The Iron Lady – Review

January 4, 2012 7 Comments

The Iron Lady (2011) 

Director: Phyllida Lloyd. Writer: Abi Morgan. Cast: Meryl Streep, Jim Broadbent.

What could have been an insightful, challenging and even controversial film about one of the most loved/hated politician of the twentieth century, instead ends up being just an empty vessel for Meryl Streep to showcase once again that she’s Oscar worthy! As if we didn’t know that already… The most Oscar nominated living actress in history really does indeed become the British Prime Minister in the “Iron Lady”. Unfortunately Meryl alone is not enough to lift an otherwise flat and quite superficial biopic.

Some may argue that sometimes her performance veers slightly too much towards parody, but that’s mainly a problem with the staging and the direction of the film itself.

“The Iron Lady” is trying too hard to please everyone that in the end it just disappoints everyone. It wants to be too much like “The King’s Speech” (there’s even a scene which feels lifted directly from it, where Margaret Thatcher is rehearsing her voice… I was waiting for her to stammer at any point), but here the baggage behind the main character is just too big and edgy to get away with such lightness. Margaret Thatcher is a complex character with an even more complex life: to try to reduce it and compress it all into a film of less than 2 hours is a tough task and “The Iron Lady” suffers from trying to do it. Major events like the Falklands war, or the miners’strike,  are given just a few minutes and it all ends up feeling a little bit like reading a page from Wikipedia: yes, all the facts are there, but it all feels a little bit too superficial… And a film about Margaret Thatcher should be anything but superficial.

The film is structured through a series of flashbacks as it also try to give a more intimate portrait of the old Prime Minister in her first stages of Alzheimer. This is probably the most revealing and poignant part of the film (though not without its problems too). Once again Meryl manages to step above the mannerism and the caricature and brings some unexpected humanity into her character as the so-called iron lady becomes now more like an old rusty iron lady or worse a paper-thin weak old woman (with the aid of some impressive make-up. The people behind the make-up in J.Edgar should watch and learn!!): her performance as an old woman is something to wonder at!

However the film doesn’t quite know what to do with all this material and all the characters around Mrs Thatcher. Are we supposed to like this controversial and yet influential British politician? Are we really meant to feel sorry for her? What is it try to tell us by showing the Iron Lady as a weak old woman stricken by illness? It’s all rather too easy to be controversial, and too thin to be thoughtful, too friendly to be considered seriously.

In the end all we are left is a marvellous performance for a film that doesn’t quite deserve it.

6/10

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A real moviegeek or a tired old cynic?

April 25, 2011 6 Comments

Some of you have pointed out that in the last few months it seems like I was disappointed by most of the stuff I saw in the cinema.

This came just at the time when I was about to choose which film to review next, of the ones I’ve seen in the last couple of days: “The Roommate” (A thriller, which is usually a genre I love), “the extraordinary adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec” (By Luc Besson who made La Femme Nikita and leon, 2 of my favourites ever!), or “Hachi” (By the director of one of the film I love the most, What’s eating Gilbert Grape)… And you know what?! I really didn’t like any of them!

It made me think: when did I become such a cynic?

It is so unlike me… I’ve always been the positive one, the smiley person who tries to look for bright side…

I love going to the movies and there’s nothing I cherish more than loosing myself in a good flick.

Whenever I go and watch something, I’m always hoping this might be the one that makes me go back to being a kid, or makes me cry or laugh with tears in my eyes, or forget about my deadlines at work and my worries at home…

The fact that I have not liked a lot films recently is probably indicative of the way cinema is today. Most of these films are just products”: they are made by a committee of advertisers, or people who need to balance their books at the end of the year.

There are very few mavericks, or real storytellers out there… Most of them prefer to play it safe and give us what their recent surveys told them they should give us.

Or is it me who is just getting pickier and pickier? Why do I seem to be the only one who thought “The King’s Speech” was a pretty average film crowd pleaser?

Why didn’t I like Scream 4, when in fact it did exactly what the “tin” said?

Should I have got lost in the colours of “Rio”, forgetting about the fact that the story line was so damn predictable?

Why wasn’t I swept away by the quirkiness of “Rubber“?

Why was I so cold in front of that tragedy that was “Rabbit hole“?

Why couldn’t I just laugh watching “The Dilemma” while everybody else was in tears around me in the theatre?

Why couldn’t I just go with “The Adjustment Bureau“, instead of looking for all the plot holes?

Why wasn’t I enchanted by Submarine?

And why am I more terrorized than excited by the idea of the forthcoming Tintin movie by Spielberg (a director I love making a film about my ultimate childhood hero?) … Why am I so afraid I’ll be disappointed?

Am I growing old and just tired of movies or are there just fewer and fewer fresh good things our there?

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Oscar Winners 2011

February 28, 2011 1 Comment

The Academy Awards ceremony is over and the statuettes have been given all away exactly to who we thought might win… Once again, Oscar disappoints in originality, courage, boldness, and predictability reigned.  But in most cases what was to be expected was also the best available choice.

If you really asked me Toy Story 3 should have won and Christopher Nolan should have been recognized at least as a screen-writer, or even better as a director for what was one of the most inventive and original film of the year: Inception. Instead the Academy opted for the most obvious Tom Hooper: his directing on “The King’s Speech” was showy, obvious, by number and lacked of any subtlety (you can see read my review, which was written long before the film even got released).

Is this guy really worthy of standing in the same league as Steven Spielberg, Clint Eastwood, Peter Jackson, Roman Polanski,Oliver Stone, Milos Forman, Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Wise, George Cukor, Billy Wilder, Martin Scorsese, Vincente Minnelli, David Lean, John Ford, Michael Curtiz, just to mention a few?

And yes, of course, Colin Firth was good, but was he really better than James Franco in 127 hours, a film that was entirely dependent on him stuck in a hole? No, he wasn’t. However he deserved the Award last year for “A Single Man” and even Colin himself knows that (that’s why he thanked Tom Ford in his speech).

The Social Network, even though that too was a flawed movie, felt more like a solid piece of film-making.

Well, you can obviously tell I am a bit disappointed…. Oh well, that’s the way it is. The King’s Speech joins the list of Oscar winner crowd-pleasing films, like Shakespeare in Love or Crash, Ordinary People, Driving Miss Daisy and so on. Films that found themselves at the right time in the right place and got away with winning (Let’s face it, even the Hurt Locker last year). Not bad ones, but not that great either.

On the whole this was one of the lamest show in the last few years. James Franco was under-used and Anne Hathaway she felt stiff and was confined by a silly, bitty, and unfunny script.

There was nothing remarkable about the show itself: no glamour, no drama, no surprises… It makes me wonder whether I should have gone to bed earlier and watch the highlights tomorrow…

Few nice moments but that’s about it, just nice: Natalie Portman’s speech, Colin’s Speech (though he has been better before), Melissa Leo cursing and droppping the “F” bomb at one point (hahaha), Christian Bale showing that he has got a heart and that nerd guy who got the Oscar for the short film who said “I should have got a haircut”.

On the whole a pretty forgettable show, with very forgettable hosts.

Here’s the list of all the winners and some comments:

BEST PICTURE

The King’s Speech – WINNER

BEST DIRECTOR

Tom Hooper – The King’s Speech – WINNER

BEST ACTOR

Colin Firth – The King’s Speech – WINNER

BEST ACTRESS

Natalie Portman – Black Swan – WINNER

Beautiful performance and a well deserved Oscar.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Christian Bale – The Fighter – WINNER

A very showy performance, but still a good one. Also Christian redeemed himself for all the bad he did, by getting moved and giving a nice speech.I just hope that beard is there for some reason!

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Melissa Leo – The Fighter – WINNER

I knew it the moment I saw the fighter.

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

In a Better World – Denmark – WINNER

I haven’t seen this yet, but it’s winning awards left and right… I’m getting curious.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

David Seidler – The King’s Speech – WINNER

Yawn… How predictable… Poor Nolan

BEST ANIMATION

Toy Story 3 – WINNER

Was there any other choice? This should have got the Best feature film too!!

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Aaron Sorkin – The Social Network – WINNER

Well, of course.

BEST ART DIRECTION

Alice in Wonderland – WINNER

mmm.. Not so sure, really. A tilted tree is really not enough for getting an Oscar. But then again, it was the easiest and laziest choice.

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

Inception – WINNER

This was a surprise, but a very welcome one. It was certainly a harder film to light that True Grit. However Rogers Deakins will have to win sooner or later.

BEST SOUND MIXING

Inception – WINNER

BEST SOUND EDITING

Inception – WINNER

Both this and the previous award are very very hard to differentiate for me, so it’s good to see them going to the same film.

BEST ORIGINAL SONG

We Belong Together (from Toy Story 3) by Randy Newman – WINNER

20 nominations for Randy Newman and this is only his second win. Also it brings the Oscar count to “2” for this wonderful film, so I’m just happy for it.

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

The Social Network – Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross – WINNER

The most original score for sure. Totally deserved!!

BEST COSTUMES

Alice in Wonderland – WINNER

The only redeeming feature of that film.

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

Inside Job – WINNER

Pity for “Exit through the gift shop” which was an extremely entertaining doc (and it would have been good to see who would have collected the award). But this one was clearly a better one.

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT

Strangers No More – WINNER

BEST FILM EDITING

The Social Network – WINNER

Clearly this was some of the best edited film (especially if you’ve seen the special feature on the DVD). 127 Hours was a more flashy one and slightly more interesting, but they say that the best editing is the invisible one.

BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM

The Lost Thing – WINNER

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM

God of Love – WINNER

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

Inception – WINNER

Well, was there really anything else?

BEST MAKE-UP

The Wolfman – WINNER

A lazy Award. I’m sure voters just saw Baker’s name and voted for him. The film was rubbish and in fact it’s impossible to tell what was make-up and what was CGI (including the clip that was shown during the show)

To conclude, the only thing I am pleased about is that a little film like The King’s Speech once again follows the a trend set in the last couple of years whereby small, indie movies do better than Hollywood biggies… But hey, they could have done the same thing just by rewarding “Black Swan” or “Blue Valentine” or even “Animal Kingdom”.

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Alice in Wonderland – Review

December 12, 2010 4 Comments

ALICE IN WONDERLAND (2010) 

Directed by Tim Burton. Starring Johnny Depp, Mia Wasikowska, Helena Bonham Carter

On paper this movie is something which had all the potential to be the movie of the year: Tim Burton’s visionary genius re-imagining one of the most fantastic and imaginative stories ever.  Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen. Mia Wasikowska (from the wonderful “In Treatment”) as Alice herself. Special Effects extravaganza in 3D. And a never-ending list of great actors and  actresses lending their voices to all those loved characters from our childhood. I would have said “count me in!” anytime!!! And yet, this ended up to be possibly the biggest turkey of the year!

It’s not really an awful film, but knowing what this could have been like, it just leaves you really disappointed.

How could it have happened?

In a way it reminded me of Steven’s Spielberg’s Hook, one the (few) big missteps of his career. In that movie too Spielberg had made the terrible mistake of messing with a classic story: for example we had a grown up Peter Pan going back to Neverland. Here Alice has grown up too and forgot everything about Wonderland which is now a run down place with a Gothic feel, typical of any Tim Burton’s movie. Well, that would probably be all right, except that Burton, by updating the world really managed to take the wonder out of “Wonderland”.

Tim Burton’s film is essentially a sequel/re-imagining of the Lewis Carroll without all the joyful surprises, the sense of discovery and  fun of that book and more crucially, without a single good original idea! None of the liberties the makers took seems to work culminating with fight scene with a dragon at the end  of the end which seems to belong to a different film altogether. And (big spoiler here… watch out) what’s point of all that going to China at the end? What a mess!

There was another Disney’s movie back in the 80s called Return to Oz, which made the same mistake and used the same device of having Dorothy going back to Oz only to find it all changed and half-destroyed and now look almost like a kind of post-apocalyptic landscape where everything seem to be covered in ash. However in that film the story and the characters were so compelling that somehow they got a way with it, in Burton’s Alice in Wonderland all the characters are so annoying and only just half-sketched that it’s hard to care about any of them. In fact it seems like their accents, make up  and CGI enhancements have replaced their personalities.

Michael Sheen‘s White Rabbit appears a couple of times and is probably the most confusing of them all, since it relies on your knowledge of the character from the previous incarnation of the story to make any sense of it. Where is he going? Why is there at all? What’s his point? is he there to help Alice or the Queen? Stephen Fry‘s Cheshire Cat and  Alan Rickman‘s Blue Caterpillar are just as superfluous to the story. Once again, it all feels rather over-blown, over-crowded with characters.

And finally Johnny Depp who’s impersonation of the Mad Hatter is the most annoying of them all and possibly one of the actor’s worse performance of his career . Now, I really used to like Johnny Depp, but it seems that in the last few years he’s only been playing the same over-the-top character over and over again. His Mad Hatter seems an extension and a mixture of his previous “mad characters”: there’s a little bit  from Tim Burton’s previous creations, from Willy Wonka in Chocolate Factory,  to Sweeney Todd and even his previous Edward Scissorhands but there’s also lots of reminders to Jack Sparrow from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, and hints from The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Is Johnny Depp playing the same character over and over again? What happened to the sweet, restrained and understated performances of his early work like the beautiful What’s Eating Gilbert Grape and Donnie Brasco? And most awful of them all Anne Hathaway‘s take of White Queen, who’s mannerism is just as annoying as her eyebrow. It might have been all intentional (in which case, even worse) but it was certainly a very bad choice to have her acting like that.

Helena Bonham Carter‘s impersonation of the Red Queen is one of the few redeeming factor in the whole film and the scenes with her are probably the highlights in an otherwise flat and misjudged series of sequences. Though even her bizarre creation becomes a bit tedious after a while.

Even the special effects (which by themselves are top class) are so diluted in the poor story that somehow failed to strike a chord and surprise us. Not to mention the use of the 3D which is probably one of the poorest use of it I’ve seen this year (together with “Clash of the Titans”). I guess it has to do with the fact that the movie was actually filmed on 2D and then retrofitted (I am not quite sure whether this is the right term for it) afterwards. This is a technique that not only doesn’t work but also brings a bad reputation to 3D itself (I keep on hearing a lot of people complaining about how bad 3D is, but they’ve only seen Clash of the Titans of Alice in Wonderland,  and they believe that’s what 3D really is).

Just a quick word about the music score: yes, it could have been good, if only they had work out where to use it, as opposed to ending up having music throughout the whole film, thus diminishing the effect that music should have. Overblown is once again the word that comes to mind.

I wonder what this film could have been like if maybe Tim Burton had made it, without Disney behind his shoulders. But as it is, on the whole, this mish-mash of Disney and Burton doesn’t really hold together and it proves once again that Tim Burton is the “director-that-could-be-great-but-rarely-really-is”.

5.5/10

OTHER RELATED REVIEWS (or, you’d better watch something else, instead of this)

Toy Story 3

Tron: Legacy

Back to the Future

 

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The King’s Speech – Review

November 9, 2010 6 Comments

The King’s Speech (6.5/10)

Directed by Tom Hooper. Starring Helena Bonham Carter, Michael Gambon, Colin Firth

C’mon let’s face it. This film has already been nominated with all sorts of Oscars, even 3 months before the ceremony (and it’s going to win quite a few as well, including the best film). It’s one of those crowd pleaser that somehow manages to score really high, despite the fact that’s it’s actually a fairly average film. What elevates “The King’s Speech” is its cast, there’s no doubt about that.

Colin Firth will be laughing all the way to the Oscars and most likely will win what he actually deserved in 2009 for A Single Man, and Geoffrey Rush, will somehow manage once again to get his name up there with the other nominees at least. In fact, each scene with the two actors together is worth the price of your tickets, even if you have to sit the rest of the movie which , to be honest has some pretty clunky bits.

On the whole it feels a little bit like the “TV movie of the week” or a theatre play, in the same way “The Queen” did a few years ago (a film which I loved by the way and which I still think was highly superior, much more clever, wittier and a lot more subtle that this). The fact that it looks like a play is by no means a criticism. Some of my favorite movies (One flew over the cuckoo’s nest, rear window just to mention a few) are very much confined films which could very well be made on a stage (in fact most of them have). Unfortunately this film, in my view, doesn’t really have a good director at its helm like “the Queen” had. In fact it seems like every single decision Tom Hooper has made is wrong: the cartoony staging of certain scenes for example (the one where the wife sits on the king diaphram as he practices his speeches is really idiotic for example). The choices of camera angles or camera movements are just too showy and they only seem to enhance the silly side of the film: those tracking shots forward and backward within the same room used as time-lapse are really very artificial and they actually draw attention on themselves instead of serving the film and its story. And those shots of the king being framed in a corner or the screen are anything but subtle. Clearly “Subtle” is not a word that’s in mr Hooper’s dictionary: every single time the King is about to give an important speech, on cue, the music starts, just to warn the audience “Oh watch out… this is going to be emotional”…  Well, it seems to work. Audiences all over the world are loving this film.

“The King’s Speech” is clearly aimed at an American audience, possibly even more that the Queen was. Every historical information is spoon-fed to the audience in a pretty clichés way to the point of becoming a little bit annoying and taking you away from the real good part of the story which is the relationship between Firth and Rush. Thankfully  their performances are so much fun, that they manage to elevate the film and making it OK, despite of everything else.

Best film of the year?  Well, it has costumes, good performances, big names, it mixes drama with comedy, somebody with a disability… It must be then.

I’m afraid not. It’s just an average film, well made and well acted and  looking for attention. Sadly it might get it.

6.5/10

Time out has a nice piece on this film, which doesn’t make me feel too guilty aboutgiving a mere 6.5 to the film

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