What We Did On Our Holiday

This was my sleeper hit of the season. I'd never really watched Outnumbered on TV, but I'd been a keen fan of Drop The Dead Donkey plus the programmes that Andy Hamilton had written for radio.

The casting of the film was intriguing in the mix of the different backgrounds of the key performers, i.e. RSC and Doctor Who, Oscar Nominated Actress plus everything that Billy Connolly has done, but somehow it worked.

It was a black comedy, with definitely touches of Bill Forsyth's work, and iIenjoyed it very much.

Here are my notes:

What We Did On Our Holiday

UK 2014                      95 minutes

Director:                      Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin

Starring:                        Rosamund Pike, David Tennant, Billy Connolly, Ben Miller and Amelia Bullmore

Awards and Nominations

• BAFTA Scotland nominations for Best Actor (David Tennant) and Best Film
• London Critics Circle Film Awards Best Actress Award (Rosamund Pike)
• A further nomination for Best Film

“It’s impossible not to enjoy this big-hearted and sweet-natured British family movie from Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin – effectively a feature-format development of their smash-hit BBC TV comedy, Outnumbered, which pioneered semi-improvised dialogue from the children. It creates a terrifically ambitious (and unexpected) narrative with a tonne of sharp gags.”

Peter Bradshaw

 

Doug (David Tennant) and Abi (Rosamund Pike) take their children on a trip to Scotland to visit Doug’s elderly father for a family party.  Dog and Abi have decided to separate, but have kept the news secret so as to avoid spoiling the party; their children find it difficult to do the same.

Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin created and directed the BBC comedy series Outnumbered which ran from 2007 to 2014. Before this they were best known for the TV comedy Drop the Dead Donkey (1990 to 1998), although as writers their earlier work included sketches for many comedy shows including The Two Ronnies, Smith and Jones, and Not The Nine O’Clock News. 

Rosamund Pike first made her name playing Jane Bennet in Joe Wright’s 2005 film of Pride and Prejudice. She played supporting roles (and received good reviews) in numerous films including An Education (2009), Made in Dagenham (2010) before securing the lead role (and Oscar and Golden Globe nominations) in the acclaimed thriller Gone Girl (2014).  David Tennant’s career has included both stage and screen work: prior to Doctor Who his most high profile film role was in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005) but he had already played leading roles with the RSC. Subsequently he returned to the RSC to play the title roles in Hamlet and Richard II (both filmed) as well as teaming up with Catherine Tate (after their brilliant double act in Doctor Who) in a version of Much Ado About Nothing set in the 1980s.  His subsequent TV work has included two series of Broadchurch (with a third series in production) plus the lead role in Gracepoint, its US remake. He also narrated the spoof documentaries 2012 (about the preparations for the London Olympics) and W1A (about BBC bureaucracy).

 Here's the trailer:

 

 

 

Mr Holmes

It's been a bit of a year, and I'm hopelessly behind in posting my notes for the films we have screened.

Way back at the end of January we showed Mr Holmes: Ian McKellen as an ageing Sherlock Holmes. While I enjoyed both the film and his performance, the whole entity did not work for me. I've read too many of Conan Doyle's stories to accept the basic set up of the film. and the long shadow of the BBC's brilliant Sherlock looms large over any attempt to make any film about Sherlock Holmes.

Here are my notes:

Mr Holmes

UK 2015                      103 minutes

Director:                      Bill Condon

Starring:                        Ian McKellen, Laura Linney, Milo Parker, Hiroyuki Sanada and Hattie Morahan

Awards and Nominations

• Five nominations for Ian McKellen  as Best Actor
• A further four nominations

“Like its eponymous hero, the film drifts in and out of focus as it sifts through its deck of memories, a touch broad here, a little undercooked there, sometimes satirical, more often whimsical. Yet Jeffrey Hatcher’s script neatly ties together the interplay between myth and memory – both unreliable and malleable – while McKellen nurtures his character’s changing nature with affection and grace.”

Mark Kermode

After retiring to the South Downs and taking up bee-keeping an elderly Sherlock Holmes (Ian McKellen) is looked after by his housekeeper Mrs Holmes (Laura Linney) and her young son.  As his health declines and he begins to lose his memory he reviews the two cases that made him retire from his role as a consulting detective.

Despite a long, award-winning career on the national stage that began in 1965 Ian McKellen’s screen rolls were for a long time limited to TV and/or specific British films like Richard III (1995), a screen adaptation of the acclaimed National Theatre production that moved the action of the play to a fascist 1930s. It was not until he secured an Oscar nomination for best actor for his portrayal of James Whale in in Gods and Monsters (1998), Bill Condon’s breakthrough film as director, that his international film career began.  Since then his roles as an Oscar nominated Gandalf in Peter Jackson’s two Tolkien trilogies and Magneto in the ongoing X-Men series have meant that he currently stands at 14 in the top 20 of the highest grossing actors in the USA (based on the box office takings of the films in which he has starred) and well ahead of long-established stars such as Robert de Niro and Matt Damon.

Bill Condon started his film career as a scriptwriter for independent films before becoming a director. His screenplay for Gods and Monsters won him an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay and he subsequently wrote the Oscar nominated screenplay for Chicago (2002) His subsequent films as director have included Kinsey (2004) and the musical Dreamgirls (2006), for which he also wrote the screenplay, as well The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Parts 1 and 2, the final films of the lucrative vampire franchise. He is currently working on a film version of Beauty and the Beast, a film version of the Disney stage musical starring Emma Watson and Dan Stevens - with Ian McKellen as Cogsworth (a character who has been transformed into a pendulum clock).

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.

Sinister Conspiracy

I enjoyed the new Star Wars film but I am not enough of an enthusiast to notice the lack of left-handed Storm Troopers in the most recent instalment.

However as a lifelong left-handed individual I could not fail to notice this:

http://www.anythinglefthanded.co.uk/why-are-stormtroopers-no-longer-left-handed.html#sthash.bFEBpbQ6.dpbs

I've always thought that in history a troop of left-handed swordsmen could have been useful when invading a castle with right-handed spiral staircases.


 

Paddington

This was our last film before Christmas, and so we wanted something that would be a bit of fun.  I knew that the film had been well reviewed, but had not expected to have enjoyed it so much and laughed out loud so many times.

After the film I started thinking about Theorem and Boudu Saved from Drowning. Was Paddington an ursine remake?

Here are my notes:

UK 2014                      95 minutes

Director:                      Paul King

Starring:                        Hugh Bonneville, Sally Hawkins, Julie Walters, Jim Broadbent, Peter Capaldi and Ben Whishaw

Awards and Nominations

• BAFTA nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay
• Nomination for Alexander Korda award for Best British Film
• BTVA nomination for Best Voice Acting Award (Ben Whishaw)
• Winner of Best Comedy at the Empire Awards
• Two for nominations for Best Film

“The jokes are good…, ranging from laugh-out-loud observations about the transformative effects of parenthood (and knowing mentions of “exotic wrestlers”) to slapstick bathroom episodes. Ben Whishaw turns out to be the perfect voice of Paddington …, his lilting diction at once childlike and wise, his delivery naive yet oddly noble. ‘Please look after this bear’, says the tag around Paddington’s neck. Rest assured, they have.”

Mark Kermode

 

After travelling from Peru to London in search of a new home, a polite young bear meets the Brown family at Paddington station. The bear is lost and alone so the Brown family offer him a place to stay – and name him Paddington.

 

Paddington Bear first appeared in print in 1958, and since then he has featured in more than twenty books of stories by Michael Bond. In the 1970s the BBC broadcast a series of short films adapted from Michael Bond’s stories with Michael Hordern memorable as the narrator.  For this film Paul King worked with screenwriter Hamish McColl (who had worked with Rowan Atkinson on Mr Bean’s Holiday (2007) and Johnny English Reborn (2011)) to develop a new story that included characters and elements from Bond’s works.

Paddington was Paul King’s first cinema film as director.  He began his career on TV where he directed 20 episodes of The Mighty Boosh and six episodes of Come Fly with Me, although he has also worked in theatre where he has specialised in comedy. David Heyman, best known as producer of the Harry Potter films, bought the film rights to Paddington Bear in 2007 and worked on the story in consultation with Bond and King since then.  Heyman’s aim with the character of Paddington was to achieve the level of verisimilitude for CGI characters achieved in the Harry Potter and recent Planet of the Apes films, although the film also used an animatronic version as well.

Paddington was the most expensive film ever produced by production company StudioCanal but it was a global success with total earnings of USD 259.6 million. It has now been confirmed that there will be a sequel, with King in discussions to direct it.

 Here is the trailer:

 

 

Star Wars...

I'm old enough to remember the arrival of Star Wars first time round. I can remember some of the reviews that pointed out how much George Lucas had borrowed/ripped off (make your own choice) from classic science fiction, as well as the one that pointed out that doctor Who (in his Tom Baker incarnation) would have simply flown the Tardis into the Death Star and destroyed it in several episodes.

in subsequent years I'd picked up on the way Star Wars borrowed from other film genres, especially Casablanca, but the following article gives a much more comprehensive list:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/star-wars--a-new-hope/movies-influences-george-lucas/

However despite all this I'm still going to see the latest instalment when it arrives in the cinema....

Testament of Youth

I'd seen the brilliant BBC adaptation many years, but this version caught the spirit of the book as well.

Here are my notes:

Testament of Youth

 

UK 2014                      129 minutes

Director:                      James Kent

Starring:                        Alicia Vikander, Kit Harington, Taron Egerton, Dominic West, Emily Watson and Miranda Richardson

 

“A fine and moving film, if heavy-handed in places. The screen version of Testament of Youth gilds the lily of Vera Brittain’s memoir – though fans of the book may well feel it didn’t need so much extra adornment.”

 

Alex von Tunzelmann

Awards and Nominations

·         Best Actress Nomination for Alicia Vikander at the British Independent Film Awards

·         Best Breakthrough British Filmmaker Nomination for James Kent at the London Critics Circle Film Awards

·         Best British Newcomer Nomination for Taron Egerton at the London Film Festival

After winning a place to read English at Oxford University in 1915 Vera Brittain decides to delay her degree so that she can work as a Voluntary Aid Detachment during the First World War. Her fiancé Roland Leighton, close friends Victor Richardson and Geoffrey Thurlow and her brother Edward have all enlisted, and as the war progresses all are killed. After the war Vera Brittain became a pacifist.

Vera Brittain published Testament of Youth in 1933 having previously tried and failed to write about her wartime experiences in fictional form. The book was well received but it failed to achieve the “classic” status of books about wartime experience such as Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves and Memoirs of a Foxhunting Man and Memoirs of an Infantry Officer by Siegfried Sassoon.  Even the fiftieth anniversary of WW1 in the 1960s (where the appearance of Oh What A Lovely War together with the arrival of feminism prompted a re-appraisal of the history of the period) failed to bring it to wider audience.  The book only became widely known in in the 1970s when the feminist publishing house Virago Press republished the book and it became their best-selling title, and then in 1979 the BBC produced a superb five part adaptation with Cheryl Campbell as Vera. 

 James Kent began his career as a director by working on EastEnders before moving on to TV movies and bigger budget series.  His most recent work in both the US and UK has included Agatha Christie: Poirot, Margaret (tracing the final days of Margaret Thatcher in power) and several episodes of the historical drama The White Queen.  Testament of Youth is his first film for cinema.