The Personal History of David Copperfield (Armando Iannucci, 2020)
Emma. (Autumn de Wilde, 2020)
There is nothing we seem to like better in the British Film Industry than a literary adaptation — and there have been great versions of Austen and Dickens in the past, so much so that it wasn’t until two hours and four minutes into Emma. that I felt we need another Austen on screen. Continue reading →
1917 (Sam Mendes, 2019)
Once continuity editing became a thing, it was inevitable that directors would try and show their versatility by avoiding it with the longest possible takes limited by the amount of film a camera could load and thus disguising cuts in a way best shown in Hitchcock’s Rope which also has a number of very obvious cuts, as indeed does 1917 in which two soldiers walk, ride and fight their way through no man’s land in order to stop a doomed assault on the western front in which one of the soldier’s brothers will be risking his life and slowly the tension is ratcheted up with countering moments of beauty of cherry blossom and de Chirico illuminated ruined towns and Paul Nash canvases and distracting appearances from half the cast of Sherlock as we carefully balance the idiocy of the donkeys leading the lions with rather more smart generals who are aware of the deaths of the young men they are causing and so there’s a certain distaste in the distraction of formal skill from a subject matter in soldiers are trapped for nearly two hours and seemingly indestructible even at the cake and eat it assault that is over the top in at least two sense of the words as digital enhancements wear their effects on the sleeve to such an extent that one wonders if this is the dream of a dying man from a hundred minutes earlier whilst avoiding the discomfort of Atonement’s heavily augmented beach sequence.
Sorry We Missed You (Ken Loach, 2019)
The irony was that I saw this film whilst being pissed at the sort of company central to this film. Continue reading →
The Souvenir (Joanna Hogg, 2019)
For a good chunk of this film I sat there wondering who it was playing Anthony.
Benjamin (Simon Amstell, 2018)
Yesterday (Danny Boyle, 2019)
I’d not knowingly come across Joel Fry before, but here he is, playing essentially the same role of kooky and tactless best friend in two romcoms.
Back in the late 1970s, Brian Henderson suggested that the romcom was no longer possible – two broad schools of the genre divide into two questions. Continue reading →
Only You (Harry Wootliff, 2018)
For a good half an hour, this film feels too good to be true. I knew it was an unlikely love story, but I immediately assumed that the bear shown in the first few shots was the lover. In fact, settled status Spaniard and arts administrator Elena (Laia Costa) is pipped to a taxi in the early hours of New Year’s Day by DJ and PhD marine biologist Jake (Josh O’Connor) and after arguments over who saw the cab first and her deciding to walk home and he offering to walk her home, they end up going back to her flat to listen to Elvis Costello. The attraction is immediate, even though she’s 35 (but won’t admit it at first) and he is 26.
In Fabric (Peter Strickland, 2018)
Remember when the 1970s was the decade that taste forgot? Thirty years of Tarantino pastiche have summoned the visuals back, and it has been embraced by a generation of British horror directors, including Peter Strickland, whose Duke of Burgundy left me indifferent. There’s a mix here of Dennis Wheatley and Spearhead from Space and Don’t Look Now and Hammer and God help us Are You Being Served?. And Dario Argento, although this film is more rosso than giallo. It can’t be present day, because blind dating is committed via newspapers rather than apps, and money is sent through airtubes in department stores, but not all the of the phones are rotary dial. And there isn’t any racism, despite the position of the Black British heroine.
A Private War (Matthew Heineman, 2018)
Marie Colvin was a female war correspondent, following in the footsteps of Martha Gellhorn (and Kate Adie), reporting under fire from many of the hell holes of the world. We know what war correspondents are like from films — hardbitten, tough, driven, sociopathic and unable to maintain normal relationships, slave to the bottle and traumatised if they’d but admit it. It’s still unusually to see a women in this role on film, although since at least the 1930s journalism has been an acceptable job for a woman on screen.
Mary Queen of Scots (Josie Rourke, 2018)
Having just seen a rather mixed version of Richard II, with Simon Russell Beale, this felt rather theatrical, albeit without the poetry. There’s the Meaningful Looks from ensemble dignitaries, many of whose names escape me, brandishing of papers, condensation of time (oh, is that the same day or twenty years later?)… the climactic encounter between the two two leads which seems to be staged amidst indoor washing lines. And there’s Simon Russell Beale, in a brief cameo. There’s also race blind casting — yes, there were people of colour in Elizabethan England (and presumably Marian Scotland), but Bess of Hardwick (Gemma Chan) and the English ambassador (Adrian Lester)? It comes as no surprise that Rourke comes from the theatre — the Donmar Warehouse — and is better at tableaux than action.
Continue reading →
Stan & Ollie (Jon S. Baird, 2018)
All comics end in tragedy, in one way or another. They either die in harness — Tommy Cooper on stage — or fade away to keep bees on the South Sussex Downs or can’t stay at the top. Those giants of silent film — Keaton, Lloyd and Chaplin — transitioned awkwardly into the synchronised sound era, but production slowed or stopped. Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy were paired together by Hal Roach, with Laurel’s gift for dialogue pairing perfectly with their slapstick. But Laurel never had the financial control he craved and was unable to negotiate a better deal as his contract never ended at the same time as Hardy’s. Laurel left Hal Roach Studios and Hardy made a film with Harry Langdon; thirteen years later the two tour Britain and Ireland in 1953, rebuilding an audience as the has-beens, enjoyed more in reruns than live, and trying to out together one last film. But Hardy is dying.
Subject to Change 