Movie reviews
by James Douglas
SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK
Odeon: April 9–11
David O. Russell’s wonderfully unconventional ‘bipolar’ romantic comedy has a lot of interesting things to say about this disorder, cleverly wrapping its traumas in a frothy off-beat comedy that is pitch perfect, compassionate and sharp. Jennifer Lawrence’s Best Actress Oscar is well deserved. ‘For all its high-flying zaniness the movie has the sting of life, and its humor feels dredged up from the same dark, boggy place from which Samuel Beckett extracted his yuks’ (New York Times). ‘Manic as it might be stylistically, emotionally Silver Linings Playbook maintains too even of a keel. It’s a film about the alienated that makes sure to alienate no one, a movie depicting wild mood extremes that never rises or falls above a dull hum of diversion, never exploding into riotous comedy or daring to be devastatingly sad’ (Village Voice). ‘Pretty much a miscalculation from beginning to end’ (New Yorker).
DEAD MAN DOWN
Fulgor: April 11-17
This is the English-language debut of the Swedish filmmaker famous for the original Girl with the Dragon Tattoo film. The well-developed relationship between the attractive Colin Farrel and the sexy Noomi Rapace make this typical action film watchable. He plays a gang member, Victor, who is seduced by her, Beatrice, a victim of his boss. For the rest, it’s an revenge thriller action movie, described by one online reviewer as not bad action sequences, ‘but there was nothing really that original or memorable, except maybe one that involved a hanging, and another that involved rats.’
ARBITRAGE
Odeon: April 12-15
There’s a thin line between getting rich and getting caught. In this debut thriller, Robert Miller is the man in the middle of a complicated life that becomes even more complicated when his high finance career is threatened by his weaknesses and errors. ‘A tense and chilling horror story for financially fraught times’ (Los Angeles Times). ‘Hitchcock called his most familiar subject “The Innocent Man Wrongly Accused.” Jarecki pumps up the pressure here by giving us a Guilty Man Accurately Accused, and that’s what makes the film so ingeniously involving’ (Roger Ebert). ‘Features an exceedingly dapper Richard Gere in a series of nice suits and handsome close-ups that serve no purpose other than to remind us how exceedingly dapper Richard Gere looks in nice suits and handsome close-ups. The rest of the movie registers as a loss of: time, money, talent and logic’ (San Francisco Chronicle).
THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES
Odeon: April 16-21
One place is where it all collides. Intriguing crime drama in which a motorcycle stunt rider turns to desperate measures to honour his obligations as a father, bringing him into conflict with the law. Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper at their best. ‘A brilliant, towering picture, The Place Beyond The Pines is a cinematic accomplishment of extraordinary grace and insight’ (The Playlist). ‘The three-part story, spread over nearly two and a half hours, represents a triumph of sympathetic imagination and a failure of narrative economy. But if, in the end, the film can’t quite sustain its epic vision, it does, along the way, achieve the density and momentum of a good novel’ (New York Times). ‘It’s a slow-burner that burns so slowly its wick completely fizzles out’ (Entertainment Weekly).
OBLIVION
Fulgor: April 18-23
Tom Cruise and Morgan Freeman star in this sci fi film based on the graphic novel of the same name written by director Joseph Kosinski (Tron: Legacy). Set in 2073, 60 years after the Earth was nearly destroyed by an alien invasion, Cruise plays a drone repairman, living in an airborne ‘town’ floating thousands of meters above the Earth, who swoops down investigate a downed spacecraft; in the process, he is forced to reconsider everything he knows about his planet’s past and present. The locations (shot in Iceland and the USA) and the expensive special effects are impressive. We will have to wait for the release to find out if this movie holds up to high expectations based on the important actors, producer and director.
THE HOST
Odeon: April 22-24
Love never dies. When an unseen enemy threatens humankind by taking over human bodies and erasing their memories, Melanie Stryder (a host) will risk everything to protect the people she cares most about. Stephenie Meyer’s novel follows themes similar to her Twilight Saga. Greater forces than mere humans are at play, but amor vincit omnia. ‘Dopey, derivative and dull, The Host is a brazen combination of unoriginal science-fiction themes, young-adult pandering and bottom-line calculation. That sounds like it should work (really!), but it never does, largely because the story is as drained of energy as are its moony aliens’ (New York Times). ‘Saoirse Ronan’s talents are wasted on a foolish dual part in this dull sci-fi fantasy’ (USA Today).
BARRY LYNDON
Odeon: April 23, 8:30pm (free)
Stanley Kubrick’s immaculate adaptation of William Thackeray’s mediocre novel must rate as one of the best evocations of the eighteenth century ever made. This majestic biopic traces the growth to doleful maturity of its wayward protagonist with stunning authenticity. One of Kubrick’s best films, it is famed for its totally natural lighting, perfect period costumes and well-chosen soundtrack, not to mention the low key fish-out-of-water performance of Ryan O’Neal. The ironic narration is a masterstroke to complement the very best of cinematic storytelling. Sensory overload kept firmly in check by Kubrick’s celebrated cool detachment. An experience to be relished.
PROSPERO’S BOOKS (1991)
April 15, 7:30pm
Peter Greenaway’s rich and dense visualisation of Prospero’s world (through the 24 books he is imagined to have consulted in his island exile on such subjects as cosmology, pornography, music and magic) relies on the central performance of John Gielgud, who plays all the parts. ‘To some degree, the relentless proliferation of ideas smothers the dramatic highs and lows, but this is a minor quibble compared to the sheer ambition and audacity of the overall conception’ (Time Out). Original and revealing.
THE TEMPEST (2010)
April 16, 4pm
Julie Taymor, perhaps taking her cue from Peter Greenaway and Derek Jarman, gives us a kitsch and overwrought blast of sound and fury with Helen Mirren as the now feminised Prospera in this daring and controversial reworking of the play. ‘Ms. Taymor’s overscaled sense of stage spectacle can be impressive and effective, even moving, but her three-dimensional, high-volume compositions translate awkwardly into the cosmos of cinema, which turns her pageantry into mummery and the physical exuberance she likes to draw from performers into mugging’ (New York Times). A storm in a teacup?
THE TEMPEST (1979)
April 17, 8pm
Derek Jarman’s decidedly weird, voluptuously camp and delightfully magical Shakespeare-light version of the play features off-beat locations (the ruined Stoneleigh Abbey), is packed with exotic bric-a-brac and magic lantern effects and has a jokey, show-stopping cabaret rendition of ‘Stormy Weather’ (what else?) but is never less than an intriguing and compelling engagement with the play and its issues. ‘The actors might be good, but it’s impossible to tell …There are no poetry, no ideas, no characterizations, no narrative, no fun’ (New York Times). Sui generis.
The current season of Talking Pictures takes a look at (and has a listen to) a selection of the works of film composer Bernard Herrmann, whose scores have graced some of the finest movies ever made, notably Hitchcock’s (still to come).
THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (1951)
April 24, 8pm
with Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal, Hugh Marlowe
Robert Wise’s thoughtful science-fiction movie called for Herrmann to ‘do something special,’ and this he did with ‘another scoring milestone that anticipated the era of electronic music with its then unheard-of instrumentation for electric violin, electric bass, two high and low electric theremins [the instrument that came to be associated with science fiction otherworldliness], four pianos, four harps, and ‘a very strange section of about 30-odd brass.’ The story, in which a Christ-like peaceable alien called Klaatu tries to prevent Earth’s self-destruction, needed ‘an extraterrestrial strangeness, a sense of the bizarre and unsettling,’ and Herrmann’s innovative electronic soundtrack provides just this. A science fiction classic (an inferior remake appeared in 2008).
Odeon
piazza Strozzi 2, tel. 055/295051
Astra2
piazza Beccaria, tel. 055 2343666
Fulgor
via Maso Finiguerra 24r, tel. 055/2381881
The British Institute
Lungarno Guicciardini, 9 tel. 055/267781
