Sandra Bullock plays Leigh Anne, Oher’s new “mother”, and delivers one of her strongest performances in a complex role.
Only one criticism: I misheard some of the intro and it sent me down the wrong path. I spent the whole film expecting Oher to fatally injure another player, which wasn’t where it was heading at all. That’s my fault, but I do think the opening moments could have been clearer.
Mark Ruffalo plays the cop investigating. Robert Downey Jr is a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle. And Jake Gyllenhaal is Robert Graysmith, a cartoonist at the same paper who becomes obsessed with the case and intent on solving it, no matter what.
Ruffalo and Gyllenhaal are such sensitive performers that they build huge depth into their characters. Downey Jr. is less impressive. Nothing wrong with him as such, but he makes less of an impact.
I like the way the film charts the passing years, and keeps the narrative on the ongoing quest to resolve the case rather than veering off too much into the personal soap operas of the main characters' changing lives.
It’s an emotional story, extremely well-handled. Firth and Kidman are both excellent. You can really believe they are in love, and the scene in which they first meet, on a train journey, exudes warmth and charm. I wanted more of that. You can also believe how damaged Firth is.
The younger and older depictions of the key characters work well, and the time transitions are elegantly managed.
The ending is unexpectedly satisfying.
Mark Ruffalo plays Robert Bilott, who tried to sue the chemical manufacturing corporation DuPont for their contamination of a small town in West Virginia.
Anne Hathaway portrays his wife, Sarah, and Tim Robbins plays his boss Tom. Ruffalo is extremely convincing and hugely sympathetic in the main role. You really feel every emotion he expresses.
Alex Jennings plays Bennett. Maggie Smith is superb in the lead role, giving a suitably cantankerous and unlikable yet intelligent performance. I found the gimmick of two Alan Bennetts (as writer Alan talks to regular-guy Alan) an unwieldy distraction. Introducing the real Alan Bennett in a tricksy cameo at the end was further self-indulgent silliness.
To the film's credit it doesn't sentimentalise the original material (there's plenty about toilet matters), and it reveals psychological depths that a lesser director might have ignored in favour of lazy farce. It also looks at middle-class guilt and how people behave when confronted by difficult situations that puncture the veneer of social normality.
I was pleased to see Rising Damp's Frances de la Tour as one of the neighbours.
Karel Roden plays a man who returns to his village after a spell in prison, only to find that it no longer exists.
Beyond the history lesson, I didn’t get a great deal out of the film. Not entirely sure why, as the performances were mostly strong. Perhaps I was just in the wrong frame of mind to witness more senseless killing and cruelty.
Julia Roberts stars as an American who leaves her husband, finds a boyfriend, leaves her boyfriend and then travels to Italy, India and Indonesia to “discover” herself. There’s no explanation of why she was unhappy in either relationship, nor of how she can afford these open-ended wanderings.
She comes across as a pampered, fairly self-obsessed individual. That would probably be fine – the film isn’t obliged to create a character you like or identify with – but for the shallow presentation of her journey to enlightenment. There are long, lingering shots that dwell on the foods she eats and the landscapes she passes through. The film fetishes food in a way that’s genuinely intrusive on the narrative. Italians are beautiful people eating beautiful food and speaking a beautiful language, the film suggests – in a woefully simplistic and two-dimensional manner. But if the character loves Italy so much, why does she move on to India?
Most annoyingly of all, she’s forced to make a big decision at the end of the film and she makes the wrong one. It takes a man with no teeth to point out what she should stick with another man (Javier Bardem). So the film shows us that she still lacks wisdom and appears to need men to guide her. So much for being enlightened.
The story is fascinating and Matt Damon is watchable in the lead role. What spoils it is the deliberately “cheesy” tone achieved by Soderbergh, who applies irritatingly chirpy and “comedic” music to nearly every scene. I’ve never known music to be more poorly judged or matched to a film. It only underscores that the story and situations we see unfolding aren’t particularly funny. The Informant! (why the exclamation mark?) could have been far more compelling as a straightforward biographical drama.
The same corny stylings ruined Ocean's Eleven, too, so I’ve come to conclude that this director’s work simply isn’t for me.
Matt Damon plays the team captain and Morgan Freeman plays Mandela.
While Freeman’s impersonation of the president may be accurate, there’s something about this old man playing another old man that ends up being ponderous and extremely dull. It could be his slow speaking manner or the rather flat way the scenes are directed, but the first half feels slow and laboured. Also, Matt Damon’s character is hardly developed at all. He’s highly watchable, but he doesn’t have much to get behind in terms of the role. His girlfriend and family are even sketchier. Also, the racial stuff seems simplistically handled.
On the plus side, things improve a lot once the actual rugby begins. The final is exciting and dynamic in a way that little else in the film is.
It’s an extremely tense drama that’s all the more affecting because these events actually happened.
Josh Brolin plays Beck Weathers, who survives but loses his hands and nose to frostbite. Robin Wright plays his wife back home, hoping to coordinate a helicopter rescue attempt.
Keira Knightley plays Rob Hall’s wife and does the “terrified spouse stuck at home” part better than most, probably because the role is fully developed and she’s given a character to explore.
Also excellent is Emily Watson as Helen Wilton, the base camp manager. Her experience of the escalating horror conveys just what it must have been like to witness this nightmare and be powerless to stop it.
The film doesn’t moralise or pass judgement on why the deaths occurred. Instead, it pieces together a narrative that lets you make up your own mind.
The film focuses on the relationship between the two men, who undertake a sort of psychological boxing match as Frost tries to get Nixon to acknowledge his wrong-doing and law-breaking during the events that famously became known as Watergate.
It has character and depth, with both men emerging as more complex figures than they first appear to be.
One major anachronism is a character using the phrase “comfort zone”, which – according to the internet, was not coined until 2009.
The only other flaw is that Frost’s girlfriend (played by Rebecca Hall) has very little to do. But maybe that’s intended as a comment on gender roles in what was clearly still meant to be a men’s world.
The author is played by Robert Redford and his friend (a wheezing former alcoholic) is played by Nick Nolte. Meanwhile, Emma Thompson plays Bryson’s wife left at home.
It’s gently funny and wise, with some poignancy and melancholy. It’s probably intended for the older viewer.
Redford is always easy to like, although his character doesn’t really develop. Nolte steals the show, with a performance that grows in depth as the film progresses.
The scenery looks good and it makes you want to go walking, even if their bags never seemed to be heavy enough.
Based on a true story, this is a gripping and desperately sad drama starring Sean Penn. He plays Samuel Bicke, a furniture salesman who is suffering at work and in his personal life and who – amid a mental breakdown – decides to kill the president.
Penn is absolutely superb, making you feel his utter isolation and his heartbreaking descent through a series of personal tragedies. He is estranged from his wife (Naomi Watts) and children, is bullied by professional colleagues and sees his plans to set up his own business rejected.
Nixon himself is cleverly woven into the story through the use of archive footage shown on news broadcasts.
When Bicke finally undertakes his assassination attempt we really feel for him. It’s not that you’re rooting for him to succeed – history already tells us that he will fail – but you yearn for him to be happier and to find peace.
Their romance is shown in flashback during Gloria’s final days after she comes to stay with her young lover’s mother (Julie Walters) and his family while dying of stomach cancer.
It’s a poignant love story that examines youth, age, celebrity, sexuality and other themes with a lightness of touch.
It’s shot in a deliberately dream-like way, with the Hollywood sunshine deliberately contrasting with the “grim oop north” English light.
Taron Egerton is endearing as the well-meaning, socially awkward anti-hero, who became an unlikely star despite – or because of – the fact that he came last.
Hugh Jackman is his coach, a surprisingly wholesome alcoholic, and Jo Hartley and Keith Allen play his mother (supportive) and father (repressed). Improbably, Christopher Walken has a brief role too.
There are funny and poignant moments and the film sidesteps having to deal with any of the more difficult topics it encounters (addiction, social disorders, etc), opting for a more lightweight, frothy approach. An idealised but enjoyable portrait.
Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monáe star alongside Kevin Costner, who portrays the director of the Space Task Group. Meanwhile, Kirsten Dunst is oddly cast as an unsympathetic supervisor.
The film combines their stories with that of the space race itself, bringing to life the nail-biting events of John Glenn’s first American orbital spaceflight.
There's no getting away from the seriousness of the subject matter, but there are funny and tender moments too.
In November 1979, Iranian extremists stormed the US embassy in Tehran as a result of the USA (under Jimmy Carter) granting the Shah political asylum. A total of 66 staff were taken as hostages, but six diplomats escaped and were given shelter by the Canadian ambassador. Incredibly, CIA operative Tony Mendez (played here by Ben Affleck, who also directs) travels to Tehran in an attempt to rescue the six under the premise that they are making a science-fiction film, Argo, in the region.
It’s tense and exciting stuff. The sense of threat is built up with real expertise. The storytelling is lucid. All of the characters are portrayed brilliantly, with no weak links. Even John Goodman, who plays a prosthetics expert (alongside Alan Arkin as a film producer), is reined in enough that he cannot mess it up.
Naomi Watts and Sean Penn deliver remarkably convincing performances in the lead roles. There’s the political saga, but also the story of their marriage and family, and the strain that these events put on them.
I admire the realism of it, such as the way that every scene featuring the couple’s children had them constantly asking questions and demanding attention. I also respect the film for delving into the moral ambiguities of the topic – should you tell the truth even if it puts loved ones at risk? – and not providing any simplistic answers.
It tells the story of how the Washington Post acquired and published the Pentagon Papers, which incriminated the US government in their handling of the Vietnam War. Meryl Streep plays Katharine Graham, who owns the newspaper. Tom Hanks plays Ben Bradlee, its editor.
Hanks is terrific, giving one of his most convincing performances. I really believed in his character, rather than merely thinking “there goes Tom Hanks again” (as is usually the case). Streep was less impressive, perhaps because there’s too much of Graham being weakly indecisive in the first half before she suddenly finds her mojo and seems to become a different character in the second. In reality, it surely can’t have been that straightforward or simplistic. Likewise, the connection to Watergate at the very end seems abruptly and conveniently bolted on, while other threads are left dangling. What happened to Daniel Ellsberg (played by Matthew Rhys), who first leaked the papers? And what happened to Robert McNamara (Bruce Greenwood), the Secretary of Defense, who was friends with Graham at the time of the leak?
The Post is interesting because of the historical moments it alludes to, but it’s difficult to accept it as an accurate account of events. And there’s something mannered and stilted about the way it’s filmed that prevents it ever becoming truly engrossing.
