IN THE LOOP: not as smart as it thinks it is

The humour on show in IN THE LOOP is drier than the most barren stretch of desert on Earth on a particularly dry day following a long dry spell. The humour is so dry it's in danger of shriveling up.
It's just too damn dry for it's own good.
What I'm trying to say here is that IN THE LOOP is not even 25 per cent as funny as it thinks it is.
This political satire pokes fun at the clash of cultures between a barely disguised George W Bush led US administration and an equally thinly disguised Tony Blair-era British Labour government in the lead up to an only ever vaguely defined outbreak of American-led hostilities in the Middle East.
The film's targets aren't the leaders themselves but their mid-level ministers and operatives - the people whose competing machinations are pushing the two countries towards war.
It's a study in incompetence, intrigue and ego which pits the bumbling insecure, pintsized British Secretary of State for International Development, Simon Foster (Tom Hollander) against the PM's uber-aggressive foul mouthed Director of Communications Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi channelling Alastair Campbell) and the supercilious unscrupulous and disturbingly Donald Rumsfeld-like US Secretary of Defense Linton Barwick (David Rasche). 
Throw in attempts by a peace-loving US General (James Gandolfini) and a war-averse State Department assistant secretary to block the march to war and the result is armour piercing satire - except it isn't. 

The script by noted British satirist and comedian Armando Iannucci is more clever than sharp. It raised a few appreciative half-smiles and a couple of chuckles but for the most part it succeeds in being clever rather than funny, and I'm not using clever as a compliment. Just how the script came to be Oscar nominated is one of 2010's biggest mysteries.
I never got bored but I didn't feel particularly entertained either. IN THE LOOP is a collection of sophisticated observations on politics that never really goes anywhere. I kept waiting for the story or the humour or something to kick up a gear and start firing on all cylinders but it never did.  

EVERY GIRL SHOULD BE MARRIED: but should every man be stalked?

There's two ways of reading this movie.
1. It's an incredibly cute rom-com about an incredible cute young lady called Anabel (Betsy Drake) who uses her feminine wiles to land the man of her dreams;
or
2. It's a disturbing tale of an obsessed young woman named Anabel who relentlessly hunts down her prey, stalking the poor man for weeks and bamboozling him into marriage.

In both instances the heroine is painted in a less than flattering light. In the former she's a love-sick simpleton whose only goal in life is to land a husband, while in the latter she's become unhinged under the weight of society's pressure to conform. She's been brainwashed into believing a woman isn't whole without her husband and has become manic in her efforts to find one.
In 1948, when EVERY GIRL SHOULD BE MARRIED was originally released it's unlikely there would have been many who would have agreed with the latter interpretation. The film's lighthearted title reflected a popularly held sentiment, particularly among the millions of men who'd recently returned from the war and were eager to reclaim the jobs that had been taken over by women during their absence. 
60 years ago Anabel's behaviour may have been viewed as rather over-enthusiastic but, after all, she is only acting on her biological urges. The pretty little thing is to be admired for demonstrating some initiative in landing her man who obviously doesn't know what's good for him..  
The poor sap who doesn't stand a chance is Dr Madison W. Brown, a noted baby doctor who's too busy enjoying his bachelor lifestyle to realise it's not what he wants. As played by Cary Grant, Dr Brown is something of a mystery. Resolutely single and initially impervious to Anabel's dubious charms he only starts to succumb when she begins displaying the kind of behaviour which is more normally grounds for the issuance of a restraining order. 
What's particularly frightening is that when she finally reels him in he admits he was onto her all along, and still he wants to marry her. On the basis of no evidence whatsoever he appears to believe that once the ring is on her finger all this obsessive behaviour will simply vanish and he'll have a perfectly contented little wife to come home to everyday. While Dr Brown's imagining Myrna Loy in "The Best Years of Our Lives" I'm thinking the reality's likely to be someone closer to Alex Forrest in "Fatal Attraction."
Some may accuse of me of reading too much into a frivolous piece of Hollywood fluff - and it's not even a particularly good piece of fluff - but mainstream Hollywood was all about maintaining the status quo in the 30s and 40s and made much use of fluff such as this to explore and resolve social issues in a way that disguised their true intent.
In what may have been a case of life or imitating art, or may just have been pure coincidence, Grant and Drake were married a year to the day after the film's release. And they didn't live happily ever after.   

CRAZY HEART: whiskey soaked magnificence

With his best days far behind him, has-been country music star Bad Blake is on a booze soaked, chain-smoking back road to oblivion, eeking out a living by trading on those past glories in the bars and bowling alleys of rural Texas and New Mexico.

At one such gig he's introduced to Jean Craddock (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a single mom and journalist who wants to interview him for an article.  Despite the age difference and Blake's serious alcohol problem the two hit it off and a budding romance develops. But is Jean's love enough to pull him out of his downward spiral?
I'm not going to give away the ending. I'll just remind you that Blake's a country singer and country is not a genre built on celebrating the redemptive qualities of the love of a good woman.
The smell of whiskey and stale cigarettes permeates Jeff Bridges' masterful portrayal of Blake. He doesn't just play the part, he is  the part so completely and utterly that you'll forget within minutes that you're watching Bridges and believe in Blake as a real-life character. He gets under the skin of the part in a way we rarely seen on screen. There's not a single false note from start to finish, and the authenticity is enhanced by having Bridges sing his own songs. I'm no fan of country music but these sound like the real deal; genuine stripped down, unaffected, old school country tales of lives mis-spent and good love gone bad.

Magnificently impressive as Bridges is, the film's biggest surprise is Colin Farrell's convincing performance as Blake's former protege, Tommy Sweet, who's now enjoying the kind of career Blake should had if his demons hadn't led him astray. Farrell displays the kind of maturity and depth that's been glimpsed but rarely in his previous films.   
CRAZY HEART is a film that takes it's time and for that I'm extremely grateful because it allowed me to spend more time getting to know Blake and share in his travails. 
Both Bridges and Gyllenhaal are totally deserving of their Oscar nominations and, much as I enjoyed George Clooney's Best Actor Academy Award nominated performance in Up in the Air there will be something seriously wrong if Bridges doesn't walk off with the Oscar tomorrow night in Hollywood.

THE PUMPKIN EATER: most definitely not a date movie!

1964's THE PUMPKIN EATER is a bleak and depressing examination of mental illness and infidelity within the confines of a middle class marriage. Think of it as a British cousin to "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf' and you'll have a good idea what to expect.
Jo (Anne Bancroft) has commitment issues and an obsession with reproduction. When we first encounter her she's on her second husband and fifth child. Before long she's left him for film scriptwriter Jake Armitage (Peter Finch) and a sixth kid is on the way.

Jake's convinced he can cope with the instant family but it's not too long before he finds himself resenting the constant noise, and the paucity of quality time with Jo, for whom the kids always come first.
Frustrated at the lack of attention at home he begins to look for it elsewhere, and while Jo is slow to cotton on to his extramarital activities, when she does, it shatters her mental equilibrium.
THE PUMPKIN EATER is as much a study as it is a story; a study in what educated, civilised adults can do to the person they profess to love most in the world, and the mental pain that behaviour inflicts. 
With a screenplay by playwright Harold Pinter this film is anything but uplifting but there is much pleasure to be derived from watching Peter Finch at work. In the hands of a lesser actor Jake could easily have become little more than a stereotypical male heartless bastard, but Finch endows the character with depth, breadth and complexity. Jake's behaviour is inexcusable but he has his reasons, and they are reasons not excuses.
Finch holds the attention whenever he's on screen and he makes it look so effortless. He really is one of the finest and most underrated actors of 1960s cinema, and I wish he would have had more scenes with co-star James Mason. The one substantial scene they do have together doesn't quite generate the same level of excitement as DeNiro's much anticipated head to head with Pacino in 'Heat' but I reckon it comes close.
Anne Bancroft, in contrast, appears slightly miscast. She performs well but it's a part for a British actress. Bancroft seems a little too foreign, too exotic, to be entirely convincing. 
THE PUMPKIN EATER is not a film with broad appeal. Many will find it too slow, too uneventful and too depressing, but it's worth it to watch a master practice his craft. 

THE ENTERTAINER: a great name acting like his career depended on it

THE ENTERTAINER is a masterclass in acting from one of the masters of acting. 
Laurence Olivier stars as Archie Rice, a moth-eaten music hall entertainer with an ambition that greatly outstrips his talent. He and his act are corny, old fashioned, pathetic and tired, but Archie just keeps plugging away convinced that his big break will arrive any day soon. 

His singleminded pursuit of the unattainable has made him a particularly unattractive and selfish character, willing to sacrifice those nearest and dearest to him if it'll edge him closer to his ultimate goal, and the story explores the impact on his long suffering family.
Archie Rice was a new departure for Olivier. Long established as Britain's leading thespian, he specialised both in playing noble, well-spoken and well-bred types on film and on stage, and in  bringing Shakespeare to the masses. 
Archie, by contrast, was a character at the cutting edge of the new big thing in British theatre.circa 1960, summed up in the phrase 'kitchen sink drama.' Life among the working class was in and drawing room dramas were out. Olivier wanted to be a part of this new scene and commissioned playwright John Osborne, the angry young man of British theatre, to write something for him. The result was THE ENTERTAINER.
Olivier throws himself wholeheartedly into this new style of storytelling, playing Archie as a kind of third rate Max Miller, but to anyone accustomed to seeing him as 'Henry V' or 'Richard III' or Heathcliff in 'Wuthering Heights' it's a bit of a surprise. It's not as embarrassing as watching the dad who still thinks he's got it busting a move at his daughter's school disco, but it's definitely unsettling. 
To me, Olivier as Archie is acting - in the best sense of the word. He is playing the part, not being the part. He plays it very well - he acts his socks off bringing Archie to life - but not for one minute did I forget that I was watching a great act-or essaying a shabby, disreputable working-class type. 
Olivier had toured with the play to great success before embarking on the film version and it's theatrical roots show, most notably in Brenda de Banzie's overheated performance as Archie's long-suffering wife. In contrast, rising stars Alan Bates, Albert Finney and Joan Plowright, demonstrate a better grasp of the idea that less is more in film acting, although their characters are less showy to start with.
Despite the critical success of THE ENTERTAINER Olivier did not persevere with this new style of film acting. As the 1960s unfolded he reverted to playing characters that were less of a stretch in terms of challenging expectations. 
Today THE ENTERTAINER stands as an ambitious experiment by a great performer who wanted to step outside his comfort zone. From this point of view, it's well worth investing two hours of your time to watch.

THE LOVELY BONES: love, death and too much cgi

Cinema's Serial Killer Hall of Fame has a new inductee. 
His name is George Harvey. 
As played to perfection by a justly Oscar nominated Stanley Tucci, George is the most genuinely creepy and disturbing movie bad guy I've seen in a long time.
It gives nothing away to reveal that early on he murders 14 year old Suzie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan). THE LOVELY BONES is not a whodunit, a why-he-dunit or even a will-he-get-away-with-it. There is, to be sure, an element of the latter but the real focus is on the impact on the murder victim and her family.
Rather disconcertingly the story is told by Suzie, looking back on the events from her vantage point in a spectacularly lush and beautiful way-station on the road to heaven. She watches George going on with his everyday life as her heartbroken family struggle to pick up the pieces of theirs.
Dad Jack's (Mark Wahlberg) obsession with finding Suzie's killer places intolerable strains on his marriage to Abigail (Rachel Weisz), preventing them from giving Suzie's younger sister and brother the support that they need. The healing proves to be long, painful and incomplete.
It's a story with huge potential for cloying sentimentality and gratuitous tugging of the heartstrings and while it does stray into that territory on occasion it manages to avoid feeling cloying or sappy. Much of the credit for that belongs to the mature and assured performance by 15 year old Ronan as the murder victim who discovers there's life after death.  
THE LOVELY BONES is a considerable change of scale for director Peter Jackson after "King Kong" and "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy but he hasn't abandoned his attachment to computer generated imagery. There's loads of it on show, most obviously in the creation of the aforementioned way station which ressembles a collection of photo-shopped screensavers for the most idyllic places minus the couple walking hand in hand on the sand.  
This surfeit of cgi is a big minus which offsets some of the pluses offered by Tucci and Ronan. The end result is that - despite being disturbing, moving and emotionally engaging - THE LOVELY BONES is too uneven to be a truly great movie.

AMERICAN GRAFFITI: magical movie making

AMERICAN GRAFFITI is mandatory viewing for anyone who was ever 17 or 18 years old and on the brink of making that huge transition from high school to the grown-up world of university.
It doesn't matter if your experience didn't include hot rods, Mel's Diner, and cruising Main Street in a small Californian town in a pristine Thunderbird with the car radio tuned to Wolfman Jack playing the big hits of 1962. This film isn't so much about the place as capturing the moment and the emotion.
AMERICAN GRAFITTI follows Steve (Ron Howard) and Curt (Richard Dreyfuss) through the final night of summer before they leave for college three thousand miles away. Both are acutely aware that their lives will never be the same and they want to make the most of these last twelve hours with their friends.
There's no big party, no group hugs and pledges of undying friendship. It's another night just like hundreds they've experienced before, doing the things they've done a hundred times before, but director George Lucas imbues it all with an unseen magic that makes the night unforgettable.
This is a story that will stay with you long after the final credits have rolled.

GOODBYE MY FANCY: Joan Crawford as a premature anti anti-communist

GOODBYE MY FANCY offers many guilty pleasures, and most of them are clearly visible on the surface.  
There's Joan Crawford emoting with the intensity of an open fire hydrant on a hot summer's day, and the corny dialogue breathlessly delivered by an overacting supporting cast in what may simply be a defence mechanism to avoid being blown off-screen by their leading actress.
It's second rate melodrama at it's finest. Scenery-chewing, predictable and fun.
What's surprising is the story's politically subversive undertones.
Crawford stars as the improbably named Agatha Reed, a hard charging US Congresswoman with bigger balls than all of her male colleagues put together. Invited back to her alma mater to be awarded an honorary degree she stirs up a hornet's nest by insisting that the school screen a film of her speech warning of the dangers of imposing limits on the right to free speech.
Having (equally improbably) witnessed the horrors of Naziism at firsthand while serving as a war correspondent on the frontlines of the battle to liberate Europe, it's a subject she's passionate about. 
But the film's message doesn't sit well with Claude Griswold, the domineering chair of the school's board of trustees. He doesn't believe the all-female undergraduate body should be exposed to such depressing and disagreeable ideas and images as book-burning,  the enslavement of educators, and the murder of opponents to the Nazi philosophy. He orders the college president, James Merrill (Robert Young) to cancel the screening or risk of losing his job.
Young just happens to be Agatha's college boyfriend, and while the flame still burns bright within his heart, it's no match for his sense of self-preservation. She's appalled to discover the love of her life has traded his principles for appeasement. By conceding to Griswold over the film he believes he'll be better placed to win other battles over the school's future, and is deaf to the Congresswoman's argument that his stance is indefensible at a time when the USA is fighting for freedom from tyranny abroad.

That 'time' was 1951 and when Warner Bros released GOODBYE MY FANCY in May of that year the Cold War with communism was in the deep freeze. UN troops, under American command, were engaged in heavy fighting with communist forces in Korea, the Rosenbergs were on trial for passing atomic secrets to the Soviets, and Senator Joseph McCarthy was whipping up anti-communist hysteria with his wild claims of reds under every American bed. It was a time when patriotism was measured by a willingness to denounce friends, colleagues and neighbours who displayed liberal tendencies, or who had supported anti-fascist causes two decades earlier when the left wing was the only wing warning of the danger of Naziism.
In this light it seems incredible that a Stars and Stripes hugging studio like Warner Bros would risk incurring the wrath of the right by challenging the prevailing philosophy so blatantly. Studio boss Jack Warner was a bully who liked to think of himself as a scrappy fighter who stood up to bullies but he was no friend of those accused of attempting to undermine the United States from within. 
Careers had already been ruined on less evidence of liberalism than this Warner Bros production was offering up in the guise of overheated melodrama.
Brave, brash and bad, GOODBYE MY FANCY has something for everyone from drag queens to Cold war scholars.

THE MESSENGER: bringing the war back home to New Jersey

Give me a character driven story over an action adventure blockbuster any day.
I like films where the characters are the stars not the special effects or explosions. And I'm particularly partial to interesting characters in everyday situations dealing with whatever life (and the scriptwriter) has to throw at them.
Making the ordinary extraordinary trumps making the extraordinary even larger than life everytime.
Which is a roundabout way of saying I really enjoyed THE MESSENGER.
The film examines the consequences of the US involvement in Iraq through the eyes of two soldiers whose job it is to break the news to husbands, wives, mothers and fathers, that their loved one has been killed in action.

Staff Sergeant Will Montgomery (Ben Foster) is three months away from leaving the Army when he's assigned to work with Captain Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson), driving out to families in  suburban New Jersey to deliver the terrible news in person before they hear it from the media. It's not Will's dream job. He's had no training in grief counselling and he's not religious, but he's told that's not the point. He's given a script to learn and instructed that under no circumstances is he to offer consolation to the NoK (next of kin) by touching or hugging them.
Both Will and Tony are men's men, not given to expressing emotion in public or discussing their respective military experiences, although Will has clearly been through a lot. He's still recovering from wounds received in action in Iraq, and now lives a rather isolated existence in a sparsely furnished, impersonally decorated apartment off-base. Tony's given his life to the military and looks to have it altogether, but as the story unfolds it becomes obvious that both men have many problems in common.
Harrelson is the one who's been lauded with award nominations (including one for Best Supporting Actor Oscar) but it's relative unknown Foster who's at the heart of this drama. Initially reluctant to accept the assignment he finds himself unexpectedly affected by the distressing reactions of those to whom he delivers his life-changing message, and inexplicably drawn to one young widow (played by Samantha Morton) in particular.
Despite their outward show of bravado, neither man is who they appear to be and certainly not the kind of figures we've come to expect from cinematic portrayals of cynical, battlehardened vets.The refusal to play up to that stereotype is just one of the rewarding elements to this story.
Another is it's languid pace. First time director Oren Moverman has created an experience which refuses to be rushed yet never outstays it's welcome. The film feels longer than it's sub 2 hour running time but that's not a complaint. Between his direction, his Oscar nominated screenplay and the performances of Foster, Harrelson and Morton, I felt so immersed in their world I would happily have stayed living in it for another hour.
In reviewing Zombieland and 2012 for this blog I expressed my dislike of Woody Harrelson as an actor. That still stands but I have to admit he is good here. The understated way in which he plays Tony Stone makes him considerably less objectionable and I certainly wouldn't begrudge him the Oscar in the unlikely event that it's his name in the envelope.
THE MESSENGER has received just a fraction of the attention paid to The Hurt Locker but for my money it's the superior film.
 

NEW YORK, I LOVE YOU: I like you but not in that way

There are eight million stories in the Naked City, and NEW YORK, I LOVE YOU tries to cram at least half of them into it's 1 hour 45 minute running time.

This compilation of vignettes, eavesdropping on life in the Big Apple, aims to do for NYC what 2006's "Paris, Je T'aime" did for the French capital. That film presented twenty short self-contained stories revolving around characters falling in and out of love. Each had it's own cast of famous actors, directed by a different famous film director. 
The stories were charming, amusing and light, and Paris looked absolutely ravishing.
In the hands of a different, slightly less famous, collection of actors and directors that magic has somehow been lost during the journey across the Atlantic. They've created an image of New York that's soft and inviting but doesn't succeed in exuding genuine allure. In their efforts to capture the "real" New York the directors have studiously avoided the most famous landmarks leaving me with the feeling of having consumed a Sunday lunch which is all vegetables and no meat. I wanted more from the experience.
Some of the stories are incredibly short (giving the impression that I'd missed something) while some others are incredibly confusing (again giving me the impression I'd missed something). One vignette, featuring Julie Christie, Shia LaBeouf and John Hurt is particularly baffling, and the effort involved in trying to figure out what it meant distracted me from the subsequent installment.  

Chris Cooper and Ethan Hawke star in two of the more rewarding stories, but for pure, put-a-big-smile-on-your-face pleasure it's hard to beat veteran actors Eli Wallach and Cloris Leachman as an elderly, bickering Jewish couple shuffling to the boardwalk on Brighton Beach for a breath of fresh air.
Ultimately the film is too busy for it's own good. There's too much going on to keep track of it all. 
In addition to the confusion described above, some characters have a habit of popping up out of context, Are they in this other story too, or are we cutting back to their story which is still going on even though it apparently finished? Perhaps the intention is to replicate the rhythms of the city but it feels messy and, at times, a little disjointed.
The heart's undoubtedly in the right place but as a love letter to one of the most incredible, exciting, and wonderful cities on Earth NEW YORK I LOVE YOU is an airport novel by Jeffrey Archer compared to the Shakespearean poetry of Woody Allen's "Manhattan."