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:

 

 

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:

 

Viceroy's House

For the first film of our new season we chose this film: it fulfilled the basic selection criteria in that several of the committee had seen and enjoyed it. The added bonus was the presence in the cast of Hugh Bonneville: and we ended up with the best attended film since Mamma Mia - quite a few years ago.

The audience was thirsty so the bar had healthy takings and the film went down very well.

Here are my notes:

Viceroy’s House

USA 2016        103 minutes

Director:          Gurinder Chadha

Starring:            Hugh Bonneville, Gillian Anderson, Manish Dayal, Huma Qureshi and Michael Gambon

 “…I found myself increasingly gripped by Chadha’s handsome period drama – impressed by the accessibility of its history-primer narrative, entertained by its warm wit and occasionally boisterous charm, and moved by its melodramatic contrivances, which turn out to be more rooted in fact that one might imagine.”

Mark Kermode

In 1947 Lord Louis Mountbatten (Hugh Bonneville) has been given the task of bringing about the transition of India from its role as the jewel in Britain’s imperial crown to an independent state. As he and his wife Edwina (Gillian Anderson) oversee the complex process, clashes between the conflicting political and religious forces are resolved only by the partition of the country into two separate states; as a result of this there is a massive displacement of refugees who have to risk everything to seek sanctuary within their newly defined homelands.

Chadha’s objective for her screenplay was to tell the story of the shared history of India and Pakistan in the style of the British historical epic: thus she placed the Viceroy’s House at the centre of the story. Her plan was for an Upstairs, Downstairs approach that looked at life both in the state rooms and the servant’s quarters; for her it was important that the Indian characters were not marginalised, and thus she ensured that they would have equal screen time with the white members of the cast. Initially she was annoyed that Downton Abbey reached the screens while she was still planning her film, although its subsequent global success popularised her chosen genre and also gave her Hugh Bonneville to play the key role of the Viceroy. Chadha’s own family was affected by the partition of India and she reveals the details of their history in an epilogue to the film.

In addition to its dramatization of the complex politics of partition and its impact on the population the film also uses recent research that revealed Churchill’s responsibility for the chaos that resulted from his promotion of the establishment of a separate Pakistan as a strategic counter-balance to a left-leaning India. From a British perspective this division allowed Britain to retain influence in Karachi, an important port on the coast of the Arabian Sea and the capital of a country strategically located on the borders of Afghanistan, thus making it a vital counter to any threat of Soviet expansion southwards.

Gurinder Chadha was born in Kenya before moving to the UK with her family while still a young child. Her early work explored the lives of Indians living in Britain and drew on her own experience: her first film was the BAFTA nominated Bhaji on the Beach (1993) and she made her name internationally with her second feature, Bend It Like Beckham (2002), which also made a star of Keira Knightley. She followed this with Bride and Prejudice (2004), a Bollywood version of Jane Austen’s novel, which opened at Number One in both the UK and India. Viceroy’s House received its first screening at the Berlin Film Festival and has recently been dubbed into Hindi for release in India.

 Here is the trailer:

 

 

100 Greatest Comedies

At the current bleak moment in history - Brexit and Trump happening in the same year - it's good to be reminded of the better - and funnier - side of life.

Thus this survey of the 100 greatest comedies of all time is to be warmly welcomed:

http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20170821-the-100-greatest-comedies-of-all-time

The list of those consulted gives a broad perspective and it's difficult to argue with the films on the list, although it might be possible to question some of the positioning.

I think the top ten is pretty good and Some Like It Hot is an excellent choice for number one. I've seen and enjoyed many of the films in the top twenty but although I really enjoyed Young Frankenstein I would not have placed it above The Producers.

 

How we select the films we screen

One of the most difficult tasks we face in running a film society is actually deciding the films that we will screen. When we started the society we planned a whole season of "classics" and then abandoned it as our audience told us it was too esoteric for a village society. Even if a film has been commercially and critically successful it might not work if it has "language" in it: thus despite Ben Kingsley in a lead role Sexy Beast did not go down well.

In order to make our decisions now we have developed the idea of a "Highclere Film", i.e. a film that will appeal to our demographic. Thus anything with Dames Judi Dench, Maggie Smith or Helen Mirren will go down well. Likewise most films that are adaptations and/or period drama; on this bas Love and Friendship was a double whammy.

The only other criteria is that someone on the committee has to have seen the film: we all still bear the scars of 35 Shots of Rum: the film won many awards and had been well reviewed, but we were more than 10 minutes into the screening before we realised that we had not switched on the subtitles.

Thus a first step in the selection process is always to read review, and on this basis the following was a salutary warning:


https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2017/jul/03/the-house-film-flop-mariah-carey-will-ferrell-amy-poehler


This is definitely not a film for us to screen.

Lion

It was our AGM last night and we decided to screen Lion. Usually we hold the AGM earlier, but it was just as well that we had to slip things this year to fit in with committee holiday plans as the Village Hall is also used as a polling station. It was also useful that the hall had black out curtains as the sun did not set until well after 9.00pm.

I'd seen Lion at the cinema earlier in the year and had enjoyed it very much. However I found it far more rewarding on a second viewing, noting especially the subtle way in which recollections of his Indian life slow come back into Saroo's mind as he starts searching for his past.

Here are my notes:

Lion

Australia 2016  118 minutes

Director:          Garth Davies

Starring:            Sunny Pawar, Dev Patel, Rooney Mara, David Wenham and Nicole Kidman

Awards and Nominations

• Nominated for six Oscars, including Best Film, Best Supporting Actor (Dev Patel), Best Supporting Actress (Nicole Kidman) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Luke Davies)
• Won BAFTAs for Best Supporting Actor (Dev Patel) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Luke Davies) and three BAFTA nominations including Best Supporting Actress (Nicole Kidman)
• A further 30 wins and 67 nominations  

“There are films against which one’s head puts up a fight until, finally, the heart simply wants what it wants. Lion is one. This sweeping, sun-baked account of a life fatefully divided in childhood between two countries and families risks applying a glib National Geographic gloss to a unique existential crisis, until its sheer blunt force of feeling takes hold and the tear ducts are unlocked. Its opening stages, vividly conveying young Saroo Brierley’s accidental separation from his Indian family and subsequent Australian adoption, are unimprovable, its terror and compromised relief written in the extraordinary gaze of eight-year-old Sunny Pawar.”

Guy Lodge

After falling asleep on a train Saroo (Sunny Pawar), a five year old Indian boy, finds himself lost on the streets of Calcutta, and after being adopted by an Australian couple (Nicole Kidman and David Wenham) he moves to Australia to begin a new life with them. Twenty five years later the adult Saroo (Dev Patel) begins searching for his birth family in India.

The film is based on the book that Saroo Brierley wrote about his adoption and subsequent rediscovery of his birth family. The first half of the films follows the increasingly desperate life of the young Saroo after he finds himself lost in Calcutta while the second half covers the adult Saroo’s search for his family from Australia using Google Earth to locate landmarks that he could remember. This unusual structure to the screenplay departs from the traditional “three acts” of setup, confrontation and resolution, although given the nature of the story it is difficult to see how else it could have worked so well. The critical acclaim for the film reflected this with Luke Davies’s screenplay, amongst its other successes, winning a BAFTA for Best Adapted Screenplay and a nomination for an Oscar in the same category (it lost to Moonlight (2016)).

Salman Rushdie commented on the film’s Oscar nominations: "I would like it to win in every category it’s nominated for and in most of the categories it isn’t nominated for as well”. He admitted that he had wept “unstoppably” while watching it and added that he was "frequently suspicious of Western films set in contemporary India, and so one of the things that most impressed me about Lion was the authenticity and truth and unsparing realism of its Indian first half. Every moment of the little boy’s journey rings true – not an instant of exoticism – and as a result his plight touches us all. Greig Fraser’s cinematography portrays the beauty of the country, both honestly and exquisitely.”

Lion is Garth Davis’s first feature film as director. He started his career as an award-winning director of commercials and short films before moving into television where he directed several episodes of Jane Campion’s Emmy and BAFTA nominated series Top of the Lake (2013). Following the global success of Lion, it was announced that his next film will be a biopic based on the life of Mary Magdalene.

 

Here is the trailer:

 

An additional benefit of us having screened the film is that I'm currently enjoying the box set of Top of the Lake. I  missed it while it was on TV but read the reviews, and after seeing two episodes I can see why it was so well received.

 

 

Cannes Film Festival

It was a shock to realise recently that it was actually ten years ago that I went to the Cannes Film Festival. my former employer was a major sponsor of the festival and the trip was the main prize in a film blogging competition.

It was the first time that I had tried blogging, but once I started I could not stop...

The prize included entry to one of the festival screenings: the event itself was quite amazing, in terms of black ties, long dresses and red carpets, but unfortunately the film we saw was not that good and did not appear in any of the critics' tips for an award.

However there was time t wander around some of the other events and I enjoyed a trip around an exhibition hall in which various films - presumably many of them unmade - were being heavily promoted. Clearly some things never change and in today's paper there was a big article about the current crop of wannabees:

 https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/may/26/tsunambee-clowntergeist-and-haunted-airplane-bad-cannes-films-posters