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MrGeorgeKaplan
Reviews
El laberinto del fauno (2006)
Definitely not another remake... or is it?
While the cinema is full of familiar stories and studios won't make a film unless the book has sold a gazillion copies, going to see a Spanish fairytale movie is quite a refreshing change.
Of course fairy tales are the oldest stories of the lot, and they are actually jam-packed with clichés, but what people seem to forget is that they can be incredibly dark too. Thankfully the makers of Pan's Labyrinth have not forgotten this. Within the labyrinth are woodlice the size of my fist and a fairy disguised as praying mantis; even in the real world post Spanish Civil War setting there is a fair bit of gore and wince-making surgery. So this is very much a fairytale for adults and as adults we will have seen the themes (your basic good versus evil) a million times. But it is so refreshing to see this retrodden material handled like this, although there is a slight whiff of the awful Jim Henson Labyrinth; this version is lots darker as well as being more uplifting.
The acting was also pretty stunning; Sergi Lopez is a stunningly proud and evil Fascist captain while the lowly and invisible Mercedes, played by Maribel Verdu is easily his equal as an actor and in terms of her quietly powerful portrayal of the housekeeper. The only slight disappointment, and it is only a slight disappointment, is the performance of Ivana Baquero as Ofelia, the heroine. In any other film she would have been fine, but this film is so strong on so many levels that her slightly lacking performance does stand out more than it would in a less perfect film.
I don't really like fantasy Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter left me cold - but this form of fantasy and the way it mixes insidiously with the real life experiences of the small girl is intriguing and beguiling. And you can bet there isn't going to be a prequel or a Pan's Labyrinth II, because this was a film made by filmmakers not moneymakers.
Flags of Our Fathers (2006)
Another great Anti-War Movie... but do we need more?
Aware of the fact that the 'Our' in the title, does not apply to me because I am a limey, and the fact that this was another Spielberg-produced version of WWII, I was expecting the usual visceral action, combined with some rather sad flag waving (no pun intended) as the last victory that Hollywood can celebrate is indeed WWII, over 60 years ago. I was pleasantly surprised, Clint has managed to do a great job of retaining directorial integrity and Paul Haggis has managed to make the script reflect the fact that real heroes do not really accept that there is such a thing as a hero.
The film is beautifully shot; using the actual island of Iwo Jima as well as the volcanic backdrop of Iceland makes the battlefield seem of another world, particularly when contrasted with the stadiums that our heroes go on to tour. All of these Spielberg-produced war epics have this fantastic feel to them, with the colours appearing dull, but beautifully rich in the war footage, and with more saturated colour in the modern footage, this time contrasting the world of the past with the present. So the cinematography is not subtle, but it is incredibly effective, even if we are becoming numbed to these incredible action scenes debuted by Private Ryan and Band of Brothers.
The cast lacks a particular star. These actors are really character actors, but I mean that very positively. The people involved in this whole story are fairly unremarkable individuals who happened to be in a remarkable place at a remarkable time, therefore the low-key casting is great. Ryan Phillippe continues to as an actor each time I see him on screen, and Barry Pepper is just the sort of company sergeant that every company needs. All the actors are thoroughly believable and get the tone spot on, but the overall impression is that this is the work of an ensemble rather than a couple of actors dragging the rest of a company along behind them.
The anti-war and heroism motifs are represented with the ever-so-slightly heavy-handed brilliance that has won Clint his directorial Oscars. The film certainly makes a point of questioning exactly why nations go to war and why men do such extraordinary things both for and to their fellow man. And these are worthy, weighty themes that should be explored. But they are also worthy weighty themes to which we need some answers. Yes, indeed, you could say that propaganda wins and loses wars, and we should be aware of the difference between what we should believe and what we are being persuaded to believe, but I think, as we enter this new year, we should be presenting a new honesty to believe in rather than treading the old path that tells us not to believe anything we are told, particularly by politicians or the media. We know that, we know what not to believe, but can't we have something to believe in instead?
This is a great war movie, as are all the best anti-war movies, and it is superbly executed, but perhaps directors as experienced as Clint Eastwood, writers as talented as Paul Haggis and producers as powerful as Spielberg should be providing us with inspiration to improve the world rather than more reasons to be sceptical and world-weary.
Casino Royale (2006)
The Name might be Bond; but everything else is different
OK, it's a good film in fact it is a great film. It's just not a Bond film.
I've got a few bits of ranting to do here, so excuse the lack of clear narrative.
Casino Royale has just had its opening weekend here in the UK and it's the HIGHEST GROSSING FIRST WEEKEND FOR ANY BOND FILM
EVER!!!. That's because cinema tickets are even more expensive than they were three years ago when Die Another Day came out. Also, since when has the weekend started on a Thursday? That's when I watched it, along with a load of other mugs who netted the cinemas £1.7m on the first day / preview.
Daniel Craig is undoubtedly a fine actor. I was particularly impressed with him in the virtually unseen The Trench. He has also put in some time to go to the gym, which is something I certainly don't have the discipline to do. He also looks bloody great in a suit while toting advanced automatic weaponry. I'm not so sure about the whole swimming trunk issue - if you want equality, fine, but that means some girls in bikinis too that's how equality works. The whole taciturn, monosyllabic persona is great
for Jason Bourne
or possibly The Terminator, but this is Bond, with a cheesy quip for every situation: Sean Connery' - That's quite a nice little nothing you're almost wearing. I approve.' George Lazenby - 'this never happened to the other guy' (perhaps Craig was thinking of that when he was putting on his trunks). Roger Moore - elevated eyebrow, Pierce Brosnan - 'I thought Christmas only came once a year'. It takes Craig the entire film to unfreeze his face for long enough to say 'Bond, James Bond.'
Then the gadgets
oh well. James Bond is not a real person. He was never meant to be, he is a construct and a very important part of that construct is the gadgets. He is defined more by the car he drives and the clothes he wears than he is by his hair-colour or physique. To take this away from him is to empty him out rather than 'strip him back' as everyone is so fond of saying of Craig-Bond. To be honest I've not been happy with the whole Aston Martin thing since Ford bought Aston Martin, the '64 DB6 is a great hand-built bit of kit. The DBS is built in bulk for dull bankers who need something to blow their bonuses on. The whole travesty of the hire car at the airport is just completely beyond the pale. Okay Ford gave them £15m and a load of Jaguars and Astons, but Bond works for Queen and country, not for the highest bidder, and he is met the airport, not hanging about the Hertz desk while some fat tourists complain about their car not having a/c. So what have we got left? He has a defibrillator in the glove box of his car old men with inappropriately young wives have defibs in their glove boxes.
Eva Green is pretty easy on the eye, but her real name is better than her Bond name (Vesper Lind sounds like a limited edition chocolate moped sorry Mr Fleming). Her accent was weird and all over the shop, and her motivation was pretty confused for one supposed to be so bright. And can we not have any more Bond falling in love? Please? Weirdly Lazenby and Rigg managed to pull it off, but really Bond is a swinger at heart and modern girls can get their kicks with them too. This debacle just makes the end of the film drag on and on.
Speaking of the ending, basically wtf! Bond films don't end like that. They just don't. I can't believe I'm not allowed to spoil it for you, but I can take solace in the fact that it spoils itself.
All the President's Men (1976)
You cannot not deny that this isn't a great movie
As a piece of film-making, it is an absolute cracker. Both Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman were at the absolute peak of their powers, and their portrayal of the driven Washington Post investigative reporters Woodward and Bernstein - all corduroy suits, dishevelled hair, cigarettes and half-mast ties is superb. The old stagers of the newsroom are also great, particularly Jason Robards as Ben Bradlee, the editor in chief. The cinematography is also superb, the aerial shot of the Library of Congress, and the shots of Woodward's battered Volvo cruising the night-time streets of Washington DC give some clue as to Michael Mann's formative influences. But there is art here too; the typewritten titles, and the Teletype machine accompanied by 21-gun salute narrating the denouement of the story are effective devices underscoring the words as weapons theme here.
The newspaper industry has changed a lot in the last thirty years, to the detriment of proper investigative reporting as is depicted here. A court piece about a break in at an office building could not possibly command the attention of two staff writers particularly if the editor had some nice pictures of Madonna to put on the front page. The methodology of the editors fighting for the front page, and the journalists reaching for the phone book rather than referring to Google, shows what serious business journalism used to be. And the outcome of the story shows what power the press has and how it should wield it.
As a piece of historical drama it is incredibly informative. My knowledge of Watergate went something like: break in
blah blah blah
corruption
blah blah blah
Nixon resigns. Now I have well and truly filled in the blah blah blahs and the level of the corruption and double- dealing occurring in Washington and within the Republican Party is truly astonishing. It is a shame then that the film concludes with Nixon's re-election before his resignation because there were doubtless more rotten links in the chain flushed out by Woodward and Bernstein. It is also, in a way, a pity that this corruption was exposed at all for we all now expect our politicians to be corrupt. If it is their job to protect the best interests of the electorate should they not use every method at their disposal? If one side fights dirty, the only choice is for the other to fight dirtier.
Went the Day Well? (1942)
Well made propaganda piece with a surprisingly meaty story
Despite its rather tortuous title this is a great piece of British WWII propaganda with a simple message: The Nazis are a bunch of child-murdering blackguards, and we Brits will see through their dastardly plans and overcome them using our doughty pluck and the intelligence of our womenfolk and children.
The film begins with the arrival of a sizeable detachment of British troops arriving in a sleepy village which is coping admirably with the rigours of rationing and getting by without their menfolk, who are away fighting. However, it soon transpires that the British troops are, in fact a crack team of German paratroopers who have come to jam British radar in preparation for the invasion. Not only that but the local lord of the manor is a dastardly fifth columnist. The women of the village become suspicious of the newcomers due to the funny way they write numerals and the fact that they have German chocolate with them. This is all to no avail though as everyone takes their worries to the traitorous squire.
As it is a propaganda piece, the ending comes as no surprise. What is interesting though is the subversion of the class system: the dodgy poacher and his little scamp of a sidekick who are the true heroes, where the 'officer class' of the village are portrayed as either incompetent or downright villainous. The film was based on a Graham Greene story, and his perfect observation of the British way of life is superbly translated to the screen.
Compared to the other, more famous propaganda films (I'm thinking here of Humphrey Jennings), the quality of production (film stock, sound, lighting etc.) is very high, and it is hard to imagine that this was made in a time of war.
Fires Were Started (1943)
Not the film I was expecting - but superbly made
I'd been trying to track this movie down for a while so I had high expectations of it, and on some counts it disappointed and on others it actually excelled. I was expecting a propaganda film with a plummy BBC voice-over intoning: 'Here we see the lads of Heavy Unit one, sector c 14, enjoying a pint of bitter and a sing song before their shift.' Instead, I was presented with a proper film with characters and a plot and everything! This struck me as particularly extraordinary having seen the first film on the DVD which was a motley collection of clips of Britain at work for the War Effort, inter-spliced with a lunchtime concert (blitz spirit etc.) featuring Myra Hess wearing what looked like a lab-coat playing piano rather animatedly.
To make a film with such high production values in wartime, with everything seriously rationed is quite extraordinary. Okay, it portrays the firemen as heroes, but it presents them in a light that is far from uplifting. They are men who work tirelessly and they take great risks, and then they go and do it all over again the next night none of this wandering off into the sunset with a girl on your arm. By 1943, when the film was made, the blitz was pretty much over, but the horror and uncertainty of the V1s and V2s was yet to come and although the tide seemed to have turned, there was no end in sight at this point. Jennings' stroke of genius was to create a film that identified with its audience and was honest with them, while actually having the humour to keep morale up.
The use of actual firemen for the characters has its pros and cons some of them are decent actors, others are very poor, but I should imagine that in 1943 people in possession of an equity card were rather few and far between. There is obviously some stock footage used in the long shots of the burning warehouses, giving a broader picture of what the crew of one pump were up against, which is no bad thing. The stock footage is actually pretty important as it gives a reality that would otherwise be lacking (see also Malta Story).
All in all this is a triumph of realistic, humanist film-making from the darkest days of our darkest hours.
A Cock and Bull Story (2005)
Not the best film about making a film - but the funniest
A Cock and Bull Story
Having really enjoyed Winterbottom's 24hr Party People and the classic movie about making a movie, Lost in LaMancha, I was really looking forward to A Cock and Bull Story and on the whole it lived up to expectations, but it never really exceeded them.
Steve Coogan managed to come across as completely unsympathetic, but this is nothing new indeed he has made a career of it. Rob Brydon was a revelation to me I thought he was great, but he did have the more sympathetic 'lead' role of the two of them. It was also good to see Naomie Harris from 28 Days Later and Benedict Wong from 15 Storeys High, getting some screen time.
The plot within a plot device worked pretty well on the whole and built on a strength of 24hr Party People which was rather underexploited Coogan speaking to camera. But where Lost in LaMancha was the tale of a team of people with a vision, battling the odds to create a masterpiece Cock and Bull portrayed the crew as a bunch of chancers who had no idea what they were attempting to do. Perhaps this is a true reflection of the cottage industry approach to film-making in the UK in contrast to the corporate goal-based approach of Hollywood productions.
All in all Cock and Bull was a very polished in-joke for media types. Certainly the audience in the Electric Cinema in Portobello Road were bang on the demographic. But Winterbottom, Coogan, Brydon et al are talented folk and are able to reach out to a larger audience, and as a result this felt rather self-indulgent and a squandering of talent.
War of the Worlds (2005)
Surprisingly atmospheric
Now we might as well get this straight. I am no Spielberg fan and I am no Tom Cruise fan (particularly after his complete sense of humour failure in Leicester Square), so I went to the cinema with a rather heavy heart. I was prepared to regard it as a completely separate entity from the H. G. Wells book, the Orson Welles Mercury Theatre radio play and the George Pal movie, in short I was expecting pure action movie mayhem, with some Spielberg schmaltz.
To be honest I was not disappointed. The explosions and special effects, particularly the long shots where you see a lot of machines raining down death and destruction, were superb. When things weren't actually being vapourised I was impressed by the use of silences, storms and other tension-building devices, which certainly cranked up the tension enjoyably. The pace of the movie was pretty relentless, and despite the fact that I really needed the bathroom for the last half hour, there were no obvious let-ups in the action, so I had to sit and suffer. But after all of this action, the ending from the book was a bit of a let down. Although I should have seen it coming, the film just dribbled to a halt.
The Spielberg schmaltz was shoe-horned in with his usual subtlety by focusing on the trials undergone by one individual, flawed family. Cruise played Ray Ferrier, a rather immature stevedore who had previously chosen his Ford Mustang lifestyle over his family. But as luck would have it he was to look after them for the weekend when the aliens rocked into town. The strained relationships were well performed despite little being asked of the actors although Dakota Fanning deserves her now customary praise for her performance as claustrophobic daughter Rachel. I am still not clear whether the characters stuck together because they were flesh and blood or purely because they were acquainted, but perhaps this was due to Ray's lack of interest in actually being a dad.
Despite the unpromising premise of Spielberg and Cruise stuffing up a classic story, I left the cinema entertained and pleasantly surprised.
The Philadelphia Story (1940)
This Movie is so Yah!
Philadelphia Story is very much in the news at the moment, with Kevin Spacey reviving it on stage at The Old Vic Theatre in London and it finally being made available on DVD in the UK. I had never seen it - although I remember of the Cole Porter musical version, High Society from childhood. The casting of Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn and James Stewart was certainly an intriguing proposition.
From the opening scene with Tracy (Hepburn) breaking Dexter's (Grant) clubs on her knee and him pushing her to the ground in one of the weirdest pieces of domestic violence on celluloid, I was hooked. Despite her 'goddessness' and reserve, the relationship between Tracy and Dexter crackles with a vital force. Moments later, when Tracy pushes her new fiancé to the floor in a bit of horseplay, you can see her trying to invoke the same spiritedness into her new relationship and failing badly.
The arrival of chippy writer Macaulay 'Mike' Connor (Stewart) and hardheaded photographer Liz Imbrie (superbly played by Ruth Hussey) at the Lord's mansion for the wedding is excellently realised. As they sit in the 'South Parlour' awaiting their hosts and notice another door, Connor dryly describes it as "The -south-by-southwest parlour by dining room." The sniping between the ex-husband, the unwanted journalists and the refined but flawed Lord family is superbly written. Films of this era have such zinging dialogue - it is after all the golden era of Hollywood writers, with greats like Raymond Chandler and F. Scott Fitzgerald working for the studios - but the quality of dialogue in black and white never fails to surprise me.
The booziness of the party the night before the wedding changes pretty much everyone's ideas about everyone else, except for the level-headed Liz and the sober Dexter. The acting at the party, after it back at the Lords mansion and the hangovers the following day are both excellent and hilarious (Stewart's hiccups were unscripted and you can clearly see Grant trying to control himself). The fact that the film comes to the conclusion that the audience have been rooting for from the outset courtesy of "A certain Miss Pommery 1926" is probably a message that's seen as unmarketable by modern PC Hollywood.
The only reservation I have about this film is Hepburn herself. The play was actually written about her she was unpopular in Hollywood at the time and came from a privileged background and her billionaire boyfriend, Howard Hughes bought the rights as a present for her. Yet she fails to convince as a prig and a goddess, she seems too worldly to be able to convince herself that marriage to Kitteridge could be a good idea. The spontaneity and recklessness she shows the following morning, would seem to indicate she was still drunk, rather than had undergone an epiphany of self-realisation.
A great film though with a cracking cast, a cracking script and a belief that certain people deserve one another.