This is my review of Captain Phillips [DVD] [2013].

Paul Greengrass is well-known for his dramatization of real-life events, in this case opting for a mainstream cinema action adventure format which may give scope for more dramatic licence than the constraints of a documentary to cover the topical theme of the threats from Somali pirates.

Their target is an American container ship, ironically loaded in part with food aid for Africa, under the command of the stern, courageous but also humane Captain Phillips, who in the midst of his personal trauma is capable of feeling compassion, even sympathy for the pirates. For, beneath the suspense and menace of the plot, lies the director’s concern to show both sides of the question, understand the pressures which drive the pirates: poverty, resentment against foreign powers like America which they perceive as having taken resources from them, the tribal leaders/corrupt gang masters who force simple former fishermen to seize money through piracy, very little of which they get to keep for themselves. The two main characters are developed most fully: Phillips and the pirate leader Muse, violent when scared but clearly not innately so and capable of seeing the American captain’s decency and natural powers of leadership. He reveals in a poignant moment that all he would really like to do is escape to a “better” life in the States. However, a combination of fear and chewing of the narcotic “khat” kindles the pirates’ unpredictability, while the tight-deadlines and ruthlessness of the US rescuers add to the tension of the brew.

I was a little frustrated to be unable to hear what anyone was saying in much of the dramatic denouement, but overall this is an absorbing film which adds to one’s understanding of a serious problem. It was fascinating to see the procedures followed in the attempt to shake off the pirates, although I was left wondering why all shipping off the Somali coast does not travel in convoys with 24/7 lookouts and powerful guns for defence.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

 

This is my review of Philomena [DVD].

Depressed by the collapse of his high-flying career as a Labour spin doctor, Martin Sixsmith tries to distract himself with a “human interest story”. Philomena Lee wishes to make contact with the son taken from her nearly fifty years ago by Irish nuns, after they had allowed her to bond with him while slaving in the now notorious convent laundries to pay for their “charity” in giving shelter to an unmarried teenage mother.

Excellent as regards quality of script, acting and direction, this film is by turns unbearably sad and hilarious. Admittedly there are some stereotypes: the bigoted nun who feels that since she has kept her vow of chastity, anyone who has succumbed to sex outside marriage must pay the price for ever, or the hard-bitten editor who wants a good story at any price. There has probably been a good deal of dramatic licence in transferring the real characters of Martin Sixsmith and Philomena to the screen, but played by Steve Coogan and Judi Dench their personalities are strongly developed and complex. Coogan plays a man angered by injustice and determined to root it out, won over by the warm, frank and at times surprisingly broad-minded and perceptive Philomena, who does not hold back from commenting on his frequent cynicism, arrogance and dismissive attitude to those he regards as less intelligent. Dench portrays a still deeply religious yet fun-loving woman, whose simplicity and fondness for trashy TV series and happy-ever-after romantic fiction mask shrewd insight and tolerance. She realises the need to forgive others for one’s own sake, but is not above passing up the chance to expose wrongdoing. Greater love has no woman than to think her child might have achieved a better life without her, after worrying for decades that he might be suffering somewhere, perhaps a hopeless tramp. What counts as a “good outcome” when the essential tragedy of separation for decades has been suffered?

Philomena seems too old to have a son born in 1952 when she must still have been in her teens, but this is a minor point, the price to be paid for casting Judi Dench in the role.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars

 

This is my review of The Fifth Estate [DVD].

Since the business of online leaking is in fact quite dry and technically beyond most of us, the film attempts to divert the audience with flashing computer screens of mumbo-jumbo and noisy gatherings of uncertain purpose while flitting frenetically between capitals to show the international scope of Assange's operation.

The "hero" and central figure in terms of viewpoint is not Assange but his former colleague Daniel Domscheit-Berg. Drawing heavily on the latter's recent book, the film traces the course of his gradual alienation from admiration to bitter disenchantment over what is portrayed as Assange's capricious arrogance and narcissistic desire to control everything. The last straw for Domscheit-Berg seems to have been Assange's alleged cavalier attitude to protecting the anonymity and therefore safety of sources, to the extent of lying to obtain his agreement for the release of data to selected newspapers, but this important point is presented in too rushed a way for me to judge the justice of the charge.

I was left unsure what to believe and uneasy as to the truth and fairness of some of the attacks on Assange. For instance, he is portrayed as "borderline autistic" and psychologically damaged by childhood experiences, but how soundly based is this analysis? Although Benedict Cumberbatch puts in a compelling performance as Assange, and heads up a strong cast including David Thelwis, Laura Linney, Stanley Tucci and even Peter Capaldi (as a somewhat miscast Alan Rusbridger since it is impossible not to keep thinking of "The Thick of It" Malcolm Tucker) the actors seemed let down by the disjointed script and at times clumsy direction. It is implausible that so many hush-hush meetings should take place in bars or trains, all the while casting nervous glances at sinister onlookers, or that Assange would enter sensitive data on board a plane only to shout and hurl his PC around on receiving an unwelcome message. The film repeats too often the device of using a vast array of computers, at some times unmanned, at others operated by clones of Assange, to highlight the fact that what was virtually a one-man band could achieve so much. Also, surely Wikileaks must have involved a team of people, even if dominated by Assange?

In the case of Wikileaks and its founder Assange, truth seems more intriguing than fiction so that I realised too late that I would rather have watched a well-made documentary.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

This is my review of Blue Jasmine [DVD] [2013].

Penniless and mentally fragile after the collapse of her luxurious life as the wife of an East Coast businessman, Jasmine (Cate Blanchett) takes refuge in San Francisco with her goodhearted, dark-haired (did I miss something?) sister Ginger, the divorcee who works as a supermarket cashier to support her two young sons and now has to postpone plans for her new boyfriend to move in with her. The odd physical and social disparities between the two sisters are explained by the fact they were both adopted, but the more beautiful and stylish Jeanette who renamed herself Jasmine was favoured and given delusions of grandeur.

Will Jasmine succeed in making a fresh start? Will she ruin her sister's life, which she has already inadvertently damaged? My sympathy for Jasmine was reduced by her failure to learn from adversity. With no sense of irony, she continues to sneer at Ginger's choice of men, her lowly occupation and taste in clothes.

All the actors put in a good performance, with an Oscar nomination very likely for Cate Blanchett. I thought her abrupt switches from pill-popping, boozy craziness to calm, collected calculation were a little unlikely, but this was presumably part of the script.

You may feel that, although the film is tightly plotted and the characters have distinct personalities, they tend to be somewhat stereotyped, and no one really changes or progresses, apart perhaps from Jasmine's step-son Danny. Yet, Woody Allen has not lost his touch for concocting an entertaining brew of comedy and poignancy.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

This is my review of The Great Beauty [DVD] [2013].

The “Great Beauty” is the Rome that tourists too often miss, with sunlight playing on fountains and ancient intricate carvings, the haunting voices of choirs floating from balconies, children playing tag with white-robed nuns in lush green gardens glimpsed through stone archways.

Wealthy writer Jep Gambardella knows Rome well, but his appreciation of its beauty is heightened when, in the middle of his extravagant 65th birthday party he is struck by the decadence and vacuity of his life. Later, in post-dinner balcony drinks, the shallowness and empty pretentiousness of so-called close friends becomes almost intolerable. The death of a long-lost girl friend who apparently always loved him from a distance may also remind him of what might have been.

Made sharply aware that time is running out on his dilettante life, Jep does not do much about it, apart from take up with an ageing stripper with a heart, mocked by his snobbish friends for her name Ramona and choice of a see-through dress on her first outing with him. Great beauty seems inseparable from moments of soft porn. Apart from making a visually stunning film, full of people with striking features, often reduced to “living works of art” in their designer costumes, I am unsure what the director Sorrentino is trying to achieve. I would have liked more of a plot, and although I do not mind a film that is largely about visual design combined with music and a few witty comments, at nearly two-and-a-half hours, this is not quite enough to sustain one’s interest, plus the frenetic partying became oppressive. Watching all this began to seem perhaps more questionable than the privileged self-delusion and emptiness of the existences lived out in the film.

I felt I could not win with this film which is overlong and rambling yet leaves embedded in the mind the same powerful visual images you would get from visiting a gallery of remarkable artworks. Walking out mid-way would leave a sense of having missed out on memorable scenes. Sitting it out may seem like a waste of time: one “gets the message” in the first half, and then there is nowhere else to go. I was a little disappointed that Sorrentino focuses on the idle rich, and does not show us the beauty of ordinary lives, despite their pain and disappointment.

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⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

This is my review of Ain’t Them Bodies Saints [DVD] [2013].

I was drawn by positive reviews to this Texas backwoods tale of Bob and Ruth, two lovers who get caught up in a shoot-out with the local law officers. Bob takes the rap and goes to jail, leaving Ruth to bear and bring up their child, swearing to wait for him. This has all the potential for a drama of doomed love, but despite good performances from Rooney Mara as Ruth, Patrick Wheeler as the soulful sheriff waiting in the wings for Ruth's favours and Keith Carradine as the storekeeper who brought up the young couple "gone to the bad" I was left frustrated and disappointed by the film.

What one professional reviewer has described as "elliptical storytelling and dreamy magic-hour light" struck me as a very confusing presentation of key details and an underlit, wavering filming technique which often makes it well nigh impossible to see what is going on. Too often, an important scene is flashed onto the screen for a fraction of a second, leaving the viewer unsure what has happened – who shot whom or why. Worst of all, Case Affleck's drawl renders Bob incomprehensible half the time. Although clearly handsome, he comes across as monumentally stupid and dull. In order to make us care about Bob and Ruth, the writer/director needed to develop their characters, relationships and complex motives for their crime.

Although the recent "Beyond the Pines" was flawed, it succeeded better in this type of theme.

⭐⭐ 2 Stars

This is my review of Musee Haut Musee Bas – DVD.

In this surrealistic spoof of a day in the life of a museum, we see pretentious artists, self-important or customer-unfriendly staff, and easily manipulated visitors acting out a modern version of “the emperor’s new clothes”. The whole parody is overseen by a demented curator, obsessed with removing any trace of greenery in an ongoing battle between art and nature, which he seems doomed to lose as the vegetation displays a triffid-like aggressiveness.

There are amusing incidents, such as the artist who strangles someone who has been driving him mad, with a view to exhibiting the body in a glass case, shades of Damian Hirst’s cow in formaldehyde. I enjoyed the clever examples of actors unconsciously simulating scenes from famous paintings, although you need to be more erudite than me to recognise them all.

To be fair, I believe the cast includes a number of respected French actors, and perhaps you need to be French to appreciate the humour. Sadly, what could have been sharp and original is marred by a repetitious dialogue which tries to be funny but fails for me in its lack of wry,subtle wit. The film lapses too often into slapstick or banal silliness, so that I never felt caught up in the events or forgot I was watching a film.

⭐⭐ 2 Stars

This is my review of Summer in February [DVD] [2013].

The charismatic leader of a bohemian artists' colony in the lovely Cornish coastal valley of Lamorna, A.J. Munnings was correctly predicted by his admiring friends as destined to become the leading painter of his day. As is often the way in a film, the evidence for this is somewhat lacking to the audience.

When the beautiful Florence Carter-Wood escapes from her match-making father to join the group, it is clear from the outset that her enigmatic allure, which may mask darker traits, will draw both the rakish Munnings and his perhaps unlikely best friend, the gentlemanly local land agent Gilbert Evans. One knows it cannot end well, if only because it is 1913, and the Edwardian idyll must be shattered by the debacle of World War 1.

Since this is based on a true story, one has to accept the plot despite a few major incidents which I found implausible. It is well acted, although I thought that Dominic Cooper was insufficiently larger than life to capture Munnings convincingly. The key aspects of the relationship between two male friends caught in a love triangle with the same woman, and the suffocating conventions of Edwardian morality which even bohemian artists could not completely escape needed to be developed in greater depth.

Despite the stunning scenery and pathos of the situation after the initial rumbustious jollity, I was left feeling underwhelmed but have obtained the novel of the same name on which the film is based, since I suspect that this may be more satisfying in, for instance, revealing more about Munnings as a painter, such as his contempt for modern art which is only hinted at in the film. In an infamous speech recorded shortly before his death he claimed that the work of Cézanne, Matisse and Picasso had "corrupted art".

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

This is my review of Something in the Air [DVD].

Apparently semi-autobiographical for the director Olivier Assayas, and entitled “Après mai” in the original French, this film recaptures the sense of confused anger and scattergun resistance against injustice which persisted after the famous Paris riots of May 1968.

Gilles is in his final year at the lycée with ambitions to be an artist, also caught up in street protests, demonstrating against the police and pasting up militant posters. We gain a vivid sense of being young in the 1960s, the sudden sense of freedom to question and attack the accepted values of society, to travel, drop out, and play with fire – a constant theme in the film – experimenting with drugs at the risk of self-destruction. It shows the uncertainty and fragility of first relationships, which one may come to value when it is too late, or, in the case of the women in the film, even when thought to have been freely chosen, prove to be a trap into some aspect of stereotyped or conventional behaviour

The film is visually very beautiful – the view over the valley where Gilles meets his first girlfriend, the apparently liberated artist he would like to be. It is also very French in portraying the heated philosophical debates and the ambience of the dry, traditional approach to teaching in school, the chickens running along the street past the old stone houses, the leafy courtyard gardens with paint peeling on the sills as the men discuss making films to show soldarity with the workers. It is well-acted and most of the main relationships are quite sensitively developed.

On the downside, apart from being about thirty minutes too long with a clear need to edit some scenes sharply, the storyline is too fragmented and meandering, at times hard to follow. Some of the political discussions to do with say, relationships between students and workers, or between workers in different countries, or the issue of how to use film to promote ideas, are presented in a rather oblique or rushed and unclear way. I also agree with reviewers who have criticised the glossing over of the irony that most of the young people clearly come from unusually wealthy and privileged backgrounds.

I left the film irritated by the sense that potentially fine ingredients had been scrambled into a dog’s breakfast. On further reflection, I am left with a growing sense of the beauty of the film, some highly amusing scenes and the portrayal of the uncertain nature of youth, half-drifiting, half-striving in search of a goal, which may end in success, annihilation or nonentity.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars