) and three Oscar nominations (including Best Original Score)
• Won BAFTAs for Outstanding British Film and Original Music (plus nominations for Javier Bardem and Judi Dench as Best Supporting Actor and Actress)
• A further 25 wins and 51 nominations

“In this 50th year of the James Bond series, with the dismal Quantum of Solace (2008) still in our minds, Skyfall triumphantly reinvents 007 in one of the best Bonds ever. This is a full-blooded, joyous, intelligent celebration of a beloved cultural icon, with Daniel Craig taking full possession of a role he earlier played well in Casino Royale, not so well in Quantum -- although it may not have been entirely his fault. Or is it just that he's growing on me? I don't know what I expected. I don't know what I expected in Bond No. 23, but certainly not an experience this invigorating."

Roger Ebert

When M’s past comes back to haunt her Bond’s loyalty is put to the test.  MI6 itself comes under attack and it becomes Bond’s mission to track down and destroy the threat, no matter how personal the cost to him.

Skyfall is the 23^rd Bond film and many critics hailed it as possibly the best ever, with the only real challenger being the 2006 version of Casino Royale, which followed closely the plot of Fleming’s first novel.  Skyfall has no direct link to Fleming’s work but shares two of the writers who worked on Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace and is true both to his spirit and the series (Skyfall is the name of Bond’s family estate in Scotland).

Sam Mendes made his name with the Oscar winning American Beauty (1999) and followed this with Road to Perdition (2002), Jarhead (2005) and Revolutionary Road (2008), all made in the US.  There was some surprise when it was announced that he would direct Skyfall, but Daniel Craig had worked Mendes in Road to Perdition and had made the initial approach with regard to the Bond film.  Mendes had also worked with Judi Dench early in his career when he had directed her in a stage production of a Chekhove play.  In Skyfall he gives her a role, almost a co-starring role, worthy of her talent which is reflected in the BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actress, although Anne Hathaway won the award for her role in Les Miserables (2012).

It has recently been reported that Sam Mendes has declined an offer to direct the next James Bond film in order to focus on his theatre work, although the film’s producers have not discounted him directing another Bond film at some point in the future.

 Here's the trailer:

 

 

Anna Karenina

This week we'll be screening Anna Karenina, a film which I missed while out on general release, but which was definitely on my "must see" list.

Here are my notes:

Anna Karenina

 UK 2012                      130 minutes

Director:                      Joe Wright

Starring:                        Aaron Johnson, Keira Knightley, Jude Law, Domhnall Gleeson, Matthew MacFadyen

Awards and Nominations

• Nominated for four Oscars (including Cinematography and Soundtrack)
• A further eight wins and 19 nominations (including BAFTA nomination for Best British Film)

 “Wright's movie is a dazzling affair, a highly stylised treatment of a realistic novel, superbly designed by Sarah Greenwood and edited by Melanie Ann Oliver, with rich photography by Seamus McGarvey, sumptuous costumes by Jacqueline Durran and a highly romantic Tchaikovskian score by Dario Marianelli, all previous Wright collaborators.”

Philip French

Anna Karenina (Keira Knighley) is an aristocrat in Russian high society at the end of the nineteenth century.  When she meets the affluent Count Vronsky (Aaron Johnson) she enters into a love affair that has life-changing consequences.

There have been numerous TV and film adaptations of Tolstoy’s novel, with actresses as diverse as Greta Garbo, Vivien Leigh, Jacqueline Bisset and Nicola Pagett all having played the title role, and the resulting adaptations have borne a greater or lesser degree of fidelity to the original story.  Tom Stoppard’s objective, as he worked on his adaptation of the  800 page novel,  was to produce a script that would “deal seriously with the subject of love” as it applies to several pairs of characters: not just the relationship of Anna and Vronsky, but also Anna’s relationship with her husband (Jude Law) as well as the parallel shy relationship between Levin (Domhnall Gleeson)   and Kitty (Alicia Vikander) which Tolstoy himself intended to run as a quiet counterpoint to the passion of Anna’s affair.  Joe Wright filmed the script that Stoppard had written, but having failed to find authentic locations for the Moscow and St Petersberg scenes, decided to set these scenes within a dilapidated 19^th century Russian theatre which became a large-scale image of the upper-class tsarist society amongst which Anna and Vronsky carried on their affair.

After beginning his career in television Joe Wright made his name in the cinema with an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice (2005) which won him a BAFTA for Most Promising Newcomer and which starred Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennet.  He worked with Knightley again on the multi-Oscar nominated Atonement (2007).  The Soloist (2000), the true story of a homeless classically –trained musician, marked a clear change of direction.  His previous project was another change of direction: Hanna is the story of a 16-year-old girl, raised by her father to be the perfect assassin, who is dispatched on a mission across Europe, while being pursued by a ruthless intelligence agent and her operatives.  Following Anna Karenina Joe Wright is about to make his debut as a stage director with a production of Pinero’s Trelawney of the Wells which is about to open in London.

Here's the trailer:

The Best 49 British Films Of All Time

Barry Norman has produced a typically idiosyncratic list of the best 49 British Films of all time.

After reading the list I carried out a quick calculation and realised that I had seen 34 of them.  Many of the others are on one or other of the many mental lists I have of films that I've read about and would like to see at some point - perhaps a long trawl through the DVD section of eBay and some quiet nights in could help me boost my score.

The Daily Telegraph has produced a BAFTA special photo gallery covering all the films:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturepicturegalleries/9848319/Bafta-special-the-49-best-British-films-of-all-time.html

In truth I wouldn't mind seeing any - or all - of them again.  the real challenge would be to nominate the fiftieth film.  Possibly something by John Boorman?  Excalibur?

The Descendants

Our plan was to screen The Descendants, but a mix up over the DVD meant that we had to screen an alternative.  The screening of a film with George Clooney had attracted a certain demographic, so we offered everyone a freee glass of wind and screened The American instead.

We will screen The Descendants at a later date, but here are my notes anyway:

The Descendants

USA 2011                    115minutes

Director:                      Alexander Payne

Starring:                        George Clooney, Amara Miller, Beau Bridges, Judy Greer, Matthew Lillard, Michael Ontkean, Nick Krause, Robert Forster, Shailene Woodley

Awards and Nominations

·         Won Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay and four further nominations including Best Director, Best Film and Best Actor (George Clooney).

·         BAFTA nominations for Best Film, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Actor (George Clooney).

·         A further 47 wins and 66 nominations.

“Nothing gives me more pleasure than to welcome a new film by the gifted writer-director Alexander Payne, especially as The Descendants, his first movie since Sideways eight years ago, is so good, and in so many ways.”

 Philip French

After his wife has been left comatose by an accident while water skiing Matt King (George Clooney), a rich landowner in Hawaii, discovers that she has been having an affair.  The accident forces him to face up to his responsibilities as a (failed) husband and father and he sets off on a scenic tour of his life.

The film received its first screenings at the Telluride, Toronto and New York film festivals and was then scheduled to have a limited release in December 2011.  However the positive critical response from its initial screenings resulted in its release date being brought forward.    The film subsequently appeared in many critics’ lists of the best films of 2011 and won many awards for George Clooney, Alexander Payne (as writer and director) and as Best Film.

 In his four star review of the film Roger Ebert was particularly impressed by George Clooney:

 “And George Clooney? What essence does Payne see in him? I believe it is intelligence. Some actors may not be smart enough to sound convincing; the wrong actor in this role couldn't convince us that he understands the issues involved. Clooney strikes me as manifestly the kind of actor who does. We see him thinking, we share his thoughts, and at the end of The Descendants, we've all come to his conclusions together.”

Alexander Payne made his name as Director/Screenwriter of films such as Election (1999), About Schmidt (2002) and Sideways (2004).  George Clooney lobbied Alexander Payne unsuccessfully for a part in this latter film, being turned down by Payne on the basis that he was too big a star for a role in such an ensemble cast.

	Here's the trailer: