Stan & Ollie

We screened Stan & Ollie towards the end of last year. The film looks back to the early 1950s and to a world that has long since disappeared, but as the days go by it seems that the world we lived in in 2019 has also now disappeared - hopefully not for good.

I missed the film at the cinema, was delighted to see it finally at our film club and was not in the least disappointed by it.

Stan &Ollie

UK 2018          97 minutes

Director:          Jon S Baird

Starring:            Steve Coogan, John C Reilly, Shirley Henderson, Nina Arianda and Rufus Jones

“Like the comedy greats to whom this winningly warm film pays tribute, Jon S Baird’s affectionate drama balances humour and pathos, laughter and tears. Set in Laurel and Hardy’s twilight years, it’s more melancholy love story than slapstick showbiz reminiscence. … Superb headline performances from Steve Coogan and John C Reilly are matched by equally sparkling supporting turns from Nina Arianda and Shirley Henderson as Stan and Ollie’s combative wives, providing what an astute promoter dubs ‘two double acts for the price of one!’”

Mark Kermode

Awards and Nominations

• Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor (Musical or Comedy) (John C Reilly)
• Three BAFTA nominations including Outstanding British Film and Best Actor (Steve Coogan)
• Seven British Independent Film Award nominations including Best Actor (Steve Coogan) and Best Supporting Actress (Nina Arianda)
• A further three wins and eight nominations

In 1953 Stan Laurel (Steve Coogan) and Oliver Hardy (John C Reilly) undertake a gruelling music hall tour around the UK and Ireland as they struggle to raise finance to make another film. As word of their visit spreads their audiences grow and they begin performing in more prestigious venues, including two weeks at the Lyceum Theatre in London, although ill health meant that the tour was the last time that the pair worked together.

Laurel and Hardy made their first film together in 1921, although both were already well established as film actors in their own right, and over the succeeding 30 years made 106 films together. Their films and the characters they portrayed have remained popular with both the general public and serious film fans to this day as Derek Malcolm, a former film critic of the Guardian who as a teenager actually met them on their tour of the UK, recently admitted:

“As someone who met Orson Welles, Luis Buñuel, John Ford, Satyajit Ray, Howard Hawks, Katharine Hepburn, Charlie Chaplin and many others in the course of a long stint as the Guardian’s film critic, I am often asked who was my favourite movie star. The answer is none of them. My favourites are Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. Mind you, I was in my mid-teens when I met them, which probably led to the kind of adolescent hero worship I might later have abjured.”

The screenplay is by Jeff Pope who had previously co-written the Oscar-nominated screenplay for Philomena (2013) with Steve Coogan. His previous work for television includes screenplays for Mrs Briggs (2012), Lucan (2013) and Cilla (2014). Jon S Baird has had a varied career as director where his work includes Filth (2013), based on the novel by Irvine Welsh, and episodes of the series Babylon (2014) and Vinyl (2016) which included Martin Scorsese and Mick Jagger as executive producers.

Here's the trailer:

Carnage

One of my jobs within our Film Club is to email our members to let them know what we will be screening and to send them copies of my notes to give them some background to the film.

My usual email title is [film title] at Village Hall but this week, as we're screening Carnage, I had to make sure I had inverted commas in the right places:

"Carnage" at the Village Hall

Here are my notes:

Carnage

USA 2011                    79minutes

Director:                      Roman Polanski

Starring:                        Christolph Waltz, Jodie Foster, John C Reilly and Kate Winslet

Awards and Nominations

• Nominated for two Golden Globes (Jodie Foster and Kate Winslet as Best Actress)
• A further four wins and 13 nominations

“Carnage is a film about four people who hate each other and are unable to leave the room. Sometimes they make it far as the door and once or twice to the lift, though on each occasion they are pulled back by the unfinished business of their exquisite loathing and bitter contempt. With this stealthy adaptation of the Yasmina Reza stage play, director Roman Polanski has rustled up a pitch-black farce of the charmless bourgeoisie that is indulgent, actorly and so unbearably tense I found myself gulping for air and praying for release. Hang on to your armrest and break out the scotch. These people are about to go off like Roman candles.”

Xan Brooks

Following an incident in  a playground in which one boy hits another with a stick and knocks out several of his teeth the two sets of parents meet up to discuss the matter.  Over the course of an evening the meeting disintegrates as each set seeks to assign guilt for an event that seems to have arisen as a result of an accident.

The film is based on the play God of Carnage by the French writer Yasmina Reza which won an Olivier Award for Best Play for its London production and a Tony for Best Play in 2009 following its production on Broadway.  Reza worked on the screenplay with Polanski who kept the American setting of the play, although the film was made entirely in Paris because of Polanski’s legal status: the script does not open out the original script and the main action takes place entirely in the apartment of Penelope and Michael Longstreet (Jodie Foster and John C Reilly).

It is interesting that Polanski has cast the film as a US actor couple versus a non-US actor couple, but all four performers are superb: Foster, Waltz and Winslet have all won Oscars and Reilly has been Oscar nominated, and in the course of a relatively short film Polanski allows all four actors to hurtle through a whole gamut of emotions.

At the age of 79 Polanski shows little signs of slowing down.  In the last ten years he has directed The Pianist (2002), Oliver Twist (2005), The Ghost (2010) and Carnage (2011).  Following the release of Carnage to wide critical acclaim he is currently filming Venus in Furs, based on a play by David Ives, in which a young actress tries to convince a director that she’d be perfect for a role in his forthcoming production.

Here is the trailer: