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Reviews
Cemetery Junction (2010)
The invention of Lying had a few good one liners..this hasn't.
The cinematography/production design was reasonable. I've nothing else positive to say. I'm in a minority, the cinema could have seated 3-400 people but there were only 8 people in the audience. I guess the majority of people are wiser than me and this is the film's release week, the audiences can only get smaller! A cast which includes RG in a vest, Jamie Oliver and Vernon Kay lookalikes how could it fail! Every character is a stereotype which rather blunts the audiences anticipation of what is going to happen.
RG has given himself a smaller role this time round unfortunately it is still not in proportion to his acting abilities.
After about 25 minutes (I was patient, maybe even saintly) I gave up hope that somehow the film might get better.
This film takes pedantry to a new level. It is possible to have a film with more heavy handed direction and a more facile script but is it possible to find a film which then proceeds to explain everything to the audience just in case they are utterly incapable of thinking for themselves.
The script is amateurish, a first draft which needed binning. Nothing was original, not the jokes, the characters nor the plot. I did feel sorry for the actors, the dialogue was either woeful or just plain embarrassing. RG may claim it is a spoof or that it is very tongue in cheek, I do not believe it for one minute.
The plot is melange of second and third rate skits which are laboured and unfunny, they are of course supposed to be witty and sharp, oh that they were.
The scenes which are supposed to be emotional etc are best not discussed.
So you have a bunch of 20 somethings on the rail track (a la 'Stand by Me' et al.) who also draw puerile graffiti on a billboard. There is no likelihood we could care for any of these people. We can only hope they stay in Cemetery Junction, the world will definitely be a better place if they do.
The Invention of Lying (2009)
The Emperor has no clothes and he's short and plump with a snub nose
Saw this at premiere in Grauman's Chinese Theatre LA. The audience laughed at some of the 'jokes'. Thereagain the woman behind me laughed when the Warners logo came up at the start. I kid you not. Do they have shills in the audience? Even she didn't have a great time, just munched her free popcorn. At the end I looked around at the audience. They didn't look as if they had had a great time. They weren't bubbling but subdued.
What went wrong?
Gervais was producer, director, writer and actor. In fact the original script is by an unknown Matthew Robinson.
The script was in severe need of cutting. At times it was like Gervais was just about to do a quick aside to the camera. I can see the script gags as part of a stand up show when you get the audience in the mood and hit them with quips to keep them going. In a stand up the trick is reading your audience and timing the delivery, milking every moment. A brilliant stand up can have his audience howling with the very lightest of material. Timing and delivery is their strength. Film is a totally different thing.
The camera work was hopefully intended to be as it was. Bad. The photographer is capable of better (Juno etc.) so was it Gervais that set the rubbish lighting, the continual use of head shots, the static camera and putting everything and everyone in the middle of the screen. It looked like a low budget TV soap.
Gervais yet again is playing a guy who knows and shares with us that he is small, fat and not particularly good looking, a sort of ordinary and boring everyman. Is it a case of 'The Emperor's New Clothes' in that the character, Gervais hit solid gold with in The Office, is so close to his own view of himself that all we are seeing is him sending himself up yet again. For me the joke has worn very thin, its not funny anymore.
When we see him strolling down the street in the film dressed exactly as we have seen him in Talk shows is he being oh so clever or is it just that all short, slightly plump men wear thin black jumpers. Maybe the budget was that low and the actors had to wear their own clothes.
It reminds me of an old sales technique. If you have a big disadvantage lead with it, make it a critical part of your presentation and try to make it seem that that weakness is in fact a strength. The Gervais character in all its human weakness does that. Right from the start he gives us a voice over explaining the set up. The audience is given little room to work things out. No intelligence required. Is that Gervais' take on how to make a film tuned to American sensibilities.
So for the first 20-25 minutes we get Mark being beaten up by people's truthfulness , no chance of us not getting the idea he is a good bloke (snubby nose), ordinary but not a bad bloke who us other ordinary blokes can empathize with. Except the character here is a loser. Is that a successful comedy creation? Not to me it isn't. Such a sad git that he's funny. Nope didn't work. It did in the Office but you can't put the same character here and hope he will survive.
In this whole world we see no one lies, a good premise but unfortunately in that premise there is a huge flaw which Gervais never gets round. The people are not ones who are so impossibly good that they don't lie they are just so stupid that lying as a concept or idea is not possible. So do we warm to these people? No. Do we warm to Mark who invents lying? No. When he invents lying you get the cheap and obvious things that spring to mind (especially to someone as cheap and obvious as Mark) when you find that you can lie and are 100% believed. There was a goldmine of comedy to be dug up if the character Mark and the rest of the world had been more intelligently formed. The film never got close once.
Philip Seymour Hoffman was in it briefly. I can't imagine that the outstandingly talented Hoffman will ever plumb such depths again. For his sake I hope he avoids this type of favour in the future.
Gervais had his big 'CRYING' scene were we could see that he is a seriously talented actor. NOT. This is where the script needed someone else, the directing needed someone else and the acting needed someone else.
When Gervais invents lying his first BIG lie that there is an afterlife (the premise of organised religion). That lie is told just to reassure and comfort his dying mother it is then built on and expanded. The idiots who inhabit this world believe not because they cannot cope with the concept of lying but they have no critical faculties. They are sheep and stupid. Quite what the religious right of America will make of this I won't try to guess but it could be wild.
So Gervais reckoned he was going to be a Jim Carrey in Liar Liar or Bruce Almighty or Mel Gibson in What Women Want. He is not in the same ballpark.
A lot of words to say I didn't like it. I didn't get it. I was bored and didn't laugh out loud once. America now has their first turkey for Thanksgiving. Ricky you died in this film but you will have an afterlife and people will laugh again and this will be forgotten (that's a lie, sorry).
Go and see "In the Loop".
Sheltered Life (2008)
Words can't do this film justice. Just see it.
I saw "Sheltered Life" at the Phoenix Film Festival, it was, by a large margin, my film of the festival.
At the Q&A at the end we heard it was the director's first feature (his Short films have won awards worldwide), I was amazed/jealous. When someone sets the bar so high for a first feature, well you just wonder "how can I compete, maybe I should give up now'.
The soundtrack is totally on the money, even better it is memorable. I can't remember the music of any other film I saw at the festival and that is not saying that they were bad.
The script is sharp, funny, poignant and complete (first feature film produced for the scriptwriter also).
Ellen Page was approached for the lead role but I don't believe she could have bettered the girl in the film. In so many low budget features there are actors who just don't rate. In 'Sheltered Life' there are no poor performances. The acting is always good and often stand out brilliant. Best supporting actress is the shelter manager.
Finally the photography is superb, I am a stills photographer myself and some of the shots are just plain beautiful. I presume Carl gave the DP some latitude to give his best because whoever the guy is worked their socks off.
Carl did the edit as well. This isn't a Canadian or American film it's European (French I think but I can't say firmly why).
There are many moments when we get short or long periods with no dialogue just wonderful vignettes of people or their surroundings (with that beautiful soundtrack). What can I say I loved it.
I got a screener copy from the director and told my daughter (21) so much about the film that she gave in and watched it. I asked her what she thought, she won't say. She was moved beyond words.
In years to come people will look back and say how did we miss this? If it screens anywhere near you, go.
There are scenes /characters in Sheltered Life which have stuck permanently in my head.
Kings (2007)
Below average
So I was expecting more than I got. Workman like but not the best of Irish cinema.
I would agree that the best performance was by 'Git' by a long chalk. In the roles Jap and Joe I wonder how it would have played with actors swapped.
I had not been aware it was an adapted play but it was painfully obvious as the film crept on.
I was most unimpressed with the camera jittery work in the back bar room scene. I can't believe the director etc. don't suffer in extremis each time they see it. That is not is say the rest of the camera work was bad it was fine.
Surely only the Irish could have such nice clean alcoholics. Jap gingerly sprawling in an alleyway whilst remarkably sober was most gentil. Such a clean well shaven drunk, it is a wonder the polis didn't ask if they would like their chauffeur alerted, to take them home. Did they really take umpteen hours to drink a 2 litre bottle of cider and they stayed drunk? We must be told the name of this potent brew!
As for the conga line of "get your shirts off lads and let's bond" and let's sing a good old rebel song (for of course all oirish are rebels even after 30 yrs in England-shure they're only lads at heart). As they dance through the pub and out into the street with not a comment from anyone in the pub, well it is all so believable. Then the dapper Jap puts his shirt on again now he has bonded.
Of course the Oirish screen writers gave it an award.
The film had it's moments of poignancy and truth but they were sacrificed to the altar/stage of Irish caricatures. Not too far really from the semtex toting/Irish (extracted?) dancing thug of 'Shameless' played by Sean Gilder. But with Shameless we know where the writer is coming from and we are both entertained and educated by the revelations of human life. King's does not have the often delicate touch of life seen in shameless.
The director struggled with the script and its adaptation for screen. He lost the intimacy that drink brings and the very dark humour we Irish have in abundance. Standing around in an empty room was not good cinema.
Was it awful, No. Would I watch it again, never.