Oh goodness me. Another film inspired by a true story. This one couldn’t be more different from The Revenant in style and sensibility, although I reckon it might also be playing to the Academy Award crowd. Eddie Redmayne plays Einar Wegener, a Danish artist in the 1920s who was the first publicly-known person to undergo gender reassignment when he became Lili Elbe. The Danish Girl focuses on him/her and Gerda, Einar’s wife and fellow artist. The story is…nice, palatable, inoffensive. Transgender packaged up neatly for a heterosexual world. Continue reading
The Revenant (2015)
StandardI have mixed feelings about this movie, a visceral and epic story of survival in the frigid wilds of 19th century South Dakota. Hollywood and ‘inspired by a true story’ make me wary. Usually it means notions of heroism have been cranked up to 11 and drama has been fabricated to keep us 21st century viewers engaged. Add Leonardo DiCaprio and, at nearly three hours long, you know this has Academy Award intentions. But. This is directed by Alejandro Iñárritu, the Mexican director of Babel, 21 Grams, Amores Perros and Birdman, so it will never be ordinary. Continue reading
All is Lost (2013)
StandardAll is Lost is the Robert Redford film where he is the only cast member and there is no dialogue. This is all I knew about this film and it was enough to make me want to watch it. Peripheral anecdotes had seemed positive, along the lines of surprise at how watchable the film was, even without dialogue. Redford plays a sailor who seems to be in his sixties or seventies (Redford is 77 but not surprisingly has fewer lines and grey hairs than you would expect) who is sailing alone on a rather nice yacht. An unexpected accident happens that damages his yacht and from then, we see him struggle from one mishap to another as his situation becomes more serious. Continue reading
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)
Standard“Let me pitch you this idea. We’ll take a movie that was made 20, 30, 40 years ago and we’ll remake it, using pretty much the same story, but with a modern twist. We’ll make the token female role much tougher, although, don’t worry, she’ll still need saving by a guy lots of times. And we’ll bring back some of the original actors so the old fans feel included and we’ll make a joke of the fact that they’re really old. We’ll show everyone how much better CGI is nowadays and we’ll make the story line much more complicated with lots of ‘science’ to explain all the things that don’t make sense. And we’ll fill it with white guys.” Terminator Genisys or Star Wars: The Force Awakens? Continue reading
Love Actually (2003)
StandardLove Actually has become our Christmas Eve tradition. It used to be just the adults watching it while we wrapped presents and ate mince pies but this year it was the whole family (although the youngest looked away during all of the kissing bits, and there were quite a few of these). This is not a standard romantic comedy though, which stands or falls by the credibility of the main couple and their narrative, this is an ensemble piece that shows us love in its many guises. Continue reading
Spectre (2015)
StandardBond films don’t just fail the Bechdel test, they rip it up, stuff it into a sack and bury it in your back garden. The key to enjoying a James Bond film, I think, is to have very low expectations, take delight in the complete lack of logic and hope that the misogyny has been dialed down to negligible. Continue reading
It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
StandardHow have I managed to get through 50 years without seeing this classic Christmas film? I don’t know. The Deniliquin Film Society screened it this month and so, with mince pies clutched in our hands, my whole family and several friends reclined on the sofas at the front of the venue and submitted to a good dose of Frank Capra wit and sentimentality. It’s a cracker of a film and much less saccharine than I was expecting. Continue reading
Mockingjay Part 2 (2015)
StandardI will admit right from the start that I think the recent fashion of splitting the final book of a series into two films is a good thing. Harry Potter was my first experience of the final-book-into-2-films trend. The cynical part of me knows that the purpose is to maximise revenue – from film-goers, through merch and DVD sales and ‘tie-ins’ – but I don’t really care as finally you can see a book brought to life mostly intact. And when it’s a great book, or at least a really good one, there is much jubilation and filmic enjoyment. So yes to The Deathly Hallows and Mockingjay, a ‘meh’ to The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn and an ‘oh my goodness what on earth were they thinking’ to The Hobbit. In fact that’s a great example of where it can all go wrong. If you have to pad a book out with misappropriated and invented characters then maybe you’ve gone too far. Continue reading
The Lobster (2015)
StandardI’m going to write a lot about this film because I loved it. This is the one film I most wanted to see at MIFF but it sold out within the first few days and I missed out. I had high hopes for it as I loved Dogtooth, the previous film from this director, Yorgos Lanthimos. His films are not for everyone. They can be black and bleak and devastating but they are incisive and profoundly moving satires about our self-imposed limitations and fears. Continue reading
Shortbus (2006)
StandardIf you like Hedwig and the Angry Inch, you’re probably going to like this film. If you don’t know what Hedwig and the Angry Inch is, go and watch it as soon as you can. It won’t be everyone’s cup of tea but it is delightfully irreverent and full of pathos and catchy tunes. Shortbus shares the same director, John Cameron Mitchell who also stars in Hedwig but takes a back seat, so to speak, in this one. Other than the credentials of Mitchell, all I knew about Shortbus was that it contained unsimulated sex! Yowza! That was a reason to watch it when the kids were safely in bed. Continue reading
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