November 2016 book and film review, continued

FILMS, continued.

GLENGARRY, GLEN ROSS (1992) D- James Foley. A group of realtors in New York are struggling to make ends meet in the recession, and things aren't improved when they're told if they don't start delivering soon, they'll be fired. One of them (played brilliantly by Jack Lemmon) can't even pay his Mum's medical bills, so his whole family is depending on him coming up with something. Then he has an audacious idea...
     Scripted by David Mamet from his award winning stage play, this is a brilliant little piece, with strong performances from all the major players, from Jack Lemmon through Al Pacino, to Alec Baldwin, whose part didn't exist in the stage play but was created by Mamet especially for the film version. He is only on screen for eight minutes, but his impact is electrifying. Intelligent American movie making at its best.

DAD'S ARMY (2016) D- Oliver Parker. In wartime Britain, a hapless group of Home Guard try to outwit the feminine wiles of a glamorous German spy.
I'm old enough to remember the original and genuine version of Dad's Army, with Arthur Lowe, Ian LeMeasurier et al, all of whom are now dead, with the exception of Ian Lavender who played Private Pike ("stupid boy!") and who in tribute to the original cast has in this version been given a cameo role, promoted this time to a general.
It has proved impossible to update the wonderful flavour of the original, especially with a script not penned by Croft and Perry, but the film is saved by Toby Jones as captain Mainwearing, who makes the role his own. But other players, such as Bill Nighy, prove disappointing. Others have slated catherine Zeta Jones as the Mata Hari, though I won't hear a word said against Wales's most celebrated and glamorous export...

THE REVENANT (2015) D- Alejandro G. Inarritu. A group of fir-trappers in the vast, empty wastes of the American north-west are attacked by Indians and then Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) is attacked by a bear and very nearly killed. But this guy ain't ready to die yet... Left to die by a fellow trapper, he musters resources deep within himself to get back to civilisation and report the crimes of the man who abandoned him to his fate...
This film is astonishing. Director Innaritu and star DiCaprio work together to create an utterly compelling and completely authentic-looking product which plunges the viewer into the cold, forbidding world of a North Dakota winter, with all the dangers that implies. The fight with the bear is one of the most life-like CGI creations I have yet seen, and I still don't quite understand how it was done. But what really captures the attention is the Revenant himself, a man who like Matt Damon in The Martian, simply refuses to lie down and die in the face of the most extreme adversity.
     DiCaprio rightly won his first Oscar for his role after no less than five nominations, with Innaritu picking up Best Director, and Emanuel Lubezki winning the award for cinematography.
Tremendous.

PRISONERS (2013) D- Denis Villeneuve. In small-town, USA, two young girls go missing. The sheriff (Jake Gylenhaal) is a good man, but has nothing to go on. One minute they were playing in the street outside their homes, next minute they are gone. The father of one of the girls (Hugh Jackman) is convinced a learning-disabled man living nearby is responsible, partly because he hears him saying "they only started crying when I left", though no one else hears him saying it. The sheriff arrests him but releases him after questioning, so Jackman decides to take the law into his own hands. He abducts the young man and tortures him until he confesses. Only problem: whatever terrible things he does to the poor chap, he doesn't  confess. Despite the mitigating factors, he realises he has now committed a serious crime himself, and one the authorities cannot ignore. But first they have to uncover it...
     These days I have two special criteria to determine how good a movie is: 1) whether it is capable of taking my mind off my writing, and 2) if it makes me forget, just for a few minutes, the other massive problem I face in my personal life. To do that it has to be excellent, which this was. Top marks.