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gsygsy

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214 reviews in total

Perhaps the idea was to make a movie in the style of a funeral cortege, as one long, slow lament. If so, writer Noah Oppenheim and director Pablo Larraín have succeeded. The result, though, is a ponderous, portentous, heavy-handed film, illuminated by Nathalie Portman's star turn as Jackie Kennedy. She is stunning, and is ably supported by Peter Skarsgaard, Billy Crudup, John Hurt and Greta Gerwig, among others. But when a cast like this, with a central performance as good as that, can't prevent the enterprise from sinking under the weight of its pretensions, there's not a lot to be said in mitigation. Mica Levy's Oscar-nominated score is among the casualties: beautiful music, which will sound great on an album I've no doubt, but it doesn't help the film escape its weary slog towards the end credits. Madeline Fontaine's costume designs, which also got an Oscar nod, are fortunately free from the obsequies.

PATERSON is the best Jim Jarmusch movie for years, possibly his best ever. To his admirers, it will come as a welcome relief after the dreariness of his previous film, ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE.

The eponymous Paterson is, at the same time, a laconic bus driver, the New Jersey city through which he steers his bus, and the epic poem by William Carlos Williams set in the city. By the simple, brilliant expedient of making his bus driver a poet, Jarmusch delivers a kind of continuous triple-exposure: all three Patersons are on the go throughout the film. This enables apparently random episodes, such as conversations which Paterson the driver eavesdrops upon while driving his route, to be integrated perfectly into the structure of the film. Everything feels connected in a remarkable way.

That this never comes over as an intellectual idea, but instead as a story full of humanity and compassion, is largely down to the casting of Adam Driver as - yes, probably another wry Jarmusch gag - the driver. Observant, thoughtful, loving, tender, but also strong and capable of decisive action in what appears to be an emergency, Driver's gives a performance that is both a contradiction of what we think of as acting and its apotheosis. It's completely brilliant, beyond mere praise. There isn't an award for something like this, but if there were, Driver would walk away with it.

The supporting cast are all fine and dandy, notably Golshifteh Farahani as Paterson's lover, and the late, great Nellie as her bulldog.

The film is mercifully free from conventional plotting. When a little moment of it pops up, you can see the turn of events coming quite a way off, but it's hardly a flaw.

There's no way this can not be worthy of 10 out of 10, because it's a great movie by a great filmmaker at the top of his game.

This is a self-satisfied, sexist little romp, with a few laughs and an affable central performance from Ryan Reynolds, one of many Ben Affleck clones currently doing the Hollywood rounds. It amazes me that anyone could possibly mistake it as in any way progressive. Its postmodern "We know we're in a movie"is as contemporary as a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

Ed Skrein gives good villain, it's a treat to see Leslie Uggams enjoying herself in a supporting role, and there's a nice sardonic turn from T.J. Miller. The music, by Junkie XL aka Tom Holkenborg, is, in contrast to the movie as a whole, unselfconsciously generic, and is all the more enjoyable for it.

DEADPOOL will pass slightly too much of your time. It could have been shortened by ten minutes without anyone noticing. Otherwise, there's not a lot to be said for it.

I watched this movie on the eve of the inauguration of the 45th President of the USA. It wasn't hard to connect the content of the movie, based on Alan Moore's dystopian series of graphic novels, with fears for the future. I guess that's a sign of the filmmakers' seriousness of intent.

Sure enough, V FOR VENDETTA gets off to a great start, full of action and mystery. As the story progresses, however, the excitement peters out, as it does in the Wachowskis' THE MATRIX trilogy does, bogged down in heavy-handed portentousness.

Natalie Portman works hard and effectively in the leading role of Evey Hammond, with Hugo Weaving doing his best to make a credible human being out of the eponymous man in a Guy Fawkes mask. A who's who of character actors, led by the perpetually pained Stephen Rae, toil away earnestly in support.

The film's fatal flaw is that it assumes the majority of people are liberal at heart, and will rise up to oppose right-wing oppression. We just have to take a look at what's happening as I write this. In both the USA and Europe, democracies are turning their backs on liberal values. The demagogues are winning. The moral is, don't rely on the movies for up-to-date political analysis.

Bosley Crowther, the New York Times's movie critic at the time of this movie's release, concluded his review with the words "'Limelight' is a very moving film." To my surprise, I agree with him. Although as it was chugging along, I thought it was often verbose, sluggishly paced, only fitfully amusing, and heavy on philosophising, when its famous theme swelled up in the orchestra for the final scene, I burst into tears. It was evident that Chaplin's tale of age giving way to youth had been quietly working on my feelings. You've got to hand it to the guy: after a lifetime making movies, he knew what he was about.

One of LIMELIGHT's most fascinating aspects is Chaplin's take on audiences. We see his hero, the vaudevillian Calvero, play his old act twice: first, in a half-empty, emptying theatre; second, before an enthusiastic packed house. The act, though, is the same: there's no sense of a difference between the way Chaplin/Calvero plays it the first time and the second. The early audience decides it doesn't like it, the later audience decides it does. Such haphazard behaviour would be enough to wear anyone down in any relationship. Chaplin powerfully conveys the emotional cost of being at the receiving end of the public's whims.

At the opposite stage of her life is Theresa, a young ballet dancer, whose confidence has left her. Even as the flame of Calvero's own self-respect flickers, he is able to ignite Theresa's. The role was a huge break for Claire Bloom, not an actress for whom I have great admiration, but she does OK here, with youth on her side. Elsewhere, there are such delights as Majorie Bennett, Buster Keaton, and Chaplin's own beautiful score.

I don't know whether, when all's said and done, it's a masterpiece or not, and maybe it's helpful to be an old person like me to get the best out of it, but, once seen, it's unforgettable.

Serious, compelling but perhaps over-schematic thriller concerning the ethics of warfare.

Although the drone technology on display is up-to-date, the movie itself is redolent of American 'moral debate' films made after the Second World War. 'TWELVE ANGRY MEN' is probably the most famous, but the one that came to mind when watching 'EYE IN THE SKY' was John Frankenheimer's equally taut 'SEVEN DAYS IN MAY about a military coup threatening the White House, in which the arguments pro and con are represented by characters played by Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas. Here we have more participants, more points of view to take into account before Helen Mirren, in command of the military operation, can give the order to Aaron Paul for a lethal strike on an enemy.

The issues are presented clearly, as is the jockeying for primacy. But the clarity is, perhaps deliberately, a distancing factor. It prevents emotional engagement, which the filmmakers then try to recover through non-stop music and heartbeat sound effects. The result is a bit of a muddle artistically.

However, the movie is expertly filmed and edited. It is definitely worth seeing, not least because it is Alan Rickman's final screen performance, and he is absolutely brilliant .

Producer, director, writer and lead actor: Ben Affleck.

Let's look at those contributions one by one.

Producer. The film looks good. There's an expert team on both sides of the camera. But there's a problem with length. Also, it feels as though the adaptation from Dennis Lehane's novel has not sufficiently transformed what was on the page into cinematic story-telling.

Director. There are excellent action sequences, such as an exciting car-chase and a final shoot-out. As a director of actors Mr Affleck is strong: he elicits particularly striking work from Chris Messina, Elle Fanning, Remo Girone and Sienna Miller. Within scenes there's a reassuring sense of control of pace. But overall, there is a sense of the director being in thrall to the screenplay.

Writer. This is the weakest link. It feels in awe of its source material. I read that an entire strand of the book was removed for the purposes of the film, but this was not enough. The producer and/or the director needed to tell the writer to put it through another draft. Or put it in its current form on Netflix as a two-part drama.

Lead actor. A matter of taste, I guess. Mr Affleck's persona is always of a handsome man who knows he's handsome, and who is very pleased with himself about it. I find this insufferable in large doses. And there is a very large dose of it here. Mr Affleck's performances lack depth -- compare and contrast those of this amazing brother Casey. As far as I'm concerned, Mr B. Affleck is more a male model than an actor: in James Bond terms, he's a George Lazenby rather than a Daniel Craig. His best film performance is his self-parodying turn in 'SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE'. In LIVE BY NIGHT he is serviceable, nothing more. His director clearly couldn't get anything else out of him.

It's instructive to compare Ben Affleck to Clint Eastwood, who also has a limited -- maybe even more limited -- range as an actor. But Eastwood the director usually casts Eastwood the actor brilliantly. DIRTY HARRY, UNFORGIVEN,GRAN TORINO etc: who could be better? By contrast, there are many young actors who could have played the lead in LIVE BY NIGHT, and many writers who could have delivered a better screenplay, especially when guided by a strong producer and director. Time will tell whether Ben Affleck is as good in those last two departments as ARGO suggested he might be. The promise he showed in those areas in that film is not in evidence here.

This is a dark satire, set not so much in the future but in a kind of parallel present, in which being single is outlawed. Without a partner, you're either pray for hunters, or you have a chance to hook up with someone in a kind of institutional hotel. If you fail, you get taken to a transformation room, where you're turned into an animal.

The film maintains a deadpan tone throughout, in vibrant contrast to the horrible deeds perpetrated by and upon the characters. The cast, led by Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, Lea Seydoux and Olivia Colman, enact scene after outrageous scene with straight faces. Goodness knows how they did it.

It's merciless, often very funny, and as far as English-language movies are concerned there's really nothing like it that I'm aware of. A treat.

The first half of this movie is excellent. It takes its time to place its co-protagonist Jim Preston at a point where he has to make a fascinating choice, and then plays through the consequences of that choice on his relationship with sister-protagonist Aurora Lane. The roles are played by two perfectly-cast actors, Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence, whose enjoyment in each others charms and talents is a delight to watch. They are joined by Michael Sheen for a number of gently comic scenes set in a bar that comes straight out of Kubrick's THE SHINING. Gradually the references to other movies start to accumulate. 2001 A SPACE ODYSSEY, ALIEN, SILENT RUNNING and GRAVITY all make appearances. By the time it's done, the screenplay has lost whatever originality it had and turned into yet another piece of Hollywood sci-fi hackwork. What a pity.

That aside, I was pleasantly surprised by Chris Pratt's range as an actor, as demonstrated in the first act of this movie. I hope he gets another chance to show the extent of his acting skills in a film that doesn't peter out.

I laughed a couple of times at the octopus, but otherwise this was tedious stuff, the worst kind of baby-food: sugary and cloying. Is this really the same company that brought us the wit and wisdom of TOY STORY, WALL-E or UP? If so, it is unrecognisable.

All that technical know-how, all that talent, wasted on this sentimental slush.

I know, I know. I obviously left my sense of humour outside the cinema. It's making the company a fortune, so what do I know? Evidently not much. All that matters is that the children love it, right? Who cares if it pickles their imaginations by conjuring up a non-world, something that could only exist in the swarming collective brain of a gigantic corporation?

I recommend running early Pixar or classic Disney for your young ones. They've stood the test of time, which FINDING DORY will inevitably fail on account of its unacceptably high sugar content.

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