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.
Two hitmen (Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell) travel to Bruges to await instructions for their next job from their boss Harry (Ralph Fiennes). While passing the time as would-be tourists, they try to come to terms with who they are and what they do for a living – until a call from Harry changes everything.
It’s brilliantly written – a superb character study with some very funny lines. It’s also extremely sad, as we see the pair wrestling with their consciences and questioning whether they are entitled to strive for a better kind of life.
Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow star as two friends who travel from Los Angeles to Tucson, Arizona, to attend their school reunion, anxious to impress the peers who snubbed them 10 years previously.
As with so many American films, there’s a lot about status anxiety. It’s a story about aspiration and class. It’s also about the importance of friendship. While some of the jokes miss the mark completely, and the writing could be sharper, there’s enough charm in the two leads’ performances that it works.
I’m still not sure if it’s forgettable fluff or a satire of forgettable fluff. It certainly doesn’t have the edge of Clueless, but it’s in the same general universe.
The story concerns five friends, who – encouraged by Gary King (Simon Pegg) – return to their hometown to take part in a nostalgic pub crawl. Unfortunately, Newton Haven has been taken over by blue-blooded aliens.
Once again, there’s an obsession with small English towns and the way people behave in them.
The usual team of Nick Frost, Paddy Considine, Julia Deakin, Martin Freeman and Bill Nighy all appear, alongside Rosamund Pike and Pierce Brosnan.
It’s not quite as strong as the first two films, perhaps because you know what to expect already. But the performances are all first-rate and there are many funny lines.
Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) goes into business selling video footage of crime scenes to a TV network. He also has designs on their news editor, Nina (Rene Russo). But his work takes him into some extreme situations that reveal his amoral ruthlessness.
The film expertly juggles various themes. There are the ethics of journalism’s involvement in personal tragedies, and questions about voyeurism. There’s also a brilliant strand of corporate satire, as Louis tutors and controls his assistant Rick (Riz Ahmed), lecturing him on business strategy and career advancement. It amuses and appals at the same time, because Louis seems simultaneously so utterly deranged and yet brilliant.
It’s such an intelligent and well-paced film that you are immediately swept up into the protagonist’s murky world. Nothing you could add or remove would make it any better.
An artist (Liam Neeson) and his son (Neeson’s real-life son Micheál Richardson) struggle to deal with the loss of their wife/mother while attempting to sell their run-down old house in Italy.
The film tries to be poignant but isn’t well-written enough to inspire much of an emotional response – despite the tragic parallels with the actors’ own lives. Instead, it ends up being a sort of fifth-rate Richard Curtis homage – a rather tepid light drama with only one genuinely funny line.
Lindsay Duncan adds a little grit as a stern estate agent. Valeria Bilello seems rather idealised and one-dimensional as the son’s love interest. Neeson has his usual rugged appeal but sleepwalks through the role.
It’s easy-to-watch, and of course the Italian landscapes are seductive, but ultimately it’s all rather mediocre.
David Gale (Kevin Spacey) plays a university professor and anti-capital punishment campaigner who finds himself on death row. A journalist improbably called Bitsey Bloom (Kate Winslet) is sent to meet him and conduct his final interviews. Through their conversations, she begins to unravel what really happened in the crime he is accused of. We see those events unfold in flashback.
It’s a tense and exciting story that’s slightly spoiled by the last five minutes, which offers one unlikely twist too many. As soon as you start asking questions about the plot logic, it collapses.
Spacey and Winslet are both excellent, as is Laura Linney as Gale’s friend and colleague.
The film makes some good points about the evils of capital punishment, although you can’t help thinking that those points would be stronger still without the final twist. A simpler, more believable plot would have worked so much better.
A diamond smuggler working in Sierra Leone (Leonardo DiCaprio) begins to examine his motives after meeting an American investigative journalist and a local man who has been separated from his wife and son.
DiCaprio is compelling but not quite at his best. Maybe it’s his South African accent that makes him a little less convincing than usual. That said, his character development as the film progresses is extremely well done. I liked Jennifer Connelly as the journalist, too.
The film makes some strong moral points about trading in "conflict diamonds", but because DiCaprio’s character is presented as amoral it’s not as heavy-handed or judgemental as it might have been.
A girl (Anna Paquin) loses her mother in a car crash and goes to live with her inventor father (Jeff Daniels) in rural Canada. After some of his land is bulldozed by developers, Amy rescues several abandoned goose eggs and nurtures the geese to adulthood. Ultimately, she uses a microlight plane to teach the birds to migrate south.
Remarkably, this is based on true events.
It’s an ecological drama that could have ended up cutesy and trite but for the fact that it also addresses bereavement and family relationships.
The flying scenes are stunning and you can’t see how they were filmed.
Brothers Hank (Bill Paxton) and Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton), plus Jacob’s friend Lou (Brent Briscoe), find a crashed aircraft buried in snow in remote, rural Wright County, Minnesota. There’s $4 million inside it, which – after some debate – they decide to keep. That decision changes everything in their lives.
This is a devastating story. It works as an edge-of-your-seat thriller, but really it’s a profound morality tale.
Bill Paxton and Billy Bob Thornton are excellent as the conflicted brothers with little in common. Bridget Fonda is great, too, as Hank’s wife who becomes increasingly pulled into the drama of their own making. The escalating situation is perfectly handled by director Sam Raimi.
The novel, by Scott Smith, is even better.
An unnamed man and his son (Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee) travel across the wasteland of a post-apocalyptic America following an unnamed disaster.
It’s horrifying in places (there’s a recurring thread about vigilante bands of cannibals roaming the land), but it’s also a tender drama about the love between a boy and his father.
The film asks you to consider what value life has after everything else has been lost. I like the way it doesn’t try to explain the event that led to this chaos. Instead, it just puts you straight into the situation and lets you stare it in the face.
A conceited professor of phonetics (Rex Harrison) tasks himself with taking a working-class girl named Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn) and educating her sufficiently so that she can pose as a member of high society.
Hepburn and Harrison have plenty of charisma and charm, but pretty much everything else falls flat. Elisa’s dustman father (Stanley Holloway) is an embarrassing disaster. The “chorus” scenes don’t really work, either, and the rather abusive treatment of Elisa is played for laughs in a way that you can’t imagine happening in a modern film. In narrative terms, the two transformative moments – Elisa learning to enunciate and the pair realising they are in love – are both completely thrown away, buried in pointless filler set pieces and side plots that drag out the running time.
I liked Harrison’s talk-sing delivery of his song lyrics. The style almost approaches rap. But beyond a couple of memorable songs, all you’re left with is two talented actors struggling to rise above a drab and tiresome mess.
The story focuses on a butler (Anthony Hopkins) and a housekeeper (Emma Thompson), who develop a deep love for one another but are unable to declare it. We see their story in two time periods – when they work at Darlington Hall in the late 1930s at a point when Lord Darlington (James Fox) begins entertaining fascist-sympathising aristocrats, and their attempt to meet up again in 1958.
The two lead performances are astonishing and perfectly nuanced. There’s so much feeling and power in what they don’t say. There’s passion and tenderness, too, even though it’s all held back behind the mask of duty.
It’s a superbly shot film, too, becoming hypnotic where a lesser director would have made it merely dull.
Hugh Grant is excellent as Lord Darlington’s godson and Christopher Reeve adds gravitas as US Congressman Jack Lewis.
It’s nearly brilliant, but the script just isn’t sharp or funny enough. The two leads are both excellent, and there’s plenty of chemistry, but even with their considerable talents the dialogue cannot sparkle and the humour cannot hit home. For example, a thread about the couple accidentally switching mobile phones isn’t sufficiently mined for comic effect. A more skilled writer (such as Nora Ephron) would have done so much more with it.
It’s a shame because Clooney and Pfeiffer exude charm and their performances are worthy of a better film than this.
Every member of the cast is outstanding. Kirsten Dunst is the sweet Amber Arkins, who wants to follow in the footsteps of her hero Diane Sawyer. Ellen Barkin plays Amber's mother, and Allison Janney is her mother’s friend. Kirsty Alley plays the head of the pageant’s organising committee and a former winner of the same competition. Meanwhile, her daughter (Denise Richards) may or may not be killing off her rival contestants.
Surprisingly, the film wasn't a success. It’s in the style of This Is Spinal Tap and Best in Show, but it has a savage black humour and intelligence of its own.
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.
There are a couple of major plot twists, so it’s difficult to reveal any more about the story without ruining it. Craig and Weisz are OK (and it’s quite interesting to watch this real-life couple play a pretend couple), but Watts is oddly underused. The creepy premise isn’t quite followed through, so it slightly runs out of steam.
Shutter Island is a better treatment of similar themes. Also, the main part of the film works as a psychological study, so it’s a shame that a genuine supernatural element is confirmed near the end. All that said, it’s a fairly entertaining romp.
Nigel Havers, Ian Holm, John Gielgud also star.
The film hasn’t dated especially well, but the synth soundtrack by Vangelis is excellent and I like the fact that the sci-fi synth tones jar with the 1920s visuals.
Overall, I was disappointed. I'd expected something much more stirring and inspirational. Instead, the drama seems flat and the middle of the film really sags. The slow-motion effect is wildly over-used, becoming clichéd and almost almost comical. And, unfortunately, when Harold wins his all-important race it’s filmed and directed in a way that seems oddly anticlimactic.
It’s a touching romance that never gives in to mere sentimentality. The two leads are remarkable, with a very real chemistry. The music is excellent, too. Bridges seems every bit the grizzled country singer. You can truly believe him, whether he’s at his public best on stage or at his private nadir, passing out drunk in his hotel room.
There are parallels with A Star Is Born, and particularly the Streisand/Kristofferson version from 1976, but Crazy Heart seems like a more credible attempt to present a fading performer in a desperate situation.
Gary Oldman is George Smiley, leading an all-star cast that also includes Kathy Burke, Benedict Cumberbatch, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, John Hurt, Toby Jones and Mark Strong.
The plot follows Smiley’s efforts to track down a double agent within the British secret service. I found it often too complicated to follow. I also got annoyed with the unrelenting greys and the deliberately grim visuals. Most of the “drama” comes from flashbacks or reported speech, making it less than compelling. I could appreciate that it was an expertly made film but it was too focused on mood and style to ever pull me in.
Robert Pattinson stars as a young veterinary medicine student, Jacob Jankowski, who joins a travelling circus in 1931. He meets the sadistic ringmaster (Christoph Waltz) and falls in love with his wife (Reese Witherspoon).
It’s compelling. The circus crew live and travel on a train, and their micro-world is conveyed well. Waltz is convincingly multi-faceted and menacing. The love story is touching without being schmaltzy. And the CGI animals seem completely real.
The one flaw – and it’s a big one – is the slightly cheesy framing device in which we see Jankowski as an old man (Hal Holbrook), looking back on his life and narrating the story. Why was this considered necessary?
Also, the title makes no sense. Maybe it works in the novel (by Sara Gruen), but it jars a little for this adaptation.
Directed by Martin Scorsese, this is a genuinely terrifying psychological thriller. Leonardo DiCaprio is superb as a complicated character making a horrible discovery.
It’s closer in tone to Cape Fear than anything else I’ve seen by Scorsese. What seems to be a noirish thriller acquires extra depths as it becomes stranger and even more disturbing. It’s difficult to say any more without giving away the big twist.
The superb cast also includes Ben Kingsley, Michelle Williams and Max von Sydow.
The film is slow and laboured. The sound quality is poor and the dialogue isn’t synchronised quite right. There’s a disjointed, awkward feel.
John Wayne, Topol, Frank Sinatra and Yul Brynner all appear, but no amount of star charisma can make the script work. I do like Senta Berger as Magda Simon. She has a certain warmth and charm that is lacking elsewhere. Kirk Douglas is watchable, too, but seems much too chirpy most of the time, adding to a feeling that the whole affair is rather shallow.
On the plus side, there are a few good lines. For example, when David asks his wife why she’s up so late, she replies: “I worry better when I’m awake.”
Charlie Babbit (Tom Cruise) is a car dealer having business problems. He’s selfish and brash. After his father dies, Charlie learns that he has been denied an inheritance but also finds out that he has a brother, Raymond (Dustin Hoffman), who lives in a mental institution and who is described as an “autistic savant”. Charlie essentially kidnaps him, hoping to get his share of the will. But then his relationship with his brother begins to develop.
Tom Cruise delivers his best ever performance because the script and direction are so strong that even he can’t mess them up. Hoffman is extremely compelling, too. You wonder, however, what autism organisations make of his portrayal. Is it accurate or does it simplify and mislead?
The film works as a “road movie”, with the car trip being a central motif. Ultimately, it’s a touching character study.
The disheveled Michael Douglas is excellent in the main part, and his mid-life crisis is highly watchable. I wasn’t too keen on the queasy blend of comedy and drama, which sometimes feels awkward. The presence of a dank Tobey Maguire doesn't help.
The soundtrack is for men of “a certain age”: Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Leonard Cohen and Van Morrison all feature.
Directed by Curtis Hanson and adapted from the 1995 novel by Michael Chabon, this is a celebrated film that doesn't quite live up to expectations.
A young American traveller called Richard (Leonardo DiCaprio) goes in search of a mythical island – and finds it. There, he joins an idealistic community led by Sal (a believable Tilda Swinton). But he soon discovers that this is far from the paradise he dreamed of.
DiCaprio is superb in the main role. His mixture of arrogance and vulnerability seems very real.
I’m less keen on some of the stylings from director Danny Boyle, such as when Richard imagines he’s within a video game and the film becomes one. But the story and acting are so strong that you are swept along by the plot anyway.
It’s formulaic, racist and trashy, but nevertheless extremely well-paced and fairly exciting. As the rather OCD, over-possessive Bryan, Neeson has a presence that holds your interest – even when the plot is unbelievable. And it is often unbelievable, such as his daughter’s incredible driving ability (even though she hasn’t yet passed her driving test).
In terms of the title, they could have tried harder. How about these alternatives?
• Taken to the Cleaners (Bryan’s daughter is kidnapped at a launderette)
• Taken for Granted (Bryan’s “very particular set of skills” are overlooked)
• Taken Out (Bryan kills even more people)
• Taken Seriously (fewer car chases and shoot-outs; more soul-searching drama)
• Taken Over (the final instalment)
1978. Three young friends, Kathy, Tommy and Ruth, are at a mysterious boarding school called Hailsham. One day, a teacher tells them that they only exist to be organ donors. They will “complete” (i.e., die) in early adulthood when they are no longer strong enough to donate further organs. The film is split between their childhood at Hailsham and their adulthood – in 1985, and then in 1994 – once the donor process begins. Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley and Andrew Garfield star.
What makes it work is that the plot functions as a romantic love triangle, but it’s set against an extremely subtle dystopian backdrop. There’s a lot that isn’t explained – such as why they barely seem to resist or even question their destiny. Is that because of brainwashing or did the film just avoid the most obvious issues? As it stands, their resigned behaviour just adds to the sense of grim fatalism, which is probably intentional.
The bleakness comes from the way it’s shot as well as the overall message. It leaves you almost no glimmer of hope. In its own it's way quite brilliant, but ultimately I regretted watching it.
It’s possibly the weirdest film I’ve ever seen.
The flimsy “plot” is simple: a girl called Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) is getting married and wants to invite her father. But she’s unsure which of three possible contenders he is. So she invites them all to the Greek island hotel owned by her mother in order to find out.
Meryl Streep is surprisingly good in the main role, and sings pretty well. Pierce Brosnan comes across oddly and sings badly. Colin Firth is likeable but given little to go on in terms of the script.
Most notable are the visuals. The lighting doesn’t look real and I don’t think it’s even meant to. It creates a kind of multi-coloured hyper-reality of its own. Some of the casting is peculiar, too. Julie Walters seems an odd choice for one of Streep’s best friends, and her “fun-loving” character is coarse and difficult to endure. Even worse is Sky (Dominic Cooper), Sophie’s unappealing fiancé.
I spent most of the film in shock, unsure what I was meant to be thinking or feeling. The Abba songs are great, of course, but did they need to be used to soundtrack a fairly banal romantic comedy?
It’s fairly harrowing, as you might expect, to see this talented young singer so quickly spiral into the hell of fame and addiction. The saddest aspect is that she simply didn’t appear to have the support around her that she so desperately needed. Her husband (Blake Fielder) was imprisoned for assaulting a pub landlord. Her father (Mitchell Winehouse) had abandoned her family when Amy was a child, then returned in the role of manager/Svengali after Amy’s success took off. You are encouraged to wonder how much these two individuals were steering her down the wrong path for their own gains.
Does it teach you anything new about Amy Winehouse? Not really. But I’d never really considered the strangeness of her songwriting before. Seeing the lyrics spelled out on screen as she sings them reveals just how odd they are.
Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford are both at their very best playing the journalists. It’s a fascinating glimpse into another era. In this pre-internet world, they spend most of their time talking to people, phoning people, typing, scrawling in notebooks, chain-smoking and drinking coffee. In our current period of misinformation politics and double-think social media, the 1970s seem relatively straightforward and innocent.
You wonder if this film could even have been made now: there are no tech giants, no billionaires dictating how people communicate, no car chases, no shootings and no “love interest” – just two writers trying to uncover the truth.
Scarlett Johansson plays Mary Boleyn. Natalie Portman is her more famous sister Anne, the second wife of Henry VIII. The story details the two sisters and their ill-fated relationships with the king, who desperately craves a male heir.
It’s a work of fiction, adapted from a novel by Philippa Gregory, rather than a slice of history. This allows it to explore what might have happened rather than what probably happened.
There are some entertaining moments. Portman is unusually strong in her role, while Johansson is typically weak. There are also solid performances by Kristin Scott Thomas and Eddie Redmayne. What lets it down is Eric Bana as Henry VIII. For the plot to work, he needs to be charismatic and magnetic. Bana is none of these things. You cannot believe that this rather weedy figure has so much influence because he completely lacks gravitas.
A writer named Catrin Cole (Gemma Arterton) is hired by the Ministry of Information in 1940 to help create propaganda films during World War II. She faces sexism and other setbacks, has to deal with the ego of star actor Ambrose Hilliard (Bill Nighy), and develops an up-and-down creative relationship with her co-writer Tom Buckley (Sam Claflin).
It’s subtle and witty, with the film-within-a-film aspect working extremely well. Initially it has the feel of a “Sunday night TV drama”, but it acquires depth as it develops. Arterton is excellent, conveying an emotional range that you might not expect after seeing her brief appearance as MI6 agent Strawberry Fields in the James Bond film Quantum of Solace.
The plot interweaves the lives of several characters, told with extensive flashbacks. The mixed-up chronology can be challenging – it might have worked better in linear sequence – but the material is harrowing in any order. The relentlessly dark subject matter includes alcoholism, drug addiction, bereavement, born-again religion, relationship separation and terrible psychological anguish.
Del Toro, Penn and Watts are all excellent, tackling extremely difficult scenes. It’s searing, gut-wrenching storytelling that is quite painful to watch.
It’s visually striking, too. The colour and graininess of the film changes with the mood and tone of the events, but overall there’s very little lightness or hope offered.
