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TheGord1488
Reviews
Late September (2012)
Challenges preconceptions
Friends gather to celebrate Ken's 65th birthday, but the occasion is milestone in many ways. Relationships that are unconventional, precarious or simply over converge as the guests join the party. The only eternal love is a classical myth performed by a puppet.
If you think you know about film and film-making, if you think you know about middle age and middle England, if you have seen all those French films about le couple, Late September will surprise. Its contemplative backdrop a Kentish garden, its themes friendship, love and failure, its dialogue is wholly improvised by a cast whose relationships intertwine on and off screen. This is a film for film societies, and for watching with friends and family. It will leave you wiser than before.
Oranges and Sunshine (2010)
Loach jr - impressive docudrama
Have just seen this film shortly after its premiere in Nottingham, where the English sequences are mostly set, and am surprised to find so few people on IMDb prepared to say anything about it! Give 'em a few weeks ... "Oranges and Sunshine" works by judicious underplaying where it counts - there is a lot of dramatic tension in what is effectively a documentary, and although we may know the overall historical background after Kevin Rudd's 2008 apology for the deportations, we aren't all familiar with the more personal and "smaller scale" story of Margaret Humphreys; there are a few moments where she is almost placed in the "woman in distress" role, although Jim Loach (son of Ken) and his collaborators don't allow the film to lapse; they emphasise that Mrs Humphreys is one to put her work before anything else, and much is made of the tension between the reuniting of other families and the continual physical split in her own family. David Wenham gives a performance (to my mind) better than the nominal star Emily Watson - he is at once a "typical Australian male", a damaged victim of abuse, and a collaborator who doesn't feel the need to upstage Margaret while constantly offering assistance; the scene as they look back at the "childrens home" after they have gone in and helped themselves to a cup of tea is powerful stuff. Emily Watson acts well and is perhaps let down a bit by the script, which gives her lots of social-worker lines to say when she is in emotional states that make them seem artificial and elaborate. Hardly any of the story is a flashback to the 1940s and 1950s when most of the deportations happened - it's solidly based around 1986 Nottingham, and one slight flaw is that the constant back-and-forth England-Australia air travel by Margaret and her "clients" threatens to downplay the huge disorientating effect of the original seaborne voyage to the other side of the world; clever cutting and overlaps of sound add to this lessening of difference. How does Loach jr compare with Ken? You can't judge one film against a couple of dozen, and Ken didn't direct a lot of actual documentaries, or "true stories" so it's difficult - certainly not "Looking for Eric" but IMHO of similar merit.
Black Swan (2010)
Its Hollywood Hype time
Went on a bit of a whim to see this as it had a good writeup in the local independent cinema, but it was a complete comedown - maybe I shouldn't watch so many DVDs, as it compared so poorly with one I'd seen the day before called "Waterlilies" which had French synchronised swimmers where "Black Swan" had New York ballerinas, and was so much better it's almost insulting. BS (as I will appropriately abbreviate) was overblown, over-hyped, poorly scripted and reliant on a constant bang-bang-bang of clichés and frenetic camera rushing about (usually just behind the heroine's head). And if I ever see another "symbolic" mirror in a film I may throw up - there was hardly a scene without one. One of your other reviewers mentions "Repulsion" as a reference point, which got me as well, and just showed how much that particular film succeeded by understatement. I really don't understand why this film is seen as a shoo-in for multiple Oscars - Natalie Portman acts well enough and Vincent Cassel manages to be Anton Walbrook from the "Red Shoes" up to a point, but the film otherwise relies totally on cliché and isn't even as well directed as some auteurist reviewers seem to think. By the end I really didn't care whether Natalie was hallucinating or the events were actually happening - the film would not have suffered any more either way. If the Oscar selectors are mainly prurient teenagers looking for an undemanding mixture of dull sex and ersatz culture (even Tchaikowsky is played too loudly!) this year, then this film will indeed win a few.
Gainsbourg (Vie héroïque) (2010)
Biopic that sort of works
As an Englishman I didn't have as much of an idea of Serge Gs career as most of the previous critics here, so a lot of this film was pretty educational. However, it wasn't a literal biopic by any means, using the cartoon characters alongside Serge (quite well, I thought) and the latter half of his life (I didn't realise when or whether he'd died until I'd read one of your reviewers!) seemed to tail off into nothing, even more than his increasing physical degradation was suggesting.
I found the emphasis on his sexual groundbreaking and role as a general iconoclast a bit similar to the film "Mesrine" which came out a year or two back - a similar time period was covered in that - masses of smoke and sexism! The actresses playing Jane Birkin and Juliette Greco are good (especially Jane Bs English/French accent) but "Brigitte Bardot" less so, and the scenes with her do go on a bit (although some of the poses are meant to correspond with real Bardot roles like "Et Dieu Crea La Femme" and "La Mepris".
The music fits in well with the film and, surprisingly - with the film making style - the intrusion of early 1960s loud pop, and of reggae, is quite a shock to the system, as it is intended to be, and was at the time. Perhaps I'm missing some of the French references, but in general the milieu Gainsbourg moved in might not be best served by a "straight" biopic with a Nicholas Cage-type performance, but the surrealist cartoons do detract from the picture we get of Serge - and believe me, it's not that easy to like him! I wasn't that keen on the precocious young boy stage of his life either - a bit too "that's the French way boys grow up" all very pre-Simone de Beauvoir.
Anyway shouldn't carp too long - I was glad I saw it and a lot will stay with me, although I'll remember the Django-type guitar playing possibly longer than the (apparently rather few) Gainsbourg songs which graced the soundtrack.
Shoot on Sight (2007)
dated and simplistic but politically astute
Watching this I was reminded of "Who Dares Wins" (a paean to the SAS film from the early 1980s) blended with "Sapphire" (UK film on the late-50s race riots and the police response to them) - it's all very earnest and trying to balance (and it succeeds in the latter) but there's too much BBC2-school acting on "terrorist subjects" for it to seem new or fresh - there have been plenty of episodes of "Spooks" covering the ground only they are limited by BBC timidity of being seen to take a side (note for overseas commenters; the BBC is the UKs "national" state TV station and BBC2 is the previously artistic and cultural arm which has been drastically dumbed down), and Greta Scacchi and Brian Cox are disappointing (the Cox character would have been out of date in a film from the 1970s!) The comments likening it to a made-for TV are spot on - I don't see exciting film making here, just stacking up the pros and cons and trying to make cheap points rather than presenting the nuances through the film - the script is certainly written with a broad brush.