Cecil says: The best thing about this film was actually the venue: Rochester's Cinema Theater (yes, it reminds me of getting Gateau Cake in my home town of Hull as a kid; and in many ways Rochester is rather like Hull, funnily enough). The Cinema dates back to 1914, and claims to be one of America's oldest continuously running theaters. Hats off to the local community that restored the place in the 80s and kept it running today. And, only $5 each for a double bill (we didn't bother staying for the X-Men...).
The Art of Getting By has had quite a few bad reviews, but actually I quite enjoyed it.
I think we needed a simple teen love story after the grief and sadness of the last film we saw. And the main character, George, had a certain resonance for me, taking me back to my last years at high school, with his philosophical approach to life and his fumbled attempts at romance.
Of course, not all of us 'got the girl' during our high school years, and I don't want to ruin things for those who haven't seen the film yet, but you kind of know things will all turn out OK for George in the end, just because this is a feel-good movie and it wants to end happily.
So George felt fairly believable, if perhaps a bit of a caricature of the kind of 17 year old some of us would like to have been. We don't really know much about Sally, the target of George's affections and friendship. But maybe that's the reality of teenage romance and friendship: we don't really get inside the head of the people we date and/or fancy, do we? At least, not at that age...
Overall, though, as I say, I actually enjoyed this film. Not really very memorable, but another nice way to spend a cool evening while it's hot outside.
Oh, and get this: Sally is played by Emma Roberts, who is none other than the niece of Julia; she got into film by hanging out on sets when her aunt was performing over the years. Easy for some, huh?
***
Bea says: A nice-looking film, with easy-on-the-eye actors playing all the lead roles, and New York's Upper East Side starring as itself in autumn/winter, all leaves in the park and Christmas lights. In fact I whiled away time through the rather thin plot by just enjoying the visuals.
The story was diverting, if not particularly original - angst-ridden, slightly gawky, and not very good student George gets a shot to hang out with the "A" list popular kids when he becomes "just friends" with Sally. Borrowing rather heavily from 80s classic Less Than Zero, all the teens in the film are privileged, wealthy and not lacking in opportunity, with mostly disinterested parents. The film does focus closely on George and his inner and outer life, so we do get some insights into his relationship with his mother, but other characters, such as Sally's mother, are rather stereotyped. George makes another new friend through the course of the film - an older ex-student of the school, and introduces him to Sally - with predictable results. So far, so like true life.
I might have been happier with this film if it resisted the urge to add on a very unlike real-life sugar coated happy ending.
**
Wednesday, 27 July 2011
Monday, 25 July 2011
Beginners
Bea says: A sad film. Touted as a fun-loving flick about a young man's dad coming out at an advanced age, it is actually about death, loss and grief, and in fact is a good exploration of these themes - but it is, nevertheless, a sad film to watch. This might be because I have watched Cecil experience many of the events of the film, and have some experience with them myself, and I suspect that most audiences will contain significant numbers of people who can directly relate to the loss of one or both parents.
The plot follows Oliver (Ewan McGregor), whose father Hal (Christopher Plummer) admits he has always been gay following the death of Oliver's mother. A short period of enjoyable exploration of Hal's long-suppressed sexuality follows (support groups, Pride, nightclubs, and a boyfriend, Andy, well played by Goran Visnjic), but all too soon he is diagnosed with cancer, and his decline and death follows. There are some insights into what being gay was like in the 1950s, Hal's youth, and I enjoyed hearing the recording of Ginsberg reading.
The story then follows Oliver, who has always struggled to form meaningful, long-lasting relationships, and who is trying again with Anna (Melanie Laurent) despite being in the depths of grief. A somewhat happy, if bittersweet ending concludes the film.
It left me melancholic, although not unhappily so, and I would definitely recommend seeing this film. A good film for an autumn Sunday afternoon. Not so great for a hot summer Saturday.
***
Cecil says: I felt very like Bea on this one: somewhat duped by the film's preview, which was trying to sell it as a hilarious look at life as an elderly gay man. In fact it was really about grief and sadness, so no wonder we both came away feeling even less like skipping down the street afterwards than we would have anyway on an afternoon of sultry heat.
The shame was that this film was showing at the Little Theatre in Rochester, New York. This is a cinema that sells itself on 'foreign and independent film', but I guess they ran out of such movies, so this was the best on offer this weekend.
It's just two years since my own father died - also of cancer - so I inevitably related to many of the things Ewan McGregor was going through (and it is no surprise to learn that the storyline is actually autobiographical). But maybe if I had known that this was the plot, I might not have chosen such an anniversary reminder.
If Ewan McGregor's character was believable, I can't say the same about his girlfriend, Anna. A bit of a mystery; with an apparently suicidal father (yep, gets cheerier, the more you hear, huh?) and a life without roots. But we don't really get to see much of what makes her tick, which makes me wonder how well Mike Mills knew her, if this is indeed autobiographical?
I didn't like this as much as Bea did; certainly felt duped by the film's release write-up; and can barely even remember any of the scenes about the Dad being gay, so irrelevant they seemed to the underlying plot of grief...
**
The plot follows Oliver (Ewan McGregor), whose father Hal (Christopher Plummer) admits he has always been gay following the death of Oliver's mother. A short period of enjoyable exploration of Hal's long-suppressed sexuality follows (support groups, Pride, nightclubs, and a boyfriend, Andy, well played by Goran Visnjic), but all too soon he is diagnosed with cancer, and his decline and death follows. There are some insights into what being gay was like in the 1950s, Hal's youth, and I enjoyed hearing the recording of Ginsberg reading.
The story then follows Oliver, who has always struggled to form meaningful, long-lasting relationships, and who is trying again with Anna (Melanie Laurent) despite being in the depths of grief. A somewhat happy, if bittersweet ending concludes the film.
It left me melancholic, although not unhappily so, and I would definitely recommend seeing this film. A good film for an autumn Sunday afternoon. Not so great for a hot summer Saturday.
***
Cecil says: I felt very like Bea on this one: somewhat duped by the film's preview, which was trying to sell it as a hilarious look at life as an elderly gay man. In fact it was really about grief and sadness, so no wonder we both came away feeling even less like skipping down the street afterwards than we would have anyway on an afternoon of sultry heat.
The shame was that this film was showing at the Little Theatre in Rochester, New York. This is a cinema that sells itself on 'foreign and independent film', but I guess they ran out of such movies, so this was the best on offer this weekend.
It's just two years since my own father died - also of cancer - so I inevitably related to many of the things Ewan McGregor was going through (and it is no surprise to learn that the storyline is actually autobiographical). But maybe if I had known that this was the plot, I might not have chosen such an anniversary reminder.
If Ewan McGregor's character was believable, I can't say the same about his girlfriend, Anna. A bit of a mystery; with an apparently suicidal father (yep, gets cheerier, the more you hear, huh?) and a life without roots. But we don't really get to see much of what makes her tick, which makes me wonder how well Mike Mills knew her, if this is indeed autobiographical?
I didn't like this as much as Bea did; certainly felt duped by the film's release write-up; and can barely even remember any of the scenes about the Dad being gay, so irrelevant they seemed to the underlying plot of grief...
**
Monday, 18 July 2011
Larry Crowne
Bea says: Who on earth are Hollywood getting to screen-write at the moment? (I'm afraid to say the answer is...Tom Hanks). After the poor-to-average writing of Bridesmaids and Bad Teacher, comes this confused attempt at romantic comedy.
The basic plot outline: Tom Hanks plays a middle-aged divorced man who has just been made redundant from his service industry job at "U-Mart". An all round good-guy, he served his country for 20 years in the Navy (as a cook), but, crucially, has no college education. In order to improve his employment prospects, he enrols in his local community college, taking introductory courses in economics, academic writing, and speaking. Enter Julia Roberts, his burnt-out teacher of Speech 101 (or whatever it was called).
So far, so good. If it had just been left this way, and the story could have played out as set, it might have managed to be a passable, if predictable and forgettable, romantic comedy. But oh no - enter the scooter gang. Yes, that's right - scooter gang. Is it 1969 you might ask? Are The Who at the top of the charts, and are we all going to Brighton to face-off the Rockers?
Er, no. Although, confusingly, all the members of the scooter gang are dressed as if it's 1994, it actually is the present day, and some poor misinformed Hollywood writer appears to think scooter gangs still exist. Suffice to say that Hanks is befriended by a young female scooter driver - Gugu Mbatha-Raw - (he also drives one) and this is the catalyst for his life to change, as she makes him over, makes his house over and introduces him to her "wild", "free-spirited" way of life, which basically involves riding her scooter around town, and then dropping out of college. Hanks benefits enormously from this, managing in the end to pass his courses and get Julia Roberts, but it remains unclear exactly what scooter girl gets from this relationship.
Hanks, take a writing course.
*
Cecil says: Yes, Bea said it all really. I thought the script had been written by a 15 year-old school boy because the plot was so thin and the characters were caricatures. And not even caricatures, in the case of the scooter gang: they were somehow a Hollywood dream of what gangs should be like: kind of clean, basically good at heart, fun-loving folk. I was surprised it was written by Hanks himself and Nia Vardalos, who wrote My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
Nothing else to say, really. Better than standing in the tropical rain on a steamy afternoon in southern Florida. But you know, we saw it 48 hours ago, and I can't remember anything about it.
*.5
The basic plot outline: Tom Hanks plays a middle-aged divorced man who has just been made redundant from his service industry job at "U-Mart". An all round good-guy, he served his country for 20 years in the Navy (as a cook), but, crucially, has no college education. In order to improve his employment prospects, he enrols in his local community college, taking introductory courses in economics, academic writing, and speaking. Enter Julia Roberts, his burnt-out teacher of Speech 101 (or whatever it was called).
So far, so good. If it had just been left this way, and the story could have played out as set, it might have managed to be a passable, if predictable and forgettable, romantic comedy. But oh no - enter the scooter gang. Yes, that's right - scooter gang. Is it 1969 you might ask? Are The Who at the top of the charts, and are we all going to Brighton to face-off the Rockers?
Er, no. Although, confusingly, all the members of the scooter gang are dressed as if it's 1994, it actually is the present day, and some poor misinformed Hollywood writer appears to think scooter gangs still exist. Suffice to say that Hanks is befriended by a young female scooter driver - Gugu Mbatha-Raw - (he also drives one) and this is the catalyst for his life to change, as she makes him over, makes his house over and introduces him to her "wild", "free-spirited" way of life, which basically involves riding her scooter around town, and then dropping out of college. Hanks benefits enormously from this, managing in the end to pass his courses and get Julia Roberts, but it remains unclear exactly what scooter girl gets from this relationship.
Hanks, take a writing course.
*
Cecil says: Yes, Bea said it all really. I thought the script had been written by a 15 year-old school boy because the plot was so thin and the characters were caricatures. And not even caricatures, in the case of the scooter gang: they were somehow a Hollywood dream of what gangs should be like: kind of clean, basically good at heart, fun-loving folk. I was surprised it was written by Hanks himself and Nia Vardalos, who wrote My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
Nothing else to say, really. Better than standing in the tropical rain on a steamy afternoon in southern Florida. But you know, we saw it 48 hours ago, and I can't remember anything about it.
*.5
Saturday, 9 July 2011
The Tree of Life
Bea says: Beautiful. Captivating. Hypnotic. Dreamlike. All words that went through my mind as I was immersed in the experience of watching The Tree of Life.
Plot? What little there was of one vaguely documents the childhood of Sean Penn's character, Jack, as a boy. Dialogue? Even less, other than dreamy, often biblical, words voiced over images of deserts, rivers, oceans, forests, space, and electron microscope images of our own bodily interiors. One sequence involves dinosaurs - a kind of "before we were here" pre-conception/creation/intelligent design kind of thing I think.
Kind of about death, grief, childhood, marriage, motherhood, religion and meaning in life (says a lot by saying nothing at all). Lots of symbolism and biblical references - some of these I got, some I didn't.
Loved the soundtrack. Go for the experience, not the story.
***
Cecil says: Don't go to this film if you're feeling even the slightest bit sleepy: you won't survive the 2h 18 minutes, I guarantee...
The opening scene was a bit weird, but then it got going with this family in the 1950s, only for the whole story to stop and we had to watch about 20 minutes of wildlife and the world, as Bea says (I hadn't even realised that some of the shots were of our insides). It all felt more like watching a David Attenborough wildlife documentary (without his voice), combined with Jurassic Park, for a very very odd few scenes.
What was THAT all about? And that basically sums up most of the film, I'm afraid. I'm glad Bea knew that much of it was based on biblical allegory; part of me guessed as much; and the last time we went to a film that was all Bible and allegory, I almost walked out (in fact, I think I did). But the music was lovely and some of the filming quite captivating too, so I didn't come that close to leaving.
I knew it had to return to the plot sooner or later, so it just required a bit of patience. Quite disturbing scenes often, boys growing up with a violent father and getting into lots of scrapes.
Rather like a symphony, which comes back to its original theme at the end, you kind of know when this film is drawing to a close because it goes all funny and weird again. So, I left the cinema thinking: hmmm, not sure what that was all about really. I fear the producers wanted me to go away thinking 'wow' - and maybe if I knew the biblical references, I might have. But I didn't.
**.5
Plot? What little there was of one vaguely documents the childhood of Sean Penn's character, Jack, as a boy. Dialogue? Even less, other than dreamy, often biblical, words voiced over images of deserts, rivers, oceans, forests, space, and electron microscope images of our own bodily interiors. One sequence involves dinosaurs - a kind of "before we were here" pre-conception/creation/intelligent design kind of thing I think.
Kind of about death, grief, childhood, marriage, motherhood, religion and meaning in life (says a lot by saying nothing at all). Lots of symbolism and biblical references - some of these I got, some I didn't.
Loved the soundtrack. Go for the experience, not the story.
***
Cecil says: Don't go to this film if you're feeling even the slightest bit sleepy: you won't survive the 2h 18 minutes, I guarantee...
The opening scene was a bit weird, but then it got going with this family in the 1950s, only for the whole story to stop and we had to watch about 20 minutes of wildlife and the world, as Bea says (I hadn't even realised that some of the shots were of our insides). It all felt more like watching a David Attenborough wildlife documentary (without his voice), combined with Jurassic Park, for a very very odd few scenes.
What was THAT all about? And that basically sums up most of the film, I'm afraid. I'm glad Bea knew that much of it was based on biblical allegory; part of me guessed as much; and the last time we went to a film that was all Bible and allegory, I almost walked out (in fact, I think I did). But the music was lovely and some of the filming quite captivating too, so I didn't come that close to leaving.
I knew it had to return to the plot sooner or later, so it just required a bit of patience. Quite disturbing scenes often, boys growing up with a violent father and getting into lots of scrapes.
Rather like a symphony, which comes back to its original theme at the end, you kind of know when this film is drawing to a close because it goes all funny and weird again. So, I left the cinema thinking: hmmm, not sure what that was all about really. I fear the producers wanted me to go away thinking 'wow' - and maybe if I knew the biblical references, I might have. But I didn't.
**.5
Monday, 4 July 2011
Midnight in Paris
Cecil says:
I hadn’t seen a Woody Allen film for years. Not, in fact, since the whole saga over his thing about young girls, and the creepy way he continued to play the lead male in his own films opposite some gorgeous young thing. But Midnight in Paris was on at the right time in the right cinema – the Athena in Athens, Ohio (not quite what it once was, when it opened in 1915, since it’s now divided into three screens, but great that it’s still there on the main street in downtown Athens).
The film begins with beautiful shots of Paris: the places, buildings and sights we all love; and the atmosphere that just seems to fill the air for anyone who has ever been there.
But then two things happen early on that take time to adjust to: is that Woody Allen walking across the square in a Hitchcock-style appearance at the end of those opening shots? And then meet the new Woody Allen: Owen Wilson, who plays aspiring writer Gil, is just Woody Allen in a different body. He manages the delivery, the body language, the personality, which were Woody Allen on screen for three decades, and he manages it extraordinarily well.
As to the plot: this aspiring writer is engaged to the wrong woman; they’re in Paris with her parents, whose focus is money and shopping. Gil has a dream, and loves Paris just for being Paris.
He wanders off alone one night and finds himself picked up by some friendly folk in a very old-fashioned car and whisked off to a party where he first meets Zelda, and then Scott…And suddenly he finds himself back in the 1920s, his golden era; the time he would have liked to live in if he could choose.
It’s a kind of cleverer Goodnight Sweetheart (UK TV series), as he gets to meet all the creative, arty thinkers and artists of the period, all of whom lived in or had a connection to Paris. Meanwhile he goes back during the day to his misfit pre-marriage disconnection with his fiancée and her family.
I too love the 20s for style and image, though it’s also true, as the film tries to tell us, that really we don’t know how life would have been in comparison to our own time, because we have no perspective on our own era, and only have distance from the older time.
It’s a great story with some lovely touches (Bunuel being given a tip for a film script; Hemingway constantly being driven to be so manly). One or two slightly ‘unbelievable’ touches like the young couple Gil tries to stop who speak ‘no English’ (unheard of in modern-day Paris); and the Polidor restaurant, which I know and love, being used for the 1920s scenes, but then Gil goes back there during the day and it has become a launderette…Only we know different, don’t we?
Still, minor lapses that take nothing away from a thoroughly enjoyable evening
****
Bea says: This is how to do romantic comedy, Paul Feig and Jake Kasden (see recent reviews of Bridesmaids and Bad Teacher)! A light touch, a good eye, a good story, a bit of intellectual clout for those of us who like to think a bit as well, and it leaves you feeling good. Pretty much perfect.
****
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