January 2017 Film Review

FILMS

LA LA LAND (2016) D- Damien Chazelle.
In the City of Angels, two young hopefuls meet and fall in love. She wants to be an actress, he a serious exponent of jazz. Can they make it, either in their careers or together? Let's watch.
My brother is a big opera fan. He goes to every new production at Glyndebourne, Covent Garden and so on and he reckons it's the greatest art form going. But I say, try this. La La Land is an opera for 20-teens, shot in a kind of pastel-shading that gives it a highly original feel. The plot, of course, is as old as the Hollywood Hills, but its strength lies in the two protagonists, Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, who are now basically the two hottest stars in the world. They are pretty good too, doing their own singing, dancing and playing. They're not quite the classical triple-threats that, say, Julie Andrews or Gene Kelly were, but that's a rather exacting standard to aspire to.
           My only problem with this delightful movie is that the songs aren't quite good enough (and that, I suggest, is where a musical or an opera must ultimately score). There are no really memorable show-stoppers- the sort of numbers you can't stop humming afterwards. But not everybody agrees. My wife, for instance, who knows a lot more about music than I do, thinks the songs were just fine. Watch it yourself and make up your own mind.

LES BELLES DE NUIT (1953) D- Rene Clair.
A young but down-at-heel French composer looks out of the window in his garret and watches a series of beautiful, but unobtainable women pass by in the street below. But in his dreams, ah, that's a different story. There they become characters in a series of improbable scenarios where he is a courtier, musketeer, revolutionary etc. Here he is free to play out his fantasies with these idealised beauties, until that is, he is woken by some street urchin shouting in the street or some other irritating distraction.
         This film, with its switching timelines and complex plotting, was well ahead of its time and is something of a forgotten masterpiece of 1950s French cinema, being somewhat sidelined by the daring and trendy efforts of the New Wave. Fascinating.

THE HELP (2011) W/D- Tate Taylor. In 1950s America, a collection of southern belles are brought up by the "help" (black housemaids), while their parents lead their lives unecumbered by any of the drudge of actual parenting. Then a young journalist (Emma Stone, you really can't avoid her these days, not that you'd want to do any such thing) has the idea to chronicle the lives of these forgotten people. But in a land still dominated by Jim Crow laws, this is not going to go down well...
         In 1865, when the slaves were freed, state after state passed the notorious "Jim Crow" laws, making segregation not only legal, but mandatory. Thus a situation arose where black servants were used to do everything the whites couldn't be bothered to do themselves, but paid a pittance and systematically denied all the privileges their white "masters" enjoyed. And this situation obtained right into the 1960s, when Lyndon Johnson finally laid down the legislation to do away with it all.
          Here Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer excel as the "helps" who finally agree to talk to Emma Stone, who eventually writes a book exposing the hypocrisy of her own class. Superior movie making.

SHADOWLANDS (1993) D- Richard Attenborough. An Oxford academic and successful children's novelist falls for an American divorcee. They marry, but then she gets cancer and dies. That's it.
           So, is this finely wrought little piece from Dickie Darling with spending 131 minutes of your time on? I think so. For one thing, you've got Anthony Hopkins playing C.S. Lewis, a man who never turned in anything other than an exceptional performance in his life, opposite Deborah Winger, who gives an equally neat performance as his doomed paramour. Then you have the feel Attenborough gives to this understated little movie. Put it all together and you have a very satisfying whole. No special effects that cost billions, no huge musical score trying to force you into feeling something you don't, no dizzying cuts and other directorial flourishes. Just quality movie making.

10 CLOVERFIELD LANE (2016) D- Don Trachtenberg. Mary Elizabeth Winstead (you remember her in Final Destination 2) gets in a car crash and when she wakes up she appears to have been abducted by John Goodman. Then she meets a fella who seems to have met a similar fate. But when we meet the abductor, he don't seem such a bad guy. He says he's simply protecting them from the apocalyptic events that have occurred outside the bunker they're holed up in, and if they venture outside they'll die. MEW doesn't buy it, however, and determines to escape one way or another. Goodman's spiel's got to be bullshit, right?
           I rather enjoyed this strange little ride, a "sequel" to the original Cloverfield movie, though apparently bearing little resemblance to it. Entertaining. And of course John Goodman is always good VFM.

CERTIFIED COPY (2010) D- Abbas Kiarostami. A self-obsessed author (A rather good George Shimell taking a sabbatical from his usual career as an opera singer to be a film actor)arrives in a Tuscan town to deliver a lecture about his latest book, in which he argues for the value of copies in art. They can have as much merit as the originals, he proposes. Afterwards he is taken for a little tour by a local art dealer (Juliette Binoche, absolutely delectable, as usual). A strange dynamic develops between them, and when a bar- keep thinks they must be man and wife, they decide by some strange default to behave as such. What follows is a mysterious, haunting scenario as they take to their new roles like they've been doing it for years.
            Not everyone took to this movie, but I found it remarkably skillful and thought provoking. The "couple" we see tell us a lot about how proper marriage works, its pluses and minuses, the supreme irritation it can incite, as well as the tenderness and love that, hopefully, are also part and parcel of it.