Sunshine on Leith

Seen at the wonderful Palace Cinema in Malton, North Yorkshire

Cecil says: The film opens with a bunch of soldiers in an armoured vehicle somewhere in the Middle East. One of them begins to sing and is joined by the rest of them before you know it. Same things troops have done, and sailors before them, for centuries...

It was only when the two main characters are back home in Edinburgh, and begin singing again – this time with rather well-choreographed steps down the Leith streets – that it dawned on me: Sunshine on Leith is a musical.

Now, this is the second musical I’ve seen recently without knowing it in advance (Rock of Ages caught me out too), and I’m not a big fan of the genre. But Sunshine on Leith was a lot of fun, the singing was really rather good (well, it is all based on The Proclaimers’ music, so what do you expect?), and by the final scene, with the mass flash-mob in central Edinburgh, I felt like getting up and shaking my stuff with the rest of them.

I don’t know anything about film-making, so I’ve no idea how you go about transposing a stage play to the big screen, but it didn’t feel as if the producers of this movie did much transposing. Apart from the (very frequent) camera panning over Edinburgh skylines (so frequent in fact that you feel as if the Edinburgh Tourist Board had a hand in the final cut), virtually every scene felt as if it had been taken straight from the stage.

By half way through, I was whispering to Bea every few minutes, ‘I can feel a song coming up’, and sure enough one of the main characters would burst into song, usually backed by the amassed crowd of onlookers in the pub, on the steps, in the museum, wherever you liked, basically.

Plot-wise, this was a nice story about two young soldiers getting out of the army after a touch tour of duty in Afghanistan (I think), and readapting to home life; it’s about their relationships, their parents, about dreams and wavering views of where life is taking us.

If that sounds a bit deep, I’ve pitched it wrong. This is a fun film, which I’m sure most of us can relate to on one level or other. There were a few weak moments in the dialogue and the storyline, but the overall feel was positive, so who cares?

I don’t suppose you’ll see such glowing reviews from the Glasgow side of Scotland. But I’ll let Bea elaborate on that...

***.5

Bea says: 

The musical aspect of Sunshine on Leith caught me by surprise too - although I was familiar with The Proclaimer's album of the same name, and had read some blurb on the film, so knew it was about two soldiers returning from Afghanistan, and that it was set to The Proclaimers music.  "Set to" made me think that The Proclaimers would be somewhere in the background, so I wasn't expecting people to sing them, but did enjoy it.

There were some really good performers and performances here - Jane Horrocks as Jean and Peter Mullen as Rab particularly, and the stage play feel means the dialogue feels stronger than it otherwise might.  There are some slight plot lapses in my view - Rab's infidelity is rather quickly got over by Jean, considering how badly she initially reacted, at a point in the film where suddenly all the difficulties experienced by everyone were being rather quickly got over - true 1950s musical style I guess!  The Proclaimers music and lyrics is well used to hang the story together - I've seen a few of these kinds of musicals and often this is not the case!

Edinburgh stars as itself and very nearly steals the show; the rather dismissive references to Glasgow are notable by those (like me) who have a soft spot for Scotland's other big city.. 

Most touching moment?  The lyrics of Letter from America demonstrating how similar life is in some ways to a hundred or more years ago when people left Scotland for work, and for a new and hopefully better life.

A lovely feel-good film for a dull afternoon; a bit twee in its wrapping up of all the plotlines but with a little bit of poignancy to ensure it isn't forgettable.

***.5

About Time

Cecil says: If you like a story that entertains you while making you reflect on life, then About Time might be just the film for you. Surely Richard Curtis’s best film since Four Weddings and a Funeral.

We saw it at the wonderful Palace Cinema in Malton, North Yorkshire, one of those fantastic old cinemas that somehow survived the ravages of World War 2 and the 1960s/70s bingo boom.

It’s really a film about father/son relationships, with Bill Nighy fantastic as ever alongside Domhnall Gleeson (probably best-known for playing Bill Weasley in Harry Potter films, though I saw him last in Anna Karenina – which I hadn’t much liked...).

In the opening scenes I wasn’t sure I was going to relate to much of this: as in most of Curtis’s films, this is a fairly affluent middle-class English family, not as posh as most Hugh Grant characters, but just a bit comfortable, the English equivalent of those glamorous families that feature in most US TV movies.

But within a few minutes I was won over. Partly it’s Nighy’s acting and just his presence on the screen; partly the engaging storyline. I don’t want to do a plot-spoiler here, but its premise is that you can time travel back through your own life and have another go at doing things you thought didn’t quite work the first time.

Curtis clearly likes a good wedding and funeral, hence his earlier classic. And in About Time, his best moments also probably come at Tim’s wedding and the funeral of his Dad (a particularly moving scene, suggesting Curtis may well have been through that himself).

And the overall message of this feel-good film: Enjoy it while you can. Given the short release time of most film these days, I’d say the say about this film: Go and see it while you can.

****

Bea says: We dashed into the cinema to see this after running late and bolting down a plateful of noodles at the local Thai restaurant before the screening. Running in, I wondered if it would be worth it or if we should have just lingered over dinner and skipped the movie. Well, contrary to my expectations, it was so worth it.

Now, I like Richard Curtis's films. Like everyone else, I loved 4 Weddings and I've kept up with his output and seen, and enjoyed, what followed, although I don't think anything has been quite as standout as the original and first. I expected this to be enjoyable, but not particularly earth-shattering or memorable.

But actually, it either caught me in a nostalgic, reflective mood, or it is particularly well drafted and written. I found myself close to (pleasant but rather sad) tears of nostalgia during the first part of the film, as I remembered my own young days in London - restaurants, rain, parties, rain, being walked home by someone you might just fancy, more rain...

And I was thoughtfully introspective during the second part, as the young couple we follow through the story have children and cope with life, and death, and family. There is a wedding, a funeral, at least one Christmas, and a few births, and then the charming quirk of the film: some time travel, all accompanied by a well-chosen soundtrack and great performances by all, but particularly the wonderful Bill Nighy.

We had a long drive home from the Palace Cinema in Malton which was quietly and mistily atmospheric after the show, and the mist rolled in and out as we drove over the North York Moors , talking about the film and our lives before we met.

This morning I rang my Dad and we talked, and he and Mum shared a joke and a laugh while we talked. It's good to have family. Even though, I mused last night, no one in my close circle of friends has really had the kind of longevity the couple in the film had - for those who had it, the whole babies/perfect life thing didn't happen, and for those for whom it did, the relationships didn't necessarily last But - families we all still are, nevertheless.

See this if you would like a poignant reminder of years gone by, or need to be reminded that life is good, sometimes.

***.5

Frances Ha

Bea says:  We went to see this mostly because it looked the least heavy of the two films on at the Glasgow Film Theatre on Monday night  (we were celebrating a birthday after all).  The synopsis sounded OK – it sounded like a chick flick actually.  

I hadn’t seen Noah Baumbach’s previous work, but the notes given out before the screening suggested that he had some serious fans and was well considered critically.

And it wasn’t long into the film that I thought about something I’d read about in the Metro recently – the Bechdel test, which asks whether a work of fiction features at least two women who talk about something other than a man.  I’d been struck by how few films pass the test (the Metro had rated some notable recent films), including a number of films written, produced and/or directed by women (and apparently about half of those that do pass only do so because the women talk about marriage and babies instead of men).  I think Frances Ha would pass the test – just about. 

There is a lot of talk about men (and some about marriage and babies), but there is also talk about careers, mistakes, successes, dreams and life in general.  It was good to see a film where the men were peripheral to the two central characters – I can’t remember when, or if, I’d ever seen that before.

I also fairly quickly after the start of the film thought about the TV series The Girls, which I have never seen actually (not sure it’s available yet on Freeview in the UK) but have read and seen things about, and I suspect this film has some similarities – the lives of current 20-something women, and their experiences of life and sex. 

These days I am a 40-something woman, but I remember those years like they were just yesterday, and this film rang very true indeed, particularly so in its portrayal of close female friendships and the post-university years.  It’s well written, well-shot in black and white, well acted and, crucially, well directed.

I’ll be catching up with Bambach’s back catalogue and looking out with interest for his next collaboration with Greta Gerwig, who co-wrote this.

****

Cecil says: What I liked most of all about Frances Ha is that it told a story without needing a conventional beginning, middle and end. It was just a chunk out of someone’s life; more than a snapshot because it lasted about a year or so, but we enter into Frances’s life as she has a play-fight with her friend Sophie, and we leave her inserting her name into her new apartment letter box, as the next stage in her life begins.

For the first half hour or so I wasn’t sure about this film. It felt a bit like an episode of Friends, with an arty edge to their lives, and maybe a touch of Billy Elliott, with the dancing school and lessons being key to large parts of Frances’s life. But by the end, I didn’t feel the need to compare it to any other film (certainly not to Annie Hall, as one reviewer has done); it felt like it had a place in its own right.

A couple of small things I wondered about: this film is in black and white, but I didn’t even notice that until a scene about half way through when Frances is at her parents’ house (played by the actress’s real parents).

Suddenly her Mum talks about a red baking tray and a green angel for the Christmas tree. I guess the director had some reason for throwing in the colour thing, but it just left me wondering why.

And then the discussion about Paris at that oh-so-awkward dinner party. I guess we are meant to think of the couple who have an apartment in ‘the sixth’ as being pretentious because nobody surely at a dinner party in New York would refer to the 6^th without adding the explanatory ‘arrondissement’.

And I don’t want to be a pretentious nit-picker myself (well, actually, I do) but as someone who has lived in Paris, you’d not get a beautiful corner apartment in the rue Vaugirard with a primary school playground right underneath your window, so, again, you kind of wonder why the director did that, too.

Overall, though, I liked this film.

It reminded me a lot of my own awkward time at aged 27, when I too was not quite sure where I wanted to be and things were just slowly sorting themselves out in a direction I’d be happy with.

Because of the way the film leaves Frances with no ‘ending’, we just don’t know what direction her life may take next, but there are signs that things are sorting themselves out for her.

So it even has a feel-good factor at the end as well.

****

The Great Gatsby

Bea says:  A work colleague recently described Baz Luhrmann to me as "like Marmite - you either love him or hate him".  I am definitely in the former camp, and , atlhough I've actually never seen Moulin Rouge, I have seen all of Baz's other films and loved every one of them.  I love his quirky style and the visual spectacule they always are.  I was eager to see The Great Gatsby and from the very first minute I was spellbound.

It has been a long time since I read the book (I was 15), and although I really wanted to like it at the time, I kind of didn't get it.  Watchng the film now, I realise why - this story is about damage, regret, obsession, marriage, divorce and death.  At 15 I didn't know anything about these things, but now, much later in my life, they resonate and I want to return to the book and read it again.  Amongst the (many) criticisms I have heard of this film is that it doesn't remain very true to the book, but that doesn't always worry me in film - it is a very different way of telling a story after all.

Another criticism has been of the use of modern music - but I thought that worked really, really well (I thougtht that in Romeo + Juliet too).  The excess of the 1920s parties made to look both like 1920s parties but also like the excesses of the superclubs of Ibiza was just amazing - literally my jaw dropped.  It has I think been said before, but the similarities of this period to ours currently is striking - atlhough not something I had realised before seeing this. 

The costuming (in part the main reason I wanted to go) was fabulous, the sets surreal and beautiful, and with enough reference to the things I remembered from the book - Gatsby on the dock, staring across the water, and the Ziegfield Follies.  It was wonderful, a cinema experience I have rarely, if ever, had and what it must have been like to see Gone with the Wind or some such for the first time at a cimena.  I know that is what Luhrmann is usually trying to do, and he does it, so well.

Wonderful. Marvellous.  I haven't a bad word to say about any of it. DiCaprio is good. Mulligan is better than I thought she'd be.  See it - a life lived in fear is a life half lived, after all.
*****

Cecil says: Well, I hated Moulin Rouge so when I heard it had been made by the same director, I was a bit nervous of this film, especially with lots of the critics saying it was full of OTT scenes from the 1920s.

But then I did like Luhrmann's Australia, and one of my favourite films ever is Strictly Ballroom, and I hadn't realised Luhrmann had made that one.

If you're a fan of Strictly Ballroom, though, you'll remember that key line which Bea reminded us of at the end of her review. Well, right at the start of The Great Gatsby, as they open with a Metropolis-style screen-filler, you'll see the same life-message circling the initials JG, suggesting Luhrmann has found another character who can embody one of his favourite mottos.

We saw this film at the wonderful Regent Cinema on Redcar beach. As we left this rusting hulk of a cinema at sunset, the 21st century wind farm was filling the horizon in one direction, while the 19th century-looking industrial complex of Redcar's steel works belched its fumes out over the seaside views.

It felt like a continuation of the set of Luhrmann's film. Great choice of venue to see a great film.

I liked Mulligan more than diCaprio, actually. Not sure why they casted someone British to play an American role, but hey it's been done the other way round, so why not?

And it could just be that DiCaprio's Gatsby was supposed to be someone you couldn't warm to; someone fake. So maybe it's acted well. Not sure.

There's lots more to say about this film; we were still discussing it 12 hours after we left the cinema (granted, a night's sleep in between). But I think I'll stop here.

I wasn't quite to overwhelmed as Bea, but I'd definitely recommend it and go in Redcar, while you still have the chance.

****

Side Effects

Bea says: This was certainly a gripping thriller and the time in the cinema passed very quickly indeed through its twists and turns. 

The first half was very good indeed, with a good amount of tension, pace and what was shaping up to be a very good – and subtle – story. 

But then something happened – as if the producers suddenly got worried that it was too boring and decided to make it a bit more sensational.  The storyline got rather silly at that point (complete with One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest-style mental health wards, the sudden onset of completely unexpected and unlikely sexually relationships etc) and if it weren’t for the stellar cast, the film would have been entirely lost.

However everyone acted on beautifully regardless (Catherine Zeta-Jones, Jude Law especially) and I had enough faith in the film to recommend it to others, with, however, the warning that the plot line did go downhill as the film progressed!  Not a bad night's entertainment however.

***

Cecil says: I’m not really sure why this film reminded me of Usual Suspects. Maybe it was the very complex plot, with lots of layers and angles you can only really work out at the end, and even then you might have to go back to the beginning of the film to see all the clues as they appeared.

I’m also not really sure why they felt the need to begin the film with a scene showing a bloodied foot dragging its way across a floor, leaving ghastly stains behind. They then go back three months, and actually rush past this scene about half way through the rest of the narrative. Was the idea to intrigue us? To shock us? To make us do exactly what I’m doing now?

If so, rather like with Usual Suspects, I’m slightly annoyed at being manipulated like that for no real reason, and would rather have had a straight chronological telling of the story.

As it is, the story is a good one, with high drama, and lots of issues Americans in particular are grappling with day-in, day-out.

What ARE the side effects of the drugs against depression (or Rheumatoid arthritis) or any of the other branded drugs being advertised night after night on mainstream US TV channels?

Jude Law and Catherine Zeta-Jones do a great job, though it’s interesting Law is playing a doctor trained in the UK with full-on clipped British accent, whereas Zeta-Jones is playing an American psychiatrist. The other two main characters are played by Rooney Mara and Channing Tatum (don’t you just love these names where, if you didn’t know who they were, you would be hard-pressed to tell which name is male and which female?).

There are a few moments where you’d have to question the portrayal of a senior psychiatrist, as played by Jude Law. Would he really be so touchy-feely with his patients? Would he really interrupt a lunch with his wife to give one client five minutes, when it clearly wasn’t an emergency. I know they were trying to make us doubt his integrity, but you can take things a little too far to be believable.  

And I wish I could remember his quote about the British health system (as compared to the US) or exactly how they pronounced DerHam, where he is supposed to have studied...

It’s hard to say more without spoiling the plot for other viewers. It was a good film, time flew by, but it did lose marks for me in both its unnecessary complexity and its simplicity in some of the assumptions it made. Hard to see at face value how a film can do both, but go and see Side Effects for yourself and see what you think.

***

The House - Dum

Cecil says: When I saw they were showing a Czech film at the Glasgow Film Theatre the other day, I was in two minds. I love the Glasgow Film Theatre and try to go whenever I’m up that way, but I had had a few bad experiences with Czech cinema in the past: weirdly-surreal animations or stupidly-comical farce humour.

Luckily, The House was neither of these. It was actually a fairly dour, real-life drama about an old bloke who has spent decades building two houses for his two daughters. Trouble is, the house he almost finished was to go to a daughter he then disowned because she went off with a ne’er-do-well; and he has co-opted his younger daughter into helping him build the house she doesn’t really want because she has romantic visions of better things away from her small-town Czech Republic life.

It’s not a barrel of laughs, this film. But the story keeps things flowing nicely, and the characters are all quite engaging in their different ways.

The young English teacher who arrives in school and ends up having an affair with younger daughter is slightly unbelievable, or is his character just a bit over-acted? He has about as much charisma as Iain Duncan-Smith on a bad day, but I guess for a teenage girl character like Eva he can appear like a romantic way out of small-town living. When things go wrong, though, his hang-dog look just felt a bit too like a caricature, something Scooby-Doo might do.

And would he really let himself be caught in a clinch with a teenage pupil while they’re both in the staff room? I don’t know. When I was a teacher many many years ago, there was a scandal when two of the teachers were caught in flagrante in the stationery cupboard one day, so I guess these things do happen.

And it was only the odd weakness in the plot that made me think, ‘no’. On the whole, this was a good film about family break-ups, reconciliation, dreams and realities.

It might even make me look on Czech cinema more positively, too.

***

Bea says: Being a big old softy, I was somewhat concerned that this film would be rather sad when I read the synopsis prior to going (father engaged in futile business of building houses for daughters, one of whom had left to an unsuitable marriage, one of whom couldn’t wait to escape their village life in the Czech Republic).

But in fact it was charming – poignant, tender, and a very astute exploration of family life, marriage, youth and age.  

Beautifully constructed, written (and translated), and acted it left me with the warm feeling that, sometimes, good things do happen, despite all the rest.

***.5

Great Expectations

Bea says:  Cecil, being a little older than me, sometimes takes me along to the Seniors Screen at our local Odeon, when I have a Monday free.  A bargain at £3, with tea and biscuits thrown in.  Last Monday was Great Expectations.

Now, there has recently been a BBC TV production of Great Expectations, and at times during the first half this felt very similar indeed, although as the plot moved along, different episodes in Pip's life were focussed on, so it was in the end different enough - just.  It did make Cecil and I wonder though - Dickens had a pretty good output, why aren't we seeing any of his other works in film?  Like the Pickwick Papers, or A Tale of Two Cities, perhaps? 

So this is Dickens, so the story speaks for itself, and the larger than life characters jump off the screen.  Helena Bonham-Carter does a standout turn as Miss Haversham - but I have always liked her work and it is great to see her regularly back on the big screen - and Ralph Fiennes was almost unrecognisable as Magwitch.  I am afraid I didn't really rate the younger actors although I guess they have time to develop. 

And the rest - atmospheric locations (Kent in particular - although it seemed to be exactly the same location as the BBC television drama), nice costumes, but too much make up on Estella to be truly authentic and in fact it distracted me from what she was saying.

***

Cecil says: As Bea says, it's difficult when two productions come out so soon after each other based on the same literary work. You're almost forced to compare, and although I liked Fiennes as Magwitch, I actually found Ray Winston scarier and therefore more true to my memories from reading the book.

As to Miss Haversham, I liked both Bonham-Carter and Gillian Anderson, so wouldn't try to compare or put them in a league table of favourites. But isn't it interesting - as Bea suggests - that I actually can't remember who played any of the other characters in either the TV production or the film we just saw.

The film did begin with virtually the same marshy set as the TV version. And there was lots of mud on camera, both in swampy Kent and in downtown Victorian London. They did pretty well, for that sense of just how grimey things were, even for the gentleman around town.

But even if they were trying to highlight the mud, there were a few too many shots taken at ankle level for my liking in this film. And a few too many very dark scenes, though again that is probably an attempt to make it more real for us softies living in the 21st century.

Apart from that, I did enjoy this, as did the rest of the 75-80 seniors who were in the audience: a fantastic turn-out for a Monday morning and maybe a lesson other cinemas should learn in terms of scheduling and pricing.

***