Only the Brave

Seen at the Sale Cinema in Gippsland, Victoria

Cecil says: This film felt all the more poignant because we are just moving into a fire-risk part of Australia, and as we drove through the bushy area near the NSW/Victoria border, we had passed through a hazy area which might have been cloud if it had not been for the stream of local fire service vehicles rushing in the opposite direction to us once we had driven through the area. And that slightly acrid smell that always comes with bush fires.

The next morning, the film felt even more relevant as the same fire trucks sped past us heading home after dealing with whatever fire there had been that day up in the hills in the rain.

The film itself was somewhat formulaic. You know the kind of disaster film where we spend two thirds of the story seeing all the minutiae of domestic life of very ordinary people, and there is that build-up to a situation where you know something dreadful is about to happen. There are the usual meaningful last words to people when they don’t know it’s the last words, but somehow the very fact that the film includes them shows that they will be the last…

But having said all that, the film was gripping, and actually very moving at the end, as you know the surviving firemen will be ridden with survivor guilt.

It was a good film to see as we move to an area where lives have been lost in the past and no doubt will be in future due to raging fires. Thoroughly enjoyable and a useful reminder of the fantastic work the fire service does.

***.5   

Bea says:  I had absolutely no expectation of this film whatsoever going in, and thought it would be some hero/action type genre.  I had no idea it was based on a true story and it moved me to tears.  I would highly recommend it; it was more personally relevant to us now than it would have been in previous years, but the story, writing, acting and direction are good, and the cinematography is very good.  Watch out for a brief appearance by Michelle Williams who seems to be popping up everywhere now if in small and rather typecast roles.

****

Murder on the Orient Express

Seen at the Yamba Cinema in northern NSW

Bea says: :  I am perhaps biased as I am something of an Agatha Christie fan, and I am also a fan of Kenneth Branagh.  I am sure I have seen an old black and white version of this years ago, and I had read the book years ago when on a Christie jag as a teenager, and again more recently, but I hadn’t retained too many plot details so enjoyed the whodunnit – but I mostly enjoyed the sumptuous costumes, set and cinematography of the steam train and the snowy landscape; particularly as Cecil and I had travelled through that region only a few years ago.

Branagh treats the original well and does not try to meddle with a winning formula – it’s just updated into the modern “Harry Potter” look films tend to have now and with a little more psychological understanding and insight than I remember into Poirot; well done with the light touch I would expect from Branagh.  The all-star cast are fantastic particularly Depp in fine form as a villain.

I loved that the closing scene (spoiler alert) paves the way for the next instalment, as Poirot is called away to the Nile – I find myself looking forward to it tremendously!

**** Four stars for atmosphere alone!

Cecil says: I am less of a Christie and Branagh fan than Bea, but when we found the little local cinema in Yamba had this on, I was open t giving it a go, and did actually enjoy the experience. I, too, had read the book in my teens but had also forgotten the outcome (how do crime writers manage that?).

Funnily enough, the train setting reminded me less of Harry Potter (I’m also not a fan) than of Lar von Trier’s Europa, which this film really made me want to track down again.

I’m not sure this remake would have worked without the star cast, but if you’re Branagh, I guess you can pick up the phone and have anybody you want in your movie: hence Penelope Cruz, Michelle Pfeiffer, Judi Dench, Derek Jacobi, Johnny Depp…the familiar faces just kept on coming and if this was a stage play, you could almost hear the spontaneous applause from the audience as yet another celebrity hit the screen. Couldn’t help wondering why Bill Nighy wasn’t in it, since he’s in everything else these days; maybe he and Branagh don’t get along??

Yes to this film for cinematographic quality, acting, and the epic nature of the setting. Well worth a view on a quiet weekend away.

***

The Mountain Between Us

Seen at the Roxy Cinema in Nowra, NSW

Cecil says: A moving trip to the cinema for us as this was our last visit to the wonderful Roxy Cinema in Nowra before our move away from New South Wales. The film was gripping, but not as moving as the feeling of this being our last trip to Nowra.

The plot boils down to Kate Winslet and Idris Elba getting stuck at a US airport because of an impending storm, but Alex (Winslet) having the guile to get the two of them onto a private plane to get to their destination. Trouble is the guy who’s flying the plane has a heart attack and the plane comes down on a snowy mountain peak, and the two survivors (Winslet and Elba) plus pilot’s dog, spend most of the rest of the film trying to get down from the mountain in one piece.

The dog has only a minor role, though it does get into scrapes itself as it comes face to face with a cougar and seems to get itself lost at inconvenient times – and then reappears out of the blue in a way that made me wonder if something got lost on the cutting room floor. I’m not even sure really what the dog adds to the plot, or why the script writer felt it was needed.

Surely there was enough to get your teeth into dealing just with the Winslet/Elba relationship as it developed, though I’m not sure the chemistry between the two protagonists really worked on the screen. Was that a casting issue? Or just that the film didn’t really get inside what exactly made these two bond. Sure, helping each other survive will often bring two humans closer than anything else can, but I just didn’t believe in the ‘love’ that developed between these two.

The idea of getting down a mountain alive has been done before (there was the film years ago about the survivors of the Chilean plane crash in the Andes) and this film did a nice job of raising some of the dilemmas you’d face if it happened to you. And most of it felt believable.

But I couldn’t help thinking, when they reached the house half way down, there would have been a clearer track to get to the house. Otherwise how would the people who built it in the first place have got the materials up there? So any dramas and near-death experiences from that moment on felt a little bit far-fetched.

The film was engaging, though, and gave us enough ammunition for a good post-film post-mortem.

***

Bea says: Yes, I agree mostly with Cecil on this one – a willing suspension of disbelief was certainly required.  However, I don’t mind the survivor genre, as I quite like to think about what I would do in the situation.  In this film, Kate Winslet’s character took a lot of risks, and Idris Elba’s was too cautious, which I think was supposed to provide the chemistry between them (it didn’t).

I did think that perhaps the characters might have looked a bit more – unwashed – in the sex scene, and that they also might have looked colder and more uncomfortable as the cabin had holes in the roof and poor heating, and they had not eaten for a while…. perhaps I’m getting old, but I don’t think I’d have looked as glamorous as Winslet did in the same situation.  But I did try to suspend that disbelief as disaster followed disaster as they descended the mountain. 

What this film did better, for about the last ten minutes, was examine how hard it is to fit back into normal life and society after a life-changing experience like surviving a plane crash in a remote location, and although the ending was a bit romantic and twee, it satisfied me.  Winslet and Elba both did what they could with this film, and were able to make it watchable.

**.5

Things to Come - L'Avenir

Seen at the Gala Cinema in Warrawong, NSW

Cecil says: This film brought back so many memories for me, especially of my life in Paris when I had a job as a university assistant. I shall never forget a dinner party organised by one of the senior lecturers in the English department, in which she actually referred to ‘Nous, les intellectuels’ (We intellectuals). Part of me felt inadequate, but part of me also thought: ‘speak for yourself, darling’, and yet another part of me kind of despised her for being pretentious.

Being intellectual is such a French thing to take pride in, whereas for Brits it is seen as out of touch, something almost to be ashamed of. The long dinner time discussions (something else that marks out both the film itself and French society) over philosophical questions felt soooo French. Attractive on one level, but never something I felt at ease with when I lived there.

Somehow the school student rebellions and big discussions between far left and pragmatic progressives also felt like a very French way of doing things. Not sure how many picket lines there would ever be outside a British high school…

But this film is not really about intellectuals. It is actually making the point that you still need to get on with the daily practicalities of life however intellectual you are: dealing with demented Mum, dealing with unfaithful husband, even doing the washing up while at the mountain retreat with the other young thinkers (and surely that was a conscious decision of the director to have the two women wash up while the men continued their important debate?).

The 1960s were an iconic period in France as much as Britain, but awareness of sexism was definitely way way behind where we are now – or are we?

I enjoyed this film. The plot moved along, not at an express pace, but the life changes did come one after the other so must have felt like a tsunami to the main character, played brilliantly by Isabelle Huppert.

None of the other characters or actors stood out for me, though I did wonder why the daughter was so insistent that her Dad confess to his affair, but we didn’t get enough of an insight into the kids to know really what was going on for them; and again, when same daughter had her baby, it is not clear why she is crying. It’s one of those films that could actually be developed into a TV series, with each episode seeing the same events and actions from a different character’s perspective.

***.5

Bea says: Yes, an excellent piece of French film-making and such a treat to see a French film; reminded me of the weekend trips Cecil and I sometimes used to do to Paris, when we would see 3-4 films in a row.

A strong plot is what kept this film going for me; the themes are universal – life issues and changes.  That the central character is a woman (Huppert) and we see all aspects of her life; family, partner, work, is actually a rare treat; this film passes the Bechtel test superbly.

We see her survive her husband’s affair and move on to an independent life in keeping with how she really wants to live; and despite setbacks and disappointments (when the university bookshop drops her book and her publisher cancels a new edition), we also see the joys (her work, new friendships, even if they don’t quite go as expected, a new addition to the family).  A great film to cause reflection on one’s own life and that reminds us there is always the rough and the smooth.

***1/2

My Cousin Rachel

Seen at the Gala Cinema in Warrawong, NSW

Cecil says: Rebecca was one of those films that haunted me as a child: the scene with the cackling madwoman on the roof of the burning mansion house left me cowering behind the sofa as a 7 year old (or whatever age it was). So when I saw that My Cousin Rachel  was another Daphne Du Maurier adaptation, I was not put off. And surely 50+ year old me would cope with any terrifying characters this plot might conjure up.

I think the trouble with 50+ year old me is that I have no time for the wasted energy of youthful infatuations. And that’s what most of this film is about: a young 24/25 year old (the birthday is a significant point in the storyline) infatuated with the woman who is the widow of his foster father. She turns up in his stately home and wins his heart in no time instead of being subjected to his inquiry into how his beloved parent had died.

Sure there are some mysteries about Rachel Weisz’s Rachel (yes actor and character share the same name) and as the story develops, more and more of her behaviour and actions leave the viewer uncertain as to whether she is evil or just confused, and even more uncertain of what really happened in her life. But right from the start she failed to engage me, and I would have been cautious about any involvement emotional or financial if I had been Philip.

I’m not sure whether this was because Rachel Weisz didn’t draw me in, or whether it was the film’s direction. Or was it back in Du Maurier’s text that my dislike would have found its source?

Having seen that the original 1952 version starred Richard Burton and Olivia de Havilland, I am inclined to seek out the old black and white movie rather than read the novel.

But I felt less engaged by the 2016/7 version of My Cousin Rachel  than I have by any film for quite some time.

Any redeeming aspects? I quite liked the early scene with the horse and carriage going up an Umbrian hill, as it vaguely reminded me of Room with a View. I quite liked Seecombe, the loyal but rather gruff butler, who dressed more like a farmhand than a posh person’s main man, though it did make me wonder if the northern English nobility were a bit more rough round the edges than the image we have from Downton Abbey…

**.5

Bea says: I loved Rebecca and Jamaica Inn, both as novels and film/TV adaptations, but had never seen the earlier version of this or read it.  The story is good – typical du Maurier, with strong, enigmatic female characters and a good dose of crime and psychology.  But, like Cecil, something didn’t quite work in this film.  It wasn’t particularly memorable (we are blogging sometime after seeing it), and it felt rather – stiff, like everyone was trying too hard and not just allowing the strong plot to run. 

I would now like to read the novel, in case that feeling is in the book too; I haven’t’ researched it but perhaps it was an earlier work and du Maurier hadn’t really hit her stride.  Weisz is usually good, and she is really all I can remember about the film; everyone else has faded into oblivion.  Perhaps she was too strong for the other characters and that explains the held back feeling?

Worth a look, but may disappoint.

**1/2

Hampstead

Seen at the Roxy Cinema,Nowra NSW

Cecil says: This film was awful, in spite of its excellent cast.

We had put off going because we had a hunch and sadly all our fears were well-founded. And in the end, it was the film that was starting just as we got to the cinema on a Sunday morning, so we went for it anyway.

I’m trying to find some redeeming features to talk about: the only character who felt remotely believable was Diane Keaton’s son: slightly roguish, fairly posh son who pops round to his Mum’s Hampstead flat unannounced, gets breakfast and probes into her private life.

For the rest, the characters felt more like the fantasies so many second-rate American writers have of what it is to be English (or even Irish in Brendan Gleeson’s case): somehow the men are always debonair, middle-aged and wealthy, usually with a posh accent, or are stone-the-crows cor blimey guv Cockneys. Like Americans never came across Estuary English or just an average Joe or Jill?

This film felt like the sort of script a young tourist might write after her first visit to London. She discovered some of the cute nooks and crannies of Hampstead and just had to let everyone in on her ‘discoveries’ (I say ‘her’, but actually I think it was written by a man); she got the right bus route, pointed out the Marx grave in the cemetery (Highgate of course), even calculated more or less how far it was from Hampstead to Camden, but then made it unreal with the ridiculously ditzy Diane Keaton character, the caricature accountant, and then the Gleeson character: based on a real person, but so so badly- developed (he’d say and do things that were just not what a guy like that would do: he became a kind of goofy American caricature). Even his perfect veggie patch in amongst the trees felt unbelievable – we know how hard it is to grow vegetables in ground that get little sunlight, and his shack was hidden away in the depths of the Hampstead Heath trees.

I could go on and on picking holes in this film but why rack my brain to pick it apart anymore.

Best forgotten.

Stars? Zero or maybe 0.5…

Bea says: Yes, complete disappointment.  

As Cecil says, clearly written by someone who has visited London and fallen in love with it (understandable – I did the same).  But the writer would have been better writing about someone visiting London and falling in love with it, rather than trying to write about two mature “loveable eccentrics” meeting each other in Hampstead.  

The characters were unbelievable despite apparently being based on real people, the plot was unbelievable, and the clichés were jarring.  Keaton and Gleeson are both capable of much more, although I do tire of Keaton’s constant Annie Hall reprisal.  The fact that they couldn’t save it showed how bad the script was. 

I was flabbergasted that this actually got made, released, and was on a quite a widespread cinema run at the time we saw it.  This may work as a telemovie on a rainy Sunday afternoon, but in general – avoid.

*

The Greatest Showman

Seen at the Waterfront Cinema in Greenock, Scotland

Bea says:  Cecil and I try not to be film snobs, but I was wary that this film might be a tad too commercial for us.  However – we were attempting to keep awake (jet-lagged), it was on at a good time (6 pm Saturday night) and location (The Waterfront, Greenock) for us, and it has a pretty good cast – Hugh Jackman and the always wonderful Michelle Williams – who I have been following since her Dawson’s Creek days.  We’d seen a few previews of it and it looked interesting, colourful and perhaps a bit dark too, so I anticipated a bit of depth.

What the previews didn’t really show was that it is actually a musical (not Cecil’s favourite genre), but apart from a few isolated incidents there wasn’t too much random bursting into song and the song and dance pieces generally were well woven into the story, and fitted with the circus/carnival/concert action anyway.  In fact, the music was great and the choreography spectacular; so much so that Cecil and I both turned to each other at the end and suggested buying the CD (yes, we are that old fashioned…I do use digital music options at times but Cecil doesn’t at all).

The film is purportedly the story of PT Barnum (Jackman), the circus magnate, as he establishes the first circus in New York City; going from rags to riches to the threat of rags again.  He marries his childhood sweetheart (Williams), has a little family and after being made redundant in his post as a shipping clerk, borrows enough money to get the circus – aka museum of curiosities - up and running.  It gets off to a slow start, but after Barnum’s children suggest more live acts he seeks out a range of people to provide them.  The film advertises itself as being about acceptance, and bringing people who were hidden into the light and placing them centre stage; this theme is oft spoken of in the film and some of the songs are about it.  It is a very interesting theme to explore when looking at the history of circus, and it would be interesting to see a heavier, more in-depth film about the same topic actually. 

But to be honest, it was the days between Christmas and New Year, it was fun, it was beautiful to watch, it had comedy and tragedy, and it enough subplots (Zac Efron’s assistant ringmaster role and forbidden love interest; and the character Jenny Lind’s concert tour) to maintain interest.  

The music and dancing were feelgood, and we left feeling happy – what more can you ask for?

Efron is probably responsible for the large (and largely female) youth audience; but I did notice again that the film seemed designed to attract a young audience; it was rather like watching a combination of Harry Potter and the Voice!  But I like both of those, so it was not in a bad way at all.  

***.5

Cecil says: When Hugh Jackman begins to sing within ten seconds of the start of The Greatest Showman, I had to chuckle as I had been caught out just as I was in Sunshine on Leith, when the soldiers in the opening scene burst into song. I had no idea this was a musical but I quickly realised it was.

Funnily enough earlier in the day I had read a Tweet by someone who loved the soundtrack so much that she was planning on going straight out and buying the CD. Actually, by the end of the film, we were both thinking the same. The music was a central part of this film, and the voices were remarkably strong: who knew Jackman could sing that well?

The dancing is also fantastic. I guess to audition for a role in a film like this, you need to have all those skills that go along with voice projection and being able to get inside the role you are playing.

In the case of Zac Efron, I think his dancing skills outdo his ability to act, but boy can he move. I loved the scene towards the end where he swivels on his knees as he spins in to take centre stage. But the best scene of all for movement and choreography has to be on the ropes when Efron and Zendaya flirt with each other and move towards accepting their mutual attraction.

For me, the overall feel was as much a production that will go on to Broadway or the West End as it was The Voice (as Bea says). It is interesting how this style of film-making is taking hold at the moment. This one worked, though. It kept us awake and left us feeling good.

***