New Film - 'TO ROME WITH LOVE'

For over 40 years the release of any new Woody Allen film has been an event for me, despite his 'hits' in recent years being outnumbered by those which many regard as failures, although even several of the latter I've liked. Because of a few reviews which I'd heard and read, had high hopes for this. Sorry to say I don't think it reaches my required standard. A shame since this is his first film for quite a few years in which he himself actually appears.

The film consists of a quartet of stories (one of which itself splits into two), running concurrently, each going its own independent way, only joined together by being set in Roma. (Cue the usual touristy, but still ravishing, views.).
Funniest by far is the one in which Allen stars (with the wonderful Judy Davis) though even this strand is of diminishing returns, failing later to deliver the fabulous one-liners with which it begins so promisingly.
The second most interesting one is marred by the presence of Alec Baldwin who, after a promising opening appearance, develops into a muse-like figure, generously ladling out advice concerning romance and life to a new young male acquaintance who is hovering between keeping the affections of his current girl-friend and directing his attentions towards a new one with the arrival of his partner's friend (Ellen Page in fine, entertaining form here as the self-fixated Monica). It would have been better if the Baldwin character had just stopped interrupting an already interesting situation with his bon-mots and saws, which made me progressively more exasperated. (Allen again betrays his weakness for name-dropping high-cultural references - Kierkegaard, Rilke, Bartok, Strindberg, Yeats....... you know, the sort of names which pepper all our workaday conversations!)
    The other two stories are much slighter - the one with Roberto Benigni essentially being a one-joke vignette which long outstays its welcome - and the final bi-furcated strand just left me baffled so that I wanted to re-wind to see again how each thread had started from the situation it was now in. With Penelope Cruz dazzling as a high-class prostitute there were some good moments, but not too many.

I do think the film would have been vastly improved by dropping the Benigni story completely, as well as Alec Baldwin's wise man act. It would have been a much sharper and, probably, funnier film. As it is the film's length is already 15 mins longer than Allen's usual crisp 90 minutes.
An even better idea might have been to have made a half-hour tale of just the Woody Allen episode - but, of course, there'd be no cinema market for that, even though it would undoubtedly have been more effective.

I tend to go into an Allen film with an at-the-ready smile on my face which, more often than not, delivers at least part of the promise. This does too, but not quite as much as I'd been hoping for. 
If I was to be offered a gift of a boxed set of 20 Woody Allen films of my own choice (out of a current 45 to date, I believe), sorry to say that, despite some cracking lines, especially towards the beginning, this film would almost certainly not be on that list.

Verdict, (to be generous because, after all, it is Woody)......6.5/10

New film: 'LAWLESS'

I felt some apprehension about going to see this film. It has been described (quite justifiably) as 'extremely violent'. Normally when such a reputation precedes a film it usually takes it to be something especially significant and/or notorious for me to fork out money to satisfy my curiosity. But in this case it was the starry cast, featuring some of my favourite present-day actors, which I couldn't resist.
But what a disappointment in seeing the chamelionic Gary Oldman given star billing when he has barely two minutes of on-screen time. What happened? Did most of his contribution end up on the cutting-room floor? Very good though he was, his part would hardly have been worth a credit as a cameo appearance!
The always-better-than-good Guy Pearce is first class here too, playing cold, heartless and demented right up to the hilt. A truly scary portrayal.
Tom Hardy, fast gaining a reputation as being a significant positive contribution to every film he appears in, didn't let me down either.
On the other side of the reputation scale, Shia LaBoeuf (here, disconcertingly resembling John Cusack now and again) is often dismissed as bland and uninspiring. To give him his due, I thought in this film he was a bit better than that.

The film itself, I found, reasonable enough, though I did have to look away from the screen a few times, being forewarned about certain scenes and my mentally tricking them off on a list.
This story of fraternal boot-legging and their clash with the corrupt law in the American depression period is sufficently absorbing  - and superbly photographed - though I did feel the family tale and a concurrent running romance were rather over-balanced by the several violent scenes. Those audience members who are more inured against the depiction of violence than I am may not have found it so.

When I see a film, on coming out, I ask myself if I regret having spent money, time and effort in having done so. An opinion of 'maybe/maybe not'  earns, predictably, a mark of 5/10. This is definitely on one side of it, though I do think that others may give it a higher score. However, in terms of the degree of my own personal enjoyment, I award 'LAWLESS'  a fairly comfortable ...............6/10.

New film: 'ANNA KARENINA'

(Better get this posting done quickly as, if I manage to see all the films I want to see in the next few days, then a log-jam on postings could arise. I saw this film on Monday afternoon, then blissfully unaware that when I got back home I was to be engulfed by computer troubles yet again.)

Straight to the point - I found this a splendid, bewitching film.
True, it doesn't have the visually epic scale of, say, David Lean's 'Doctor Zhivago', but the conceit of framing it in a live theatre (with occasional, very effective, 'openings-out') worked magically for me. Comparisons have been made with Baz Luhrmanns 'Moulin Rouge', (another film I loved) and I think they are justified to some extent, though that in no way detracts from this particular interpretation of a singularly weighty novel.
Some who know the original work might be put out by the whimsical manner in which the film opens. (The book is virtually devoid of any humour at all in its relentlessly serious 800+ pages!) But this is an interpretation - not a translation, and, even as an unashamed worshipper of the book, I found this angular perspective wasn't so misplaced as to jar.

    Turning to the cast, I've read and heard that some reviews said that Keira Knightly misses the title character by a mile, and another which said that she got it exactly right. I concur with the latter view. She nails the flighty, adventurous yet guilt-ridden adulterous wife just as I see Anna.
    Jude Law could not be improved on as the cuckolded husband. I don't think he's done better work on film. Here he gets to the essence of the character, with whom we can sympathise as the God-fearing, injured party, yet he also manages to bring a priggishness to his role that is spot-on with how Tolstoy sees him,  resentfully smouldering to perfection. A marvellous portrayal!
     Aaron Taylor-Johson (whose recent roles included the part of John Lennon in 'Nowhere Boy') plays Anna's lover, Vronsky, to my mind the least interesting of the book's half dozen or so main characters. Despite his dandyish portrayal I  found the character on film also quite uninteresting, and one can only wonder what Anna saw in him to risk so much. But that too accords with my reading of Tolstoy's original.

    Of course, a film of a mere two-hours must sacrifice the sweep of the book, but I think the heart and spirit of it has been admirably caught here.
   Top marks go to screenplay-writer Tom Stoppard who accepts the challenge of condensing down this hefty tome, and he rises to the occasion with relish - and pulls it off with honours! 
   It would be invidious to neglect mentioning another source of my joy in this film, viz the music score of Dario Marianelli. Much above the plane of what we are so often served as background to historical dramas, it sounded very good and authentic without being over-distracting.
    All this is not to say that the film is without faults. I think, for instance, director Joe Wright slightly over-plays the frequency of his requirement of background characters to 'freeze' their actions in statuesque poses, though it's not a major point of criticism.

    Not everybody will like this film. Some may well detest it, especially those who have a reverence for its source material. But I'm among those who have the novel as one of their very favourite books of all time, and I found this project worked well-nigh perfectly in purely cinematic terms.
   On the IMDb site, where 1/2 points are not permitted, I've given it a '9' - rare indeed for me.
If I score it half a point lower here that doesn't reflect any dissatisfaction at all - only that I allow myself the luxury of half-points - and out of the nearly 4.500 films I've seen to date, only a very tiny handful have scored that elusive, full 9 (and none have ever earned even a 9.5, let alone a perfect 10).

          So, I'm more than  pleased to award this 'Anna Karenina' an exceptionally worthy.............8.5/10.
  

The computer problems were NOT over - and still aren't.

My last blog was wrong. - P.C. troubles were nowhere near at an end. Just had another three days of continuous living nightmare, with hopelessly inadequate sleep, and out-of-pocket so far by over £130 to date ($210 Am.) - money which I can ill afford. All in all, a situation not to be wished on anyone who's reading this. And my troubles may still not be over yet.
   Long story which I won't bore you with, but got back on Mon evening after seeing 'Anna Karenina', all primed and ready to write a review (which will now be in my next blog, maybe later today or, possibly, tomorrow) when, sitting down at the computer, found it wouldn't connect to the Internet. The modem (router?) was dead. Then the 'fun' really started. Telephone help from two sources (one of them giving a false diagnosis, making me spend £30 needlessly on a new modem when the present one is now working again!) and a chap (very helpful and sympathetic, though at a price, of course) coming round yesterday. But after he'd done all he could I still had to get some on-line help .
     A remote-control technician started yesterday evening at 7.30 - and didn't finish until 11.05. All that time I was watching the cursor zinging here and there across the screen, interrupted by my being asked questions. Totally exhausted when it was all over, and with no guarantee that it was 'cured', I went to bed, Blackso already there, lying awake, impatient and annoyed at having to wait for me to tuck myself in so that  he could sleep across my arm, using me as an 'electric blanket' while snoring loudly just a few inches from my ear. There was little sleep for self. Up at 5.30. Switched on computer. Well, the major problem seems to be over for now but there are still other ones which are present and niggling, threatening to grow in size. But so far the situation is being contained and I can once again try to get back to a semblance of normality, though don't know how long it will last this time.
    To add to the woes, feeling guilty as hell at not having been able to read the recent postings of my blog-land buddies, which I shall try to remedy very soon. Because of all this ruckus, also missed another film which I so much wanted to see - and there's at least another three (including the latest Woody Allen) which I'd have to see in the next 3 or 4 days to catch them before before they disappear too, all of which costs even more money. But it's got to be done. No two ways about it. Oh dear! What a hard life this is. Never a dull moment - though I now do so crave one!

Got to re-learn how to love my p.c.

A most ghastly and stressful couple days is over!
My p.c. was down to operating at the speed of an arthritic snail, due to the amount of free space on the hard drive dipping below 1/2%. It couldn't go on so, at a cost of £43 (69$ American) I got an 'expert' online from the other side (to me) of the Atlantic.
    To cut a long story short, the instructions I got to download programs to identify exactly where the problem was, was no fun at all - involving my sitting yesterday and overnight (got to bed at 1.30 a.m.) at the computer screen for 10 mins short of ten hours, because the screen kept freezing with notices of 'unresponsive script' - +  early this morning a further 6 hours! Was near to collapse with lack of sleep - but we got there!
Now back to 84% free disk space and everything seems hunky-dory. Was worth it in the end, even if I am a bit peeved at having missed my planned cinema visit yesterday to have seen the new film 'Berberian Sound Studio'. Too late now - it's gone!  
 Brought home to me how difficult I'd now find it to live without a computer - something I'd never have admitted before I got this one seven years ago.
   Anyway, the most important thing is that I'm back to interact with my blog-chums.

Recent film release - 'Total Recall'

What a rowdy film! (Should have taken some cotton wool to plug me lugs!) Moments of repose, such as there are, are few and far between. It's 95% chase and fights, with much 'impressive' bullet-dodging by all the human characters, as against the multitude of robots, who are not much inconvenienced by the ammunition-sprays anyway!
The question everyone is asking is why bother to re-make a film which was so successful comparatively recently? - well, at least in 1990. I thought the Arnie/Paul Verhoeven original was pretty good, notwithstanding the robot-like star playing a human being - which one might well describe as 'acting out of character'. But of course, a significant part of today's audience wouldn't even have been born when this early version was released.
    I quite like Colin Farrell - well, physically anyway. For me he filled the main role satisfactorily without being especially memorable. I haven't read the Philip K.Dick short story on which the film's idea is based and expanded - but I believe that this new film is closer to the author's original concept than the earlier one.
  It would be disingenuous if I was to be harsh about this film because, frankly, I did enjoy it, something I wasn't expecting after reading two or three reviews which were decidedly less than enthusiastic. I've just been to the IMDb site and given it a rating which is actually higher than the average of those several hundred who were there before me, and that doesn't happen very often.

True, I can't see this film turning out to be anything like the classic status that the 1990 film merited, but marking it in terms of my own personal enjoyment it gets a respectably solid score of.................7/10.

Recent film release - 'The Three Stooges'

First, a confession. I have never in my life seen anything at all featuring the original trio. I became aware of their name probably in my teens and seen just one or two old photos of them since then. I knew that their humour was slapstick. And that's about it.
I understand that they made short comic films up to the 1950s and for a while they appeared on TV quite a lot, none of which was seen in England.
At the kids' Saturday morning pictures we went to during the mid-late 50s (before we'd got our own TV), the big American names on screen were 'Abbot and Costello', and 'The Bowery Boys' (whatever happened to them?). No Laurel and Hardy even, who were by that time regarded as 'old hat' and out of fashion - their only being deservedly re-appreciated in the 1970s, largely due to the oncoming popularity of video. And there was certainly no 'Three Stooges'.


Anyway, back to this film. I did laugh more than I was expecting to - at least during the first half. But all that head-slapping, hair-pulling, nose-tweaking, eye-poking etc became, over time, repetitive and wearing. Ninety minutes really stretched it to breaking point - though there were still, admittedly, occasional chortles.
The film is pointlessly broken down into three half-hour episodes but as the plot, such as it is, is so thin they could just as well have been run together. I suppose breaking it up does give a semblance of it being more digestible even if wasn't quite so.
The only members of the cast I knew were Sean Hayes (from 'Will & Grace', of course), Jennifer Hudson and Larry David, the latter in particular quite amusing in an unexpected role.
I think it's the kind of film that would go down better sitting in front of the telly with a friend and with a few cans of beer on hand. I can imagine that with a bit of alcoholic assistance it could well be seen as much funnier, even hilarious.

My rating ought to recognise the fact that I did laugh a bit more than expected, and for that reason deserves to be marked a notch above average.

                                      So I give it a .................5.5/10.