New film: 'ARGO'

I thought this a cracking good film. It got my adrenalin pumping from early on and it doesn't really let-up until the big rescue is over. It's all the more remarkable in achieving that feat in view of the fact that we know beforehand how it will turn out. (The film 'Apollo 13' accomplished the same, and this is quite as successful in that respect as that film was.)

Those of us who lived through and remember the hideously prolonged American hostages incident in Iran in 1980 were never aware of this parallel drama being played out simultaneously. Actually, I don't even recall the lifting of the embargo on details of the affair in 1997. I suppose that by then it was regarded as a curious footnote to history, but the situation was no less harrowing.
  This film concerns the fate of six American embassy workers in Tehran escaping to take refuge in the Canadian embassy after the former premises is invaded and ransacked. By a ruse that is hardly credible it is decided to effect a rescue by flying them out of Iran using a pretence of their being a group of Canadian film-makers who had been looking for a suitable location to film their projected science-fiction production, entitled 'Argo'.
    Ben Affleck, as director as well as principal actor, really knows how to turn the screws. There are a few very brief moments of humour which are, very sensibly, kept in check - and being delivered by the ever-watchable John Goodman as well as the now-veteran Alan Arkin, the appearances of these two only add to the film's pluses.
   Incidentally, over the final credits, when we see photographs of the actual people who had been involved in the escape, the resemblances given to the actors playing them is quite uncanny - something that is usually not the case in dramatic reconstructions.
    This is without doubt the most sustainedly suspenseful film I've seen this year.

Thoroughly recommended, I give 'Argo' a score of 8/10.

2011 film: 'UNTOUCHABLE'

This has been a massive domestic hit in its native France, and it was surely that which had given me high expectations.
    Not only is it the second successive film I've seen which is French but both films concern a chalk-and-cheese friendship between a wheelchair-bound individual and an unlikely helper. I'm not qualified to say which was the 'superior' film (if one can make such an absolutist value-judgment) but I know that I thought that this was better 'entertainment' than 'Rust and Bone' - though I do have reservations in making that claim.

   Out of an array of applicants for the post, a wealthy quadripligic, with high-brow tastes in art and music, chooses a street-wise, clownish, dope-smoking, rather rebellious job-seeker (who's also into 'Earth Wind and Fire' big time!) as his live-in assistant/helper/nurse. Although one can guess, early on, the trajectory arc this film will follow, it ought to be said that it purports to be based on a true story. In fact, at the film's close we actually see, for a few seconds, the real-life couple at the heart of the story.

At the very well-attended showing I went to at 11 o'clock this morning, there were raucous laughs from the audience at the helper character's antics almost from the word 'go'. I didn't think it was that funny. (Maybe the audience was playing up to its own expectations?). In fact I very soon found the character just plain annoying. Truth to tell, it took practically the first half of the film before I warmed to it at all.
   I did find his expoundings on classical music amusing - and his visit to the opera was genuinely very funny - as were some of his gauchely direct and tactless approaches to one or two of the women employed in the man's home. On the other side I was irritated at being shown the man's face so often trying to contain his laughter, as though we were being told "It's okay to laugh at this." I think that particular point was overdone.

I can just about see why it was such a success in France. It might be termed a 'feel-good' feature, and there's nothing wrong with that.
But when I balance up what were for me the good points against its negatives I cannot award 'Untouchable' more than.......................6/10. 

New film: 'RUST AND BONE'

If it were not for 'Oscar talk', I would have avoided this film. Two reasons :-
a) It features animals in a significant part  - even though in this case they are killer whales which, actually, turn out not to be on-screen for long.
b) Bare-knuckle fighting - again, not seen for long on the screen.
I always give a wide berth to films concerning boxing, which I find boring and completely without any attraction at all, even repulsive. Fighting as depicted here where nothing is barred (entirely illegal, naturally) is boxing times two.

She is a trainer of performing killer whales at a sea-life centre - he a bouncer (a single parent to an infant boy) at a night club where they encounter each other. He takes her back to her home after a certain incident, leaving his telephone number. She is involved in a major disastrous event - 'life-changing' is hardly adequate to describe it. (Anyone who has read reviews of this film will probably know what it was.)
    They arrange to meet up again. Friendship develops. Then a physical relationship, which is more functional than romantic. Inevitably, something deeper develops between them. He then suddenly has to leave where he's staying and goes away without telling her where he's gone. But following a further dramatic and shocking event a few minutes from the end of the film the two come together again.  
        Even if I try my best to put aside my prior unfavourable disposition towards the film, I fail to see what all the fuss is about. It strikes me as no more than an efficiently made film, with some necessarily clever filmic tricks revealing Mme Cotillard as having a particular physical condition.
 Assuming the film gets Oscar/ BAFTA nominations I can't imagine either body giving the award for 'Best Picture' to a French film for the second consecutive year (after this year's 'The Artist'). Perhaps she will get recognition for her role, but if she does I think it will be for the part she plays rather than the standard of the acting of it.

No real surprise that I was disappointed overall, but I'd actually been hoping to witness something really 'special' to justify all the buzz and the superlatives being lavished on this film. Reflecting my general downbeat assessment, 'Rust and Bone' earns a score of............3.5/10

    

Re-released film: 'THE SHINING'

This Stanley Kubrick classic has been given a limited cinema re-release here - including, for the first time, an additional 20+ minutes which were cut from the European release in 1980. These deleted scenes had already been part of the American release earlier that same year, but which Kubrick then removed, having been stung by the unenthusiastic or even hostile American reviews. He actually came to prefer his own shorter version, which is also the one I have on video. I'd already seen the film at least three times in the cinema as well as twice or more on video so I did know the edited version quite well. The longer film has, I believe already been shown on TV here (probably late at night) but this was the first time I myself have seen it in this cut.
The restored scenes mainly come near the beginning of the story, relating to the Torrance family's background and a reference to their son Danny's being accidentally(?) injured by his father. There are also a couple of later short scenes involving Scatman Crothers' chief cook character's failed efforts to make contact with the snowbound hotel.
    I thought that the restored minutes, although not crucial, did assist in making a bit more sense to the tale and generally helped rather than hindered the depiction of the family's isolation in the hotel's inaccessible location. 
     On first seeing 'The Shining' 32 years ago I recall feeling some irritation about the film not following the book, with very significant departures in places. I'd only recently discovered Stephen King and I had just started devouring his works avidly. He could do no wrong for me at that time and for a few years still to come. But around that time I didn't appreciate, to the extent that I do now, the acceptability of a film-maker to alter a story from the printed page. I had been expecting a faithful and literal transposition from book to screen. That had been my major disappointment. But despite this major reservation, I was still quite overwhelmed by Kubrick's style and technique, and even now it leaves me full of admiration. But then Kubrick is probably my favourite director of all. However, one thing I would say, is that, as with another favourite director, Hitchcock, I sometimes find that there are wonderful 'set-pieces', but they add up to rather more than the film as a whole. In other words, the feeling of overall satisfaction with the film after it is over can be less than the memory of the depiction of certain key moments during its progress. This is actually less applicable to 'The Shining' than to certain of his other films such as his following 'Full Metal Jacket' and his final work, 'Eyes Wide Shut'.

When it comes to giving the film a score, I was tempted to duck out of it this time as it's difficult to judge a film anew which was already known well from an 'incomplete' version. But if a gun was to be depressed against my temple I'd feel compelled to offer a rating of..........................8/10


Btw: I did find myself paying more attention to background features this time round, looking for extra significances - pictures on walls, furniture arrangements and decor, labels on boxes and tins of food etc, but didn't find anything noteworthy.
This same cinema was also showing the new film 'Room 237' (referring to the mysterious hotel room to which Danny is inexorably drawn), a documentary about some whacky theories and observations about 'The Shining', with a number of over-zealous fans of the film mentioning arcane allusions they believe Kubrick had put into his film, playing with his audience. Would dearly love to have seen it, but the timing and further expense put it beyond me. Really must try to catch it when it comes on TV.
    

2011 film:'THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO'

(No, not a re-make en francais of the 1952 Gregory Peck/Ava Gardner version of the Ernest Hemingway novel).

Likeable, unassuming, family drama.
Set in Marseilles where local trade union boss at shipyard is made redundant, along with nineteen of his fellow-workers. As the propelling event of the film happens towards its start it doesn't give much away to say that shortly after his redundancy he and his wife become victims (with two visitors) of a somewhat violent masked robbery at their home. Soon, by one of those co-incidences that rather stretches credulity, he just happens to witness a thread that enables him to uncover the identity of one the perpetrators, which turns out to be someone with whom he'd been already acquainted. The main body of the film concerns the couple's attempts to come to terms with the criminal, the latter's family and his motivation - as well as the attitude of the their own children.
     It's a modest affair and all the better for it, though I personally could have done with an ending a bit more hard-edged than the touchy-feely one we are served up with. But, on the whole, it's a satisfying and good production.

   I've seen a few films recently which have featured one or two 'hotties' of whom I wasn't aware or knew only slightly - and here comes along another one. A cuddly 'Daddy-hottie' - who, I find, is actually seven years younger than I am! Never mind, I still find him beautiful. He is Jean-Pierre Daroussin, playing the male lead.

He really presses all the right buttons for me.

Btw: The misleading title refers to the projected holiday which the main pair were due to have but, due to the robbery, have to cancel. A different English title might have been helpful.

As I say, a good film, to which I award a score of......................6.5.

New film: 'THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER'

Wish I'd done homework before venturing out to see this one. As it was, I was swayed not just by generally favourable reviews and its getting surprisingly good British box office, but nearly half the voters on IMDb have given it a scarcely credible 10/10 - and the average to date is 8.5. "Why?" is the question!
     My jaw dropped when, within the first few minutes, I was assailed by a succession of some of my biggest film turn-offs - teenage angst, American high school lippy pupils, including the 'regulation' bully-figures, and an (American) football game, though the latter was mercifully short. Add to the mix a flamboyant gay character, so keen to define himself, practically exclusively, by his own sexuality, inter-teenage rivalries in 'romance' - and I'm just bored by talking any further about it. It did pick up a little for me after the first half hour, but that's not saying much.
    The most recognisable name to most people would be Emma Watson (Harry Potter's friend, Hermione) though there is also Paul Rudd - as well as Joan Cusack in a very minor role.
It's one of those films that most make me feel my age. I just cannot relate to anything here. Clearly, a lot of people think it to be a wonderful film. They are welcome to that opinion. They may well be right, though I can't for the life of me see why. Anyway, I'm more than three times as old as the target audience so I accept it wasn't made for the likes of me. My mistake in going.

   I give 'Perks' a miserable, very personal rating of..............3/10

'SKYFALL'

I don't think anyone who sees this would deny that this is one of the better of the series.
In the obligatory, pre-credit chase sequence I was initially a bit put out by the filmic cliches - fruit and veg from street market stalls being crashed into, with the produce flying all over the place (it is Istanbul, after all!), a gun having run out of bullets being thrown away with a mini-second of irritation....But these are minor nags in the overall scheme of the film.
  Positive aspects of this film for me was that the arch-villain (played with mincing, deliciously-campy malevolence by the excellent Javier Bardem) as well as Judi Dench's 'M', are given far more screen time than either of these roles have had in any previous Bond film, 'M''s considerably so. The new 'Q' was a brave and unexpected move too, and a good one. Also, I don't think a previous film of this series has been set so much in this country - London (a large part of it being underground - I say no more!) and in the remote Scottish highlands.  (I now don't give away any further 'spoilers'!)
       Actually, there's not much more to say. I found it quite exciting without it gripping me tautly. There's no doubt that after Dalton's Bond (who wasn't exactly bad) followed by Brosnan (who was actually pretty good), the series since Daniel Craig took over has been given a much needed shot in the arm - and all three of his films now have been of a superior standard (though some may disagree about 'Q of S').
      Yes, for a spy thriller this one is distinctly above par - though maybe it's just me in feeling more a detached observer of the on-screen antics rather than a sense of being really involved in them.
     I'd better not say more as many will be going to see this, surely the most eagerly anticipated film of 2012, and I don't want to risk marring anyone's enjoyment by my own personal opinions.

I give 'Skyfall' a.............7/10 - and would not remotely suggest that anyone should avoid seeing it. Go!