Bette Midler plays Rose, a troubled singer who enters a downward spiral of addiction and self-hate. Alan Bates plays her promoter, but not very well.
I found it strangely compelling despite it being overwrought. Bette Midler cries and shouts a lot. The onstage song performances are probably the best aspect of the film, and Midler really puts everything into them.
It’s set in the late 1960s but the period detail is muddling and everything looks very 1979. Worth seeing – if only once.
It’s almost entirely devoid of humour. There are “jokes” at the expense of gay people, fat people and Mexicans. Even worse is a section in which Stiller attempts to cross the US border illegally. This ends up troubling and not remotely amusing.
Stiller and Monaghan are OK and nearly develop some chemistry, but the ugly sentiments of the script deny them any real depth or warmth.
The plot is thus summarised by Google: “Helen Schlegel falls for Paul Wilcox, but is rebuffed. Her sister Margaret becomes friends with his mother, who promises her the family house, Howards End. Unfortunately, after her death, the will disappears and it appears the inheritance will disappear. Until the widower, Henry Wilcox, becomes attracted to Margaret.”
It’s a tale about class and prejudice.
Emma Thompson, Helena Bonham-Carter and Anthony Hopkins are superb as the primary characters, with Thompson in particular delivering an astounding performance. She also acted alongside Hopkins in Remains of the Day (1993), and the two seem made to work together. There are also roles for Vanessa Redgrave, Jemma Redgrave and Prunella Scales.
There are some slightly odd cuts and edits, but these actually work to punctuate the story and provide narrative focus.
Jim Carrey is superb in the main role, but he’s expertly assisted by Paul Giamatti (as Kaufman’s best friend) and Danny DeVito (as Andy’s manager). The film traces Kaufman’s career, but it escapes the trapping of bog-standard biopics by embracing the playful qualities of the comedian’s work.
Courtney Love plays his girlfriend well, but isn’t really given enough lines.
The famous R.E.M. song is the theme tune.
Russell Crowe plays the poor New Jersey man who tries to fight his way out of poverty for the sake of his wife (Renée Zellweger) and children. Paul Giamatti portrays his coach and manager, with empathy and depth.
It’s a compelling saga, and Crowe judges the role perfectly. I like the fact that it’s also a love story in which the love is never in question. As with all Ron Howard films, the storytelling is lucid, with plot and character to the fore.
The boxing scenes are extremely well filmed, with a brutality that makes them difficult to watch.
Gates is taken hostage, live on air, by a viewer who lost his money by following investment advice given on the programme. Julia Roberts, meanwhile, is the show’s producer, speaking into Lee’s ear and trying her best to keep him alive.
Directed by Jodie Foster, this is a hugely entertaining film. Clooney and Roberts are at their best. The film does a good job of sustaining the tension, and the show-within-a-film device works extremely well.
John and Sara meet by chance in a shop in New York and hit it off. Both are involved with someone else, but they cannot ignore their mutual attraction. For reasons not fully explained, Sara won’t give John her full name or number. Instead, she says they can trust it to fate to bring them back together – if that’s what’s “meant to be”. It’s quite a forced premise, but it would have worked better if the film had Meg Ryan, Tom Hanks and a better script. You can imagine Woody Allen doing great things with the same material.
In addition to the lack of sparkle in the script, Serendipity falls down on several levels. In particular, for the pair’s one evening together to have been so life-changing it would have needed to be more remarkable than the rather ordinary set of events we saw them share (shopping, some chat, ice skating). Cusack does his best but Beckinsale seems barely present in certain early scenes. Also, her boyfriend – a silly rock star who has got into “eastern” self-discovery – is a ludicrous figure who she would never have been drawn to in the first place. You know that the film has to make him unappealing so that you’re rooting for her to get together with Cusack, but they could have at least made him credible. Cusack’s fiancée, meanwhile, is too blandly sketched out to prompt any kind of response at all. Again, that must be deliberate – the plot won’t work if we side with her – but it does make for some two-dimensional characterisation.
All that said, the film slowly grew on me as it progressed. I like the way the intricate plotting shows destiny always pushing the pair together without them even realising. I also liked the escalation towards their inevitable reunion. It’s actually quite romantic, if you overlook the shortcomings, and makes for a fairly entertaining 91 minutes.
Four street magicians are brought together by a criminal mastermind to pull off large-scale tricks – such as robbing a bank in another country – as part of their glitzy stage show.
It’s an unusual concept and it just about works, provided that you never question a sequence of highly unlikely scenarios in which the magicians exercise almost god-like powers. You also need to overlook a couple of enormous plot holes.
Mark Ruffalo is appealing as FBI agent Dylan Rhodes, and Mélanie Laurent is likeable as French Interpol agent Alma Dray. Morgan Freeman is a little silly as a professional debunker of tricks. Michael Caine doesn't have enough to do as a dodgy insurance magnate. The magicians themselves – played by Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher and Dave Franco – are a little too slick and self-satisfied. They can behave like superheroes, and we could have been given more of a sense of their motivations.
The film is itself a sort of magic trick and it keeps you guessing to the end. It’s very silly indeed – but fun.
This is the best of the John Hughes teen films, probably because it’s much funnier than the others. But I find it fascinating that even his comedy film has to have some serious “self-discovery” drama. This is played out as Ferris’s best friend Cameron (Alan Ruck) learns to face up to his fears after trashing his father’s sports car.
The fourth-wall device works well – especially since it’s only Ferris, the narrator, who talks to camera.
The music is prominent, as always. You get songs by Yello, Sigue Sigue Sputnik and Big Audio Dynamite. There’s also an especially memorable sequence in which Bueller mines "Twist and Shout" by The Beatles from a carnival float.
Like all Hughes’ films, adults are represented as one-dimensional authority figures to be scorned. And like The Breakfast Club, it mourns the passing of youth as the kids simultaneously want to join the adult world yet view that world with mistrust and contempt.
The oddly named Birdee Pruitt (Sandra Bullock) is humiliated on national TV when her husband reveals he’s having an affair with her best friend (an uncredited Rosanna Arquette). Birdee takes her young daughter Bernice (Mae Whitman) and goes to live with her mother Ramona (Gena Rowland) in her hometown of Smithville, Texas. While trying to come to terms with the changes in her life, she falls for former classmate Justin Matisse (Harry Connick Jr).
It’s extremely uneven. The script is poor and the characters aren’t developed much. That said, there are a couple of good moments – Sandra Bullock does the “throwing up and feeling ill on the bathroom floor” scene fairly well, and the daughter being abandoned by her shallow father felt all too upsettingly plausible.
There are various oddities in the film:
1. Ramona is a taxidermist, so her large house is full of creepy stuffed animals – a quirk that's apparently unrelated to everything else in the story.
2. Ramona is bringing up another abandoned grandson, Travis, who spends all his time dressing up in silly costumes. Why? It's unclear how we're meant to feel about that.
3. Harry Connick Jr seems sweaty in every scene, even when he's not doing anything.
4. Some of the shots are out of focus – even basic technical stuff seems to have been problematic for the filmmakers.
5. Birdee works in a shop developing photos, but messes up most of them. Meanwhile, her boss says that he likes looking at the dodgier images they are given, which he makes copies of and keeps in a special drawer. That makes him seem pervy and weird, but this thread is never followed up.
Rebecca Bloomwood (Isla Fisher) is a New York journalist who is addicted to buying fashionable clothes. She ends up working as a finance columnist for Successful Saving magazine in a role where her lack of knowledge or pretension is welcomed as a refreshing asset. Meanwhile, she also falls in love with her boss (Hugh Dancy, as a sort of fifth-rate Hugh Grant) and tries to avoid a debt collector.
The film has many failings and it’s a bit of a muddled mess in terms of its views on consumerism. It can’t decide whether it’s a critique or a celebration. That said, it’s a little unfair that it was criticised for being tone deaf to the fall-out of the global financial crisis. Is it really the film’s job to reflect the changing economic and political landscape?
Pretty much everything about Confessions of a Shopaholic is clumsy and awkward, and in particular Rebecca’s parents – annoyingly and bizarrely portrayed by John Goodman and Joan Cusack. Kristin Scott Thomas seems out of place, too. The major plus is Isla Fisher, who has a real radiance. Each time she smiles, she lights up the whole film and transforms a mediocre scene into something full of charm and charisma.
Sisters Rose and Norah (Amy Adams and Emily Blunt) go into business clearing up after suicides and murders. This, in turn, leads them to contemplate their own mother’s suicide and how it has affected their lives and social interactions.
Various sub-plots are expertly woven in, involving their father (Alan Arkin) and other relationships. Especially good is Mary Lynn Rajskub as Lynn, who Norah follows and then befriends after she learns that she too is the daughter of a suicide. (Director Christine Jeffs also directed Sylvia, suggesting that female suicide is a recurring theme in her work.)
The writing is subtle and sophisticated. There’s real warmth in the acting. Amy Adams delivers an incredibly sensitive and nuanced performance. You really feel what she’s feeling because she makes it seem so believable.
It’s gently funny, as well. A real gem.
A 10-year-old American girl named Opal Buloni (AnnaSophia Robb) has just moved to a new small town with her preacher father (Jeff Daniels), while trying to accept the loss of her mother. She struggles to make friends and to fit in – until she adopts a stray dog, who changes her life. She, in turn, transforms the lives of the people in the neighbourhood.
It’s surprisingly touching, and not only because of the cute, shaggy dog. The film builds a strong sense of place, and the friends that Opal makes – the librarian (Eva Marie Saint), the ex-con running the pet shop (Dave Matthews) and a blind lady who the local ruffians call a “witch” (Cicely Tyson) – seem real and three-dimensional.
Robb is among the more watchable child actors I have seen. She’s sweet without being annoying, and cheekily funny without seeming contrived. There are no irksome “stage school” mannerisms.
Jeff Daniels is great, too. In some ways it’s a similar role to the one he played in Fly Away Home. He seems to be an expert at playing dads of girls who lost their mothers.
A young girl (Abigail Brealin) quizzes her political consultant father (Ryan Reynolds) about his love life prior to her birth and his subsequent divorce. In flashback, we see three interconnected romance stories – his relationships with his college sweetheart (Elizabeth Banks), a friend she had a brief fling with (Rachel Weisz) and a fellow worker on the Bill Clinton political campaign (Isla Fisher).
Structurally, it’s reminiscent of a Woody Allen film and could even be seen as a sort of homage. In lesser hands it could have been formulaic, but it’s actually very touching. I found it romantic and hugely enjoyable.
The closing theme, Badly Drawn Boy’s ‘The Time of Times’, strikes exactly the right note of reflection and poignancy.
Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan play a couple who agree to investigate a missing girl in a poor part of Boston. They do so in parallel with the police, who are led by Ed Harris and Morgan Freeman.
There are plenty of surprises as the plot twists and turns, but the resolution is satisfying and none of the threads collapse under scrutiny – as tends to happen with lesser storylines.
One criticism: a lot of the dialogue is difficult to make out.
