Four Weddings and a Funeral

Posted on April 9, 2012 by jaycluitt

Richard Curtis and Hugh Grant seem to be a match made in heaven. So far they’ve collaborated on three features (Notting Hill and Love, Actually being the other, equally enjoyable films that, for some reason or another, aren’t on the List), and Grant’s lovably foppish dithering perfectly fits into Curtis’ skill with a subtle put-down or throwaway comment.

Here, Grant plays Charles, terminally lost amidst a sea of acquaintances tying the knot, swinging from one wedding to the next seemingly every weekend. Perpetually late, lost and underprepared, Charles is a creation that, if you don’t know someone just like him, it’s probably you in your circle of friends. And it is this circle, just like in Notting Hill, that makes the film what it is. The supporting characters in any film have the potential to be more layered and interesting than the audience ciphers required as the leads. If need be they can even be people you don’t overly like or agree with, but fortunately here they’re a wonderful bunch, from Kristin Scott Thomas’ heartbreakingly brittle Fiona, John Hannah’s dependable Matthew, Simon Callow’s enigmatic, irascible Gareth and of course James Fleet’s hopelessly wealthy Tom, who trumps Charles for the worst best man come wedding number 3 (sample speech quote: “When Bernard told me he was getting engaged to Lydia, I congratulated him because all his other girlfriends were such complete dogs. Although may I say how delighted we are to have so many of them here today”).

Often hilarious and at times genuinely touching, not the least in Matthew’s moving elegy at the titular funeral, the script is also so much swearier than you remember (“fuck fuckety-fuck”), and deals with all the problems one might encounter at a wedding – drunken bride, boorish guests, horrendous dresses, improbable hats and inappropriate songs (I Will Survive, at a wedding?) as well as the more unusual scenarios, like being sat at a table full of your former partners, or being trapped in the room the happy couple are consummating their vows in.

The only problems occur are the horrendously cliché rain-soaked finale (“Is it still raining? I hadn’t noticed”) and the casting of Andie MacDowell as Charles’ American dream girl, who is only actually desirable the less he gets to know her in my opinion.

Choose film 7/10

Volver

Posted on April 8, 2012 by jaycluitt

Following Pedro Almodovar’s usual routine of showing women discovering unknown strengths when put under extreme situations, Volver sees two sisters, Lola Duenas and Penelope Cruz, finding new leases on life after a number of unexpected deaths to people close to them.

The film is witty and intelligent, focusing largely on conversations rather than action, and showing that good things can happen if you believe and out your mind to them, and that tragedy can lead to becoming closer to others and a better person in yourself, but my main problem with the film – other than unsuccessfully attempting to make Cruz look frumpy with a prosthetic posterior rumoured to be the same one Dustin Hoffman wore in Tootsie– is that there are certain supernatural elements that take you out of the film completely, as the rest seems so grounded in a reality that is only a little exaggerated, and even then only in the amount of cheeks kissed on a daily basis.

Choose film 6/10

Babel

Posted on April 6, 2012 by jaycluitt

The first film to arrive from LoveFilm from the recent additions, Babel has seen my List update shoot me in the foot, as Babel is quite a long film that I’ve seen twice before, once just before starting the List, and that to be in honest doesn’t live up to its potential.

We follow the lives of four groups of people, as their existences are disrupted by a single bullet. First, there’s the poverty-stricken goat herder and his two young, competitive sons who purchase a rifle to protect their flock from jackals. We also have a wealthy American couple (Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, both excellent if trying a little too hard in largely thankless roles) as they bicker their way through a holiday in Morocco. An Hispanic maid is forced to take the two young children she cares for with her and her nephew (Gael Garcia Bernal) to Mexico for her son’s wedding, and the deaf/mute daughter of a successful Japanese businessman struggles to lose her virginity. The multicultural cast is good, especially Rinko Kikuchi as the Japanese girl, who carries most of her story arc single-handed, but there are several scenes that are very difficult to watch – the younger of the goat-herder’s sons masturbating within earshot of his brother, a disillusioned young boy witnesses the chicken he is about to eat slaughtered in front of him and a troubled teen coming on very strongly to her dentist.

The film is entirely humourless, with barely a smile to be seen either onscreen or off, and it lacks the finesse of director Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Amores Perros. That, and the entire thing is thoroughly depressing, with only some interesting scenes – a nightclub seen from a deaf perspective – to pique the interest.

Choose life 6/10

A Man Escaped

Posted on April 3, 2012 by jaycluitt

Francois Leterrier (father of director Louis Leterrier who, other than Unleashed, is really quite terrible, with a track record including The Transporter 1 & 2, The Incredible Hulk and the godawful Clash of the Titans) is Fontaine, an inmate at a Nazi execution prison. Left bloodied and beaten after an escape attempt en route, Fontaine doesn’t hang about before he tries to break out again.

This is an incredibly minimalistic film, with much of it taking place from the confines of Fontaine’s cell, tapping conversations to his neighbour or scraping away at his door with a spoon, and the camera is infatuated with the nuances of his face.

There are some glaring plot holes that could well be just a product of the time – cell checks seem to be very infrequent and less than thorough, and why exactly do the cells have a solid stone shelf, strong enough to support a grown man’s weight and accessible even to the elderly, positioned right next to the only window in the cell.

The film’s finale is at times almost unbearably tense, with no music but for the sound of trains rushing past and a mysterious creaking noise, and fans of the Shawshank Redemption – or any other prison movie for that matter – would do well to seek this out.

Choose film 7/10

Alice

Posted on March 29, 2012 by jaycluitt

Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland is already pretty mental, so when I read that this version by Czechoslovakian director Jan Svankmajer was “memorably bizarre,” I strapped myself in for a rollercoaster of ridiculousness, and I was not left wanting.

A terrifying stuffed rabbit – animated via stop motion – bites through its restraints with eyes bulging like a cartoon, dons gloves, coat and a hat, checks its pocket watch and escaped through the drawer of a writing desk that is only a little bit like a raven. Oh, and the rabbit has ripped a gash in its chest that continually leaks sawdust like an open wound. The young Alice (Kristyna Kohoutova) follows the rabbit along a carpet of set squares and rulers and down an elevator past jars of drawing pins in chutney and various animal skulls with eyeballs.

I won’t ruin all the insanity, though there is plenty here to suffice, but rest assured some of the regular Alice beats are present – the shrinking potion and growing cake, the caterpillar, the Mad Hatter’s tea party and the King and Queen of Heart’s, but the question begs to be asked that, if everything in between the main points has been dramatically changed, why not just make a different story altogether? Plus, it takes far too long for Alice to get to Wonderland (if that’s what they’re still calling it). Imagine if Frodo didn’t leave the Shire until near the end of the Two Towers, or Harry didn’t get to Hogwarts until two hours into the Philosopher’s Stone, yet the books remained the same.

If I’d seen this as a child, chances are I’d still wake up screaming. From the burrowing inflatable sock-worms, the carnivorous animal skeletons reminiscent of Toy Story’s franken-toys, baguettes sprouting nails, living steaks, Alice crying enough to flood a room and a swimming rat hammering a campfire into Alice’s head, this is nightmarish to the highest degree. Also, who the hell is in charge of screwing on the doorknobs in this world, because they’re doing a terrible job.

Choose life 5/10

Mad Max

Posted on March 23, 2012 by jaycluitt

Essentially a glorified B-Movie, Mad Max saw Mel Gibson break out as live wire hero cop Max Rockatansky in a not too distant semi-dystopian Australian future. Other than Gibson, and sometimes including him, the acting and scenes are straight out of a direct-to-DVD movie – see Max sitting bolt upright in bed, a red light illuminating his haunted eyes, or his looking under a sheet at the hospital, so I wonder whether this is memorable more for the creation of the character, a Dirty Harry inspired ‘bronze’ who’ll nab his victims by whatever means, and for the supposedly superior sequel (watch this space).

My main issue is that the character of Max is initially built up as being a kind of supercop brought in when no-one else will do, almost robotic in terms of getting the job done, and for the first scene, in which Max steps in to take out a cop killer and his girl when the rest of the force is lying in a heap of wrecked cars, this seems to fit, but for the next hour we see a completely different character, a family man in need of a break from his high stress job. It’s almost as though Gibson is playing twins. Annoyingly, it’s these more sentimental moments, making up the majority of the film, that prevent MM from being the guy’s night in classic it could well have become, for the scenes of brutality, chases and revenge have real potential.

Another problem is that the film has no real message. The gang of the man Max killed at the start end up tracking Max and his family, yet not because he killed their cohort, simply because they run into each other. It could so very easily have been a vengeance plot, but for reasons unbeknownst to all, this was omitted in favour of fate and coincidence.

Choose life 6/10

I Am Cuba/Memories of Underdevelopment/Lucia

Posted on March 18, 2012 by jaycluitt

There comes a point in the life of every blog when you just have to give in and succumb to what the public wants. It’s a wonder I’ve made it this far, but I’m afraid that time has come. I’ve been inundated with torrents of requests to focus on an area I, and many other blogs, have previously neglected. Yes, that’s right, it’s time for the post devoted to the history of Cuba! Yep, that’s right. There are not one, not two, not four, but three films on the list that all focus on the ‘modern’ history of a country I’ve never really even thought about, let alone cared (apologies to my veritable army of Cuban followers) and surprisingly enough, none of them are any good.

I Am Cuba inconceivably holds the rank of 112^th best film in Empire’s poll, and for the life of me I can’t fathom why. Other than the impressive early tracking scene, where the camera goes underwater in an unbroken shot, there’s little to recommend about this tale if four disconnected stories in Cuba. The acting is largely terrible, and the stories are slow and poorly told, with an at least 10-minute edit on each section still required. Nothing more than well-filmed propaganda, such a high placing on Empire’s list makes me question their tallying methods.

Memories of Underdevelopment is a largely plotless rumination on gender, language and politics in early 60’s Havana, following a wealthy former businessman turned writer as he woos an aspiring actress, only to eventually be taken to court for allegedly abusing her virginity. Dull and overlong even at 97 minutes; it’s so boring that one of the highlights is a lecture.

At 2 hours and 40 minutes long, Lucia is a monumental waste of time. Three women, all conveniently but pointlessly named Lucia, live through three eras in Cuban history – 1895, 1932 and the 1960s. I can’t really explain the importance of these times without external research, as I was bored after 10 minutes and spent the next 150 intermittently looking at my watch and hoping for the film to end, as other than some interestingly lit scenes, nothing coherent really happens in any of the segments.

I Am Cuba: Choose life 3/10

Memories of Underdevelopment: Choose life 2/10

Lucia: Choose life 2/10

Platoon

Posted on March 14, 2012 by jaycluitt

Charlie Sheen is Chris Taylor who, after dropping out of college because he wasn’t learning anything, volunteers to fight in the Vietnam war, amongst recruits including Keith David, Forest Whittaker, Tony Todd, Kevin Dillon and a young Johnny Depp. The platoon is split, with half drawn to Willem Dafoe’s free-thinking, laidback stoner Sergeant Elias, with the rest, including brown-nosing Sergeant O’Neill (John C. McGinley), prefer the ethos of scarred Staff Sergeant Barnes (Tom Berenger), who counts success by how high the bodies are piled, rather than whether peace has been achieved.

There’s an interesting film buried in here somewhere, but it either follows Sheen’s naive, error-realising private or the conflicts between the two sergeants and their unrespected, inexperienced Lieutenant (Desperate Housewives’ Mark Moses). Some gripping moments stand out – a night ambush, and the colour slowly fading back in after a white-out napalm drop – but the rest is underwhelming and littered with trite or cheesy dialogue and 5-cent philosophising: “We did not fight the enemy, we fought ourselves, and the enemy was within us.”

Choose life 6/10

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Posted on March 11, 2012 by jaycluitt

42-year old Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric) lives a life of wealth and excess, flitting between his three young children, a successful career as editor of Elle magazine and the bevy of beauties ready to satisfy his every need. But one day, on a drive with his eldest son, Jean-Do suffers a stroke and becomes a victim of ‘Locked-In Syndrome’, an extremely rare condition leaving him fully conscious but completely paralysed, except for blinking his left eyelid.

Beginning with the blurry, distorted hospital room swimming into focus, much of the film is shot from Bauby’s perspective, including the harrowing experience of having his right eyelid sewn up, seen from the inside. Amalric’s narration is wonderful, encapsulating the frustration of a man used to extreme independence, who now cannot wash, communicate or even move without another’s assistance, and praise must also be given to the supporting cast of implausibly attractive therapists and assistants tasked with acting to a camera for a lot of the film, and Max Von Sydow as Bauby’s elderly, apartment-bound father.

A story of triumph over intense adversary that does well not to dwell on the depressing, director Julian Schnabel amazingly mines humourous streaks – the agony of an immovable fly on the nose – whilst also celebrating the wonders of perseverance, memory and imagination.

Choose film 8/10

All About My Mother

Posted on March 1, 2012 by jaycluitt

Single mother Manuela (Cecilia Roth) lives with her only son Esteban as she works as organ transplant co-ordinator at the hospital. Her son believes his father is dead, but when a tragedy occurs, Manuela heads from Madrid to Barcelona in search of the boy’s father, where she ends up caring for a new brood, made up of Penelope Cruz’s demure nun, Antonia San Juan’s seasoned prostitute and Marisa Paredes’ legendary gay stage actress. The performances are all exquisite from a mostly female cast, and the plot is suitably diverse enough to remain unpredictable throughout, from the events to the tone of the picture, and a vibrant colour scheme adds to the sensual feel.