Victoria and Abdul

We knew that we'd need to screen this film even before it was released and the reviews were in: the combination of Judi Dench and period drama meant that we were bound to get a good audience.

I'd seen the film at the cinema and enjoyed it: it was genuinely good but did not have the story or impact of the same team's Philomena. It was a good evening and, as they say, a good time was had by all.

Here are my notes:


Victoria and Abdul

UK 2017          111 minutes

Director:          Stephen Frears

Starring:            Judi Dench, Ali Fazal, Tim Piggott-Smith, Eddie Izzard and Adeel Akhtar

Awards and Nominations

• Nominated for two Oscars (Makeup and Hairstyling, and Costume Design)
• Nominated for Best Actress - Musical or Comedy (Judi Dench) at the Golden Globes
• A further two wins and 10 nominations

“Victoria & Abdul is worth seeing for Dench's magisterial performance and for Frears's light but sure directorial touch. Just don't mistake it for actual history.”

Christopher Orr

Abdul Karim (Ali Fazal) travels from India to participate in Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. When he meets the Queen (Judi Dench) they strike up an unlikely alliance. As their friendship develops the Prince of Wales (Eddie Izzard), Sir Henry Ponsonby (Tim Piggott-Smith) and members of her household do their best to destroy it.

It is possible to see the film as an unofficial sequel to Mrs Brown (1997) in which Dench’s portrayal of the widowed Queen Victoria won her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress and launched her Hollywood career. The main characters of the film were real people, but the opening credits (“based on true events… mostly”) confirm that what follows is a historical fantasy.

The subject of the film is quintessentially English, and the production involves a creative team that developed their careers at the BBC before moving into cinema where they have been involved in a significant number of the best British films over the past few decades while subsequently garnering an international reputation for their work in Hollywood. The screenplay is by Lee Hall whose early work included plays for BBC Radio before making his name with Billy Elliot (2000) and later writing the screenplay for Stephen Spielberg’s War Horse (2011). Stephen Frears’s early TV work included A Day Out (1972), Alan Bennett’s debut play for TV, and My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), made for TV but released cinematically, before he moved to Hollywood where his films included Dangerous Liaisons (1988), The Grifters (1990) and High Fidelity (2000).

Meanwhile Judi Dench followed an illustrious stage career with a numerous TV roles with the BBC before being cast as Queen Victoria in Mrs Brown. She first worked with Stephen Frears in the TV movie Saigon - Year of the Cat (1983) and subsequently starred in his films of Mrs Henderson Presents (2005) and the Oscar nominated Philomena (2015). Since completing this film she has also starred in Murder on the Orient Express (2017) and has recently completed filming Red Joan, with Trevor Nunn as director.

Here's a link to the trailer:

Hidden Figures

Several of the committee had seen this film an were unanimous in scheduling it.

While researching it to produce my notes I discovered how low budget it was, and that for a weekend its takings even overtook those from Rogue One.

Having watched it again I retained my original enthusiasm for a film which manages to cover so many complex issues so well. It's a shame it did not too well at the Oscars.

Here are my notes:

Hidden Figures

USA 2016        127 minutes

Director:          Theodore Melfi

Starring:            Taraji P Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monae, Kevin Costner and Kirsten Dunst

Awards and Nominations

·         Nominated for three Oscars (Best Film, Best Supporting Actress (Octavia Spencer) and Best Adapted Screenplay)

·         Nominated for two Golden Globes including Best Supporting Actress (Octavia Spencer)

·         Nominated for BAFTA for Best Adapted Screenplay

·         Won Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture

·         A further 35 wins and 74 nominations

“The genius of Theodore Melfi’s film is not in the originality of the script – as far as prestige pictures go, its dramatic and comedic beats are easy to anticipate – but in the novelty of the story and the liveliness of the performances.”

Simran Hans

The film tells the hitherto untold story of Katherine Johnson (Taraji P Henson), Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae), three African-American women who worked at NASA and were involved with early stages of the US/USSR space race, culminating in the launch into orbit of the astronaut John Glenn.

The women’s story first came to national attention in Margot Lee Shetterly’s 2016 book Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold story of the Black Women Who Helped Win the Space Race which reached the top of the New York Times Non-Fiction Best Sellers list. The subject had clear cinematic potential but for the purposes of the film the script had to simplify the complex history.

In an interview Shetterly confirmed her understanding of this requirement:

“For better or for worse, there is history, there is the book and then there's the movie. Timelines had to be conflated and [there were] composite characters, and most people [who have seen the movie] have already taken that as the literal fact. ... You might get the indication in the movie that these were the only people doing those jobs, when in reality we know they worked in teams, and those teams had other teams. … Even though Katherine Johnson, in this role, was a hero, there were so many others that were required to do other kinds of tests and checks to make [Glenn's] mission come to fruition. But I understand you can't make a movie with 300 characters. It is simply not possible.”

The production budget of the film was USD 25 million and initially it received only a limited release in the US.  This was subsequently expanded to 2,471 screens and for its nationwide opening weekend the film’s takings exceeded those of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016). Based on its gross US takings the film was the highest grossing Best Picture Nominee at the 2017 Academy Awards as well as being in the top twenty of the most profitable releases of 2016.

Here's a link to the trailer:

 

The Lunchbox

I'm running a bit late with this: we screened The Lunchbox nearly a fortnight ago.

I'd been looking forward to it very much and realy enjoyed it: the Indian scenes were extremely atmospheric but the story itself is timeless: all I hope is that if there is an American remake then they do not give it a great big happy ending.

Here are my notes:

The Lunchbox (Dabba)

India 2014                    104 minutes

Director:                      Ritesh Batra

Starring:                        Irrfan Khan, Nimrat Kaur and Nawazuddin Siddiqui

Awards and Nominations

• Won Golden Rail (Critics Week Viewers Choice) at 2013 Cannes Film Festival, plus nominations for Golden Camera and Critics Week Grand Prize
• Nominated for Best Film at 2013 London Film Festival
• A further 21 wins and 30 nominations

 

“The Lunchbox is perfectly handled and beautifully acted; a quiet storm of banked emotions.”

Xan Brooks, The Guardian

The lunchbox that a young wife has prepared for her husband to bring romance back into their marriage is delivered by mistake to the wrong man, an elderly widower who is facing retirement.  The wife realises her mistake and sends the man a note to which he replies, and then they begin a regular correspondence through this unorthodox means of communication.

Ritesh Batra had started his career by writing and directing a series of short films, but in 2007 began to research the dabbawal, the famous Mumbai lunch delivery men, with the intention of making a documentary about them.  However the stories that they told him about their customers gave him the idea for this film and he started to write the script. 

The film was first screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 2013 where it received a standing ovation and won the Critics Week Viewers Choice Award.  After this Sony Pictures Classics picked up all North American rights for distribution, where it became 2014's highest grossing foreign film.  In India it was released on more than 400 screens and received widespread critical and commercial acclaim (and received many nominations and awards at Asian Film Festivals), but it unexpectedly failed to receive the Indian nomination for the Best Foreign Language Film for the 2014 Oscars.

 

Here's the trailer:

 

 

Thoughts about the Oscars

This is a wonderful essay on the Oscars by Raymond Chandler:

http://memex.naughtons.org/archives/2014/03/02/19707

Even though this is, in Hollywood terms at least, pre-history, I could think of any number of current films that fall into the categories he mentions.

 

Captain Phillips

I'm a bit behind schedule here as we screened this last week and soon I need to get to work on my notes for Once.

Anyway the film was excellent, and even though I knew that Captain Phillips would survive (not only was he played by Tom Hanks but he's also written a book - a bit of a spoiler really) there were whole sections when I kept forgetting to breath.

Here are my notes:

Captain Phillips

USA 2013                    134 minutes

Director:                      Paul Greengrass

Starring:                        Tom Hanks, Barkhad Abdi and Catherine Keener

Awards and Nominations

• Nominated for six Oscars including Best Film, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actor (Barkhad Abdi).
• Won BAFTA for Best Supporting Actor (Barkhad Abdi) and nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay.
• A further 12 wins and 64 nominations.

“[Greengrass] has shown us once again that mainstream cinema can be both visceral and intelligent, grabbing the audience by the throat without ever cutting off the oxygen supply to their brains.”

Mark Kermode

 In 2009 Somali pirates attacked an American container ship, the Maersk Alabama, that Captain Richard Philips (Tom Hanks) is piloting on a 10 day around the Horn of Africa and into bandit country.   With the pirates holding the crew hostage and negotiations going nowhere the US Navy plans to mount a rescue attempt.

The film is based on the book A Captain’s Duty that Richard Phillips wrote after his ordeal, with Sony Pictures quickly optioning the film rights.  Tom Hanks joined the project after reading a draft of the screenplay from Billy Ray with Paul Greengrass subsequently joining as director.  Initially Ron Howard had intended to direct the film with Paul Greengrass scheduled to direct Rush, but the two directors swapped projects with significant rewards for both.  

In his career Paul Greengrass has specialised in the dramatisation of real life events as well as his use of hand-held cameras.  He began his career making films for World in Action before directing The Murder of Stephen Lawrence and Bloody Sunday for TV before making his cinema debut with The Bourne Supremacy (2004) with Matt Damon in the leading role.  He followed this with United 93 (2006) a film about the September 11 hijackings and  after The Bourne -Ultimatum (2007) made Green Zone (2010) about the Iraq War and once again starring Matt Damon.

On its release Captain Phillips received widespread critical acclaim both as a film and for the performances of the main actors.  In The Observer Mark Kermode claims that Tom Hanks gives the performance of his life Tom Hanks and comments on the “electrifying presence” of newcomer Barkhad Abdi.

 

Here's the trailer: