Reviews

Jasper is a film maker with ideological convictions but without a production budget. He finds himself involved in some work for the council to help make ends meet, teaching film-making to a handful of children with disabilities. One of his charges has his own views, one would rather be anywhere else but cooped up in a hall with Jasper and a video camera and one couldn't care less.

In the end, blessedly, it's not about disabilities or the power of cinema. This is no Dead Poets with ramps. It is about these characters. And mostly it is about Jasper, trying to figure it out. His failed relationship with a woman. His ambiguous relationship with the idea of cinema.

The result is not perfect, but hugely watchable. The central performance by Dominic Coleman holds the film together. The young people are believable. The story line is small in scale but engaging and illuminating. If it were French it would be a hit.

But it's British, and its neither feel-good nor auter-ish. Without earnest and well funded distribution, it disappears. Which is a shame.

I'm going to write this from the point of view of someone who has not read the book (yet) and who hasn't seen the 13 part miniseries (13 parts? Mini?).

I liked it. The key performances are excellent, especially Whishaw as Sebastien. The production design is astonishing, the direction is accomplished. The cinematography skilled and sympathetic.

No doubt the particular resonances of the story have dated a little in the intervening 60 years. Does that make it a bad film? Or is it just an attempt to recall and comprehend a vanished past? In this film's telling of the story the central theme is guilt. The aristocrats are drowning in their mother's carefully cultivated brand of Catholic guilt and Ryder's story is told in terms of his guilt over his failure to understand his friends and lovers, and perhaps his failure to understand himself. That doesn't sound like an Adam Sandler movie and this isn't one, but it's a serious piece of work and worth a look.

I've seen some pretty awful films with IMDb ratings better than 5/10 - its current rating is way off beam.

In Mr Woodcock, John Farley, an apparently together writer of a top selling self-help book "Letting go", (ably played by Sean William Scott), returns to his hometown to find that the gym teacher who tortured him through childhood is now dating his mother. It's soon clear that when the chips are down Farley is going to find it difficult to practise what he has preached in his book.

There are problems. The central character is a little whiny. Some of the scenes are played pretty straight dramatic and cut straight into other scenes played pretty broadly for laughs, but there are also some killer scenes - I defy you to not laugh at the scene where Farley is introduced to Mr Woodcock's father and his opinion abouts about water sports.

Finally, I just don't get the criticism of the Billy Bob Thornton's performance - all the scenes in the gymnasium are to die for. Thornton produces a perfect mixture of boredom, deadly seriousness about how to play kickball with a thick top coat at delight in torturing fat kids and asthmatics. All played believably and with restraint. Screw the criticism - could this be his best work since Sling Blade?

Harrelson is Carter Page III. Unfortunate son of a great man, fortunate son of a dynasty of plantation owners; what does he do? He spends a day a week as a real estate agent and fails to chase up a gallery opening for his lover's photography. What he really does is move with grace through the social circles of the Washington wives. All is well, passing off lines of Tennessee Williams and playing canasta, until by chance he is dragged into a murder investigation. Forced, in his own words, into a choice between "being disloyal and being dishonest" the film follows Carter's progress as events take him into murkier waters where it is no longer enough just to smile at the chaos and hope that it will pass.

In Schrader's script the dialogue crackles, for the most part, and the narrative is traced out with skill. The film does not aspire to the pace of a thriller but achieves a constant tension. Harrelson's performance is magnificent and he is ably supported by Bacall, Scott-Thomas and a sphinx like Geff Francis as the detective on the case.

'The Walker' is not a genre film and may disappoint those looking for a ripping yarn about a murder, but judged on its own terms it is a success. There are off notes; moments of dialogue strike as contrived and some imagery is unsubtle, but all said it is engrossing and like all really good cinema there can be no doubt that it is about something important.

I almost didn't bother to see this, but I'm pleased that I did.

As noted by other comment writers, the strength of this film is the two fine performances of Helen Hunt and Tom Wilkinson, especially Wilkinson in the role of Tuppy.

The film suffers the usual foibles of a stage adaptation, with some scenes seeming very contrived, as the characters linger at bars and exchange witticisms. On the other hand the writer and director have made a serious effort to address this problem and succeed in parts, (Lady Windermere and Lord Darlington's stroll through the fish sellers is a memorable example).

I am not familiar with the original play and especially towards the end was quite swept along by the narrative tension, which again was a very pleasant surprise.

So in conclusion, a clever little story, some fine performances and a stack of Wilde's incisive aphorisms on the vagaries of the human condition. What's not too like? It deserves to be widely seen, so get out and see it before it's too late!

The positives about this piece are that the film makers have produced a document of interviews with surviving relatives and band members of an important artist, dead now for over 50 years.

For anyone with an interest in Hank Williams there are plenty of interesting insights and a picture of a complex and unknowable figure emerges.

On the downside much of the contemporary footage is sufficiently low resolution, certainly on the projection at the London Film Festival, that it doesn't stand up to the blow up from TV to cinema and looks blocky and blurred.

The film makers struggle manfully with a difficult subject with only partial success. The director indicated at the screening that the subject had perhaps not already been tackled due to the dearth of footage of Williams and this is possibly the greatest problem.

The film is structured around William's career through tracing his movements around a map and this serves to accentuate the impression of the movie as charting the steps towards his eventual demise, age 29, in the back of a car on his way to a concert.

In conclusion the film is strangely sterile - the lasting impression is of a vital and fascinating figure lost to us, remembered only in shreds of memory and scraps of film and paper. These bits and pieces do not remain in sufficient quantity for an engaging piece of film to be woven from them in the manner that this documentary attempts.

This noted the film is competently made and for anyone interested in Williams it is worth a look.

This is a modestly paced film which suits the character of its main protagonist, Alejandro, the service driver, (sort of, but not quite, a taxi driver, apparently). It sits in the comedy genre but the comedy is of a gentle and knowing kind.

It will not suit those who prefer their movies to be long on narrative and short on insight but if you're interested in the adventures of a pretty normal guy and his attachment to his Renault 12 then there is much of value.

Anyone who has ever dabbled in amateur rock should check it out just for the gags surrounding 'Piranha' and his CD.