Not a self-description (my great discovery of my mid-20s was that I'm not really, i just like Hollywood movies)
It's the name of a bad movie I watched on Monday on the old iplayer. I don't normally review stuff watched at home (I'd just end up getting behind on my reviews again) but I feel like this film is a useful failure from someone trying to do similar things to me.
Those things:
Make London a character like Paris and New York so often are
Be intelligently mainstream and romantic
Look at Londoners as I think of them- in their 20s/30s, mostly from elsewhere originally, not struggling but never going to look right in a Richard Curtis movie
And moreover I suspect it's weaknesses are similar to ones I can see myself making. I'll review it and then pick up on this.
It's got a very weak title sequence with unexciting scenes of that most exciting of dances, Salsa. It then produces its setup of three men pursuing three women all rotating around a salsa club in London. They are shepherded by a ubiquitous and all wise taxi driver played by Adrian lester who somehow manages not to be really annoying, something he deserves great credit for. There's also a poor Greek chorus of misogynistic cabbies which is trite and not worth talking about.
It's a confusing film to watch because I watched it saying to myself that if It wasn't any good I'd turn it off. Then some point after the first act I found myself saying 'this is good' and determined to keep watching it. From then on it was like watching the wheels slowly and safely come off. There was no car crash just the eventual realisation that it's not going to get you there.
So what was good? Catherine McCormack plays a neurotic weirdo who tends graves for those who can't get to them. It's a genuinely interesting idea and I think for the most part she plays her well. Highly highly neurotic but with a warmth and interest in others to go with her vulnerability
They play her off a puppy eyed idiot who steals for not very clear reasons. It's not because he's good at it. It's declared at the end that he's getting off the rush but he doesn't seem to succeed enough for that to be worth it. His one redeeming feature is that he takes care of his dad with alzheimers but he doesn't even seem to do that with much warmth.
And that's a little bit the problem throughout. The girls have very clear flaws in big type: one's neurotic, one's cold and rude and won't let anyone in, one's a massive slut hiding her pain in booze and blokes.
By contrast the flaws with the men are basically that they're not very impressive. One's a thief, one's a failed musician and one I'm not sure but he seems to have had some money now sinking with his ex wife and his decaying house. But the key problem is that they're idiots, obnoxious and apparently all they have to do to change is learn how to salsa.
It seems unequal and this is something I often find to be the case with rom-coms and something i worry might be the case with Advanced Fun.
I'm trying to figure out what Lois's flaws are. She's not very good at letting go, she likes things to be planned. But spontaneity isn't beyond her.
She fails to notice that Mark isn't loving the fun. She doesn't have any feminine intuition. Well certainly not more than Toby.
She's one for distracting from her problems- she thinks she's falling for her flatmate so she goes on a date. She thinks she's lonely so she goes on a quest for fun.
I'm not sure if that's enough. But I do know the flaws have to be the little ones people have, misjudgements, lapses in selfishness not a one liner like in born romantic.
Showing posts with label British film. Show all posts
Showing posts with label British film. Show all posts
Saturday, 5 March 2011
Thursday, 17 February 2011
Brighton Rock
Wanting to like a film is an interesting phenomenon. It's a better thing to do then wanting to dislike a film which is just unnecessary negativism. But it becomes like a solipsistic version of when you recommend a film to others. You're really keen for them to enjoy it and you're not fully concentrating because of that.
I was really keen to like Brighton Rock. Because it was British. Because it felt like an underdog piece when up against the American Oscar run, the King's speech juggernaut and even the star power of Never Let Me Go. Because it just seemed so unfair that the film came out now and will get buried under the competition when it would have done well in October.
So I almost don't know how I feel about it. There's a part of me that thinks it's a fantastic film and yet I have no courage in my conviction.
It is slightly overdirected. But often done so expertly, visual, tense and beautiful.
There are some extraordinary clunkers of dialogue and scenes which fizz or leave you feeling your insides tighten.
There is a clunky Catholicism that never feels anything more than an add on. The sense that Pinky is going to hell and knows it, just trying to put off the inevitable, is palpable. Yet none of the scenes or conversations about catholicism feel authentic. When you compare it to Of Gods and Men it's laughable.
Yet I remember how I felt in the last scene at the dread and sadness I felt at what was about to happen and the true ambiguity I felt about what I think would be better to have felt. And I definitely feel I was watching a film that had me, that had got under my skin and made me really care about a character who doesn't exist.
Rose is the defintion of pathetic. Both definitions. You want to shake her and put her to rights for being so stupid, so blind, so hooked into a false destructive belief in romance (it was an interesting choice of film for Valentine's day) and half the time you're ready to give her up because frankly she deserves it.
And yet you want to protect her, a girl broken down by her mousy downtrodden life and given a chance to be a romantic heroine. Someone who if you can get her out of there she can live. She might one day thrive.
Which is more than can be said for pinky. It's pretty common for gangster flicks to get you routing for a criminal to escape. It's a little more to have you half routing for a boy who seems to pump cold malice through his system.
You hope for his redemption. You hope for his escape. You hope that when his friend claims that he's doing something honourable with Rose he's right. That speaking into a record player that he hates her is the conflicts of a scared and damaged soul. Not just a simple malice.
But you know you're kidding yourself. You're copying Rose in giving him strengths he doesn't possess. And you know that Rose would probably drive you to, if not the hate he feels, but a disgust at her total projection and detachment from the reality he's desperately trying to manage.
They are two really strong performances. Tragic youthful romance made more tragic by the presumption on her part that tragic youthful romance is a magnificent thing rather than pathetic drisly miserable.
So yes I think it's a film which deserves more attention then it's getting. And I hope the people who made it are recognised as talent who should be allowed to do tales of such scope again. And that the distributor have learnt not to try and go toe to toe with the Fox Searchlights of this world.
Two postscripts: I loved the backdrop of fights between mods and rockers. It worked brilliantly.
A lot of the big films of the last year seem to be about young people. This may be the first time I've started to consistently see films about people younger than me.
I was really keen to like Brighton Rock. Because it was British. Because it felt like an underdog piece when up against the American Oscar run, the King's speech juggernaut and even the star power of Never Let Me Go. Because it just seemed so unfair that the film came out now and will get buried under the competition when it would have done well in October.
So I almost don't know how I feel about it. There's a part of me that thinks it's a fantastic film and yet I have no courage in my conviction.
It is slightly overdirected. But often done so expertly, visual, tense and beautiful.
There are some extraordinary clunkers of dialogue and scenes which fizz or leave you feeling your insides tighten.
There is a clunky Catholicism that never feels anything more than an add on. The sense that Pinky is going to hell and knows it, just trying to put off the inevitable, is palpable. Yet none of the scenes or conversations about catholicism feel authentic. When you compare it to Of Gods and Men it's laughable.
Yet I remember how I felt in the last scene at the dread and sadness I felt at what was about to happen and the true ambiguity I felt about what I think would be better to have felt. And I definitely feel I was watching a film that had me, that had got under my skin and made me really care about a character who doesn't exist.
Rose is the defintion of pathetic. Both definitions. You want to shake her and put her to rights for being so stupid, so blind, so hooked into a false destructive belief in romance (it was an interesting choice of film for Valentine's day) and half the time you're ready to give her up because frankly she deserves it.
And yet you want to protect her, a girl broken down by her mousy downtrodden life and given a chance to be a romantic heroine. Someone who if you can get her out of there she can live. She might one day thrive.
Which is more than can be said for pinky. It's pretty common for gangster flicks to get you routing for a criminal to escape. It's a little more to have you half routing for a boy who seems to pump cold malice through his system.
You hope for his redemption. You hope for his escape. You hope that when his friend claims that he's doing something honourable with Rose he's right. That speaking into a record player that he hates her is the conflicts of a scared and damaged soul. Not just a simple malice.
But you know you're kidding yourself. You're copying Rose in giving him strengths he doesn't possess. And you know that Rose would probably drive you to, if not the hate he feels, but a disgust at her total projection and detachment from the reality he's desperately trying to manage.
They are two really strong performances. Tragic youthful romance made more tragic by the presumption on her part that tragic youthful romance is a magnificent thing rather than pathetic drisly miserable.
So yes I think it's a film which deserves more attention then it's getting. And I hope the people who made it are recognised as talent who should be allowed to do tales of such scope again. And that the distributor have learnt not to try and go toe to toe with the Fox Searchlights of this world.
Two postscripts: I loved the backdrop of fights between mods and rockers. It worked brilliantly.
A lot of the big films of the last year seem to be about young people. This may be the first time I've started to consistently see films about people younger than me.
Friday, 28 January 2011
127 Hours
So a new year. A new attempt at blogging. I'm going to try and review films I see in the cinema but not bother with others to make it more manageable.
127 hours made me think of the Social Network. Both of them have brilliant and i think not sufficiently remarked upon performances which capture brilliant young men and the emotional limits that tend to come with Being one of them.
More importantly make fine, watchable films out of not particularly obvious cinematic ideas. As Simon Beaufoy said in the creative screenwriting magazine interview, 'It's one guy, down a canyon, on his own and he doesn't move. Great cinema.'
And it is. From the exhilarating dynamism of the short first act, through the brilliant first day of him trying to figure out what he'a going to do, the interview where he cracks up pretending to be a chatshow host to the extraordinary scene where he takes the knife to his arm, it is great cinema. I can't imagine being half as effective on the small screen.
It is what I think of as experience cinema. Other good examples include United 93 and Hunger (maybe it should be considered a British specialist genre). There is a conscious effort to try and make you understand what the people on screen are going through. I guess it's kind of a highbrow version of horror. The point is that the glory of it is in its viscerality rather than the scope of the tale or the acuteness of the observations of humanity. It tells us as much about ourselves as any of those would.
But it does it in a way that is definitely cinematic. I consider Hunger and United 93 two of the best films of the last decade but I'm not sure I'd think it if I'd seen them on DVD. They look amazing, mesmerising with strong visuals that require the darkness of a room that gives you nothing else to look at.
And I think crucially it requires surround sound. The sound editing is extraordinary particularly at the end. It fools you into thinking you're seeing things you're not and mean even as you look at away, you're still there, feeling, experiencing.
It has a hallucinatory quality and not all of the 2nd act quite gets you over the fact nothing's happening but it's taken you along far enough that you feel the beats with him. You need to dream and think of other place when he does. You get scared by his hallucinations. And when he gets to cutting, you're ready in the same way he is. Yes it's going to be excruciating but it's time for a heave.
That's not to say watching it is equivalent to cutting your arm off but you follow his emotions well. And like him, when he comes free, you feel in shock.
like social network I'm in awe of the people who made it and remember more than I normally do of a film. And yet, it doesn't really really resonate. There's a tiny bit of 'that was interesting'. Hell of a thing to say about two young men who made a billion and a social phenomenon on the one hand and cut off the other hand. But there you go. I don't think i'm alone in thinking it.
127 hours made me think of the Social Network. Both of them have brilliant and i think not sufficiently remarked upon performances which capture brilliant young men and the emotional limits that tend to come with Being one of them.
More importantly make fine, watchable films out of not particularly obvious cinematic ideas. As Simon Beaufoy said in the creative screenwriting magazine interview, 'It's one guy, down a canyon, on his own and he doesn't move. Great cinema.'
And it is. From the exhilarating dynamism of the short first act, through the brilliant first day of him trying to figure out what he'a going to do, the interview where he cracks up pretending to be a chatshow host to the extraordinary scene where he takes the knife to his arm, it is great cinema. I can't imagine being half as effective on the small screen.
It is what I think of as experience cinema. Other good examples include United 93 and Hunger (maybe it should be considered a British specialist genre). There is a conscious effort to try and make you understand what the people on screen are going through. I guess it's kind of a highbrow version of horror. The point is that the glory of it is in its viscerality rather than the scope of the tale or the acuteness of the observations of humanity. It tells us as much about ourselves as any of those would.
But it does it in a way that is definitely cinematic. I consider Hunger and United 93 two of the best films of the last decade but I'm not sure I'd think it if I'd seen them on DVD. They look amazing, mesmerising with strong visuals that require the darkness of a room that gives you nothing else to look at.
And I think crucially it requires surround sound. The sound editing is extraordinary particularly at the end. It fools you into thinking you're seeing things you're not and mean even as you look at away, you're still there, feeling, experiencing.
It has a hallucinatory quality and not all of the 2nd act quite gets you over the fact nothing's happening but it's taken you along far enough that you feel the beats with him. You need to dream and think of other place when he does. You get scared by his hallucinations. And when he gets to cutting, you're ready in the same way he is. Yes it's going to be excruciating but it's time for a heave.
That's not to say watching it is equivalent to cutting your arm off but you follow his emotions well. And like him, when he comes free, you feel in shock.
like social network I'm in awe of the people who made it and remember more than I normally do of a film. And yet, it doesn't really really resonate. There's a tiny bit of 'that was interesting'. Hell of a thing to say about two young men who made a billion and a social phenomenon on the one hand and cut off the other hand. But there you go. I don't think i'm alone in thinking it.
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