Film Review - Never Let Me Go (2010)

Oh it's another film review of a reasonably old film!  I'm wondering if I should re-consider my no plot spoilers or description rule...but no, I do like to see a film where I don't have any preconceptions, so I shan't spoil anything for you. Having said that the problem here of course is that this is one of my favourite books. So you know what I'm going to say.  

I thought perhaps if you hadn't read it you might think it was ok, and I was pretty happy with the casting of Keira Knightly as one of the central characters because she plays Ruth, the repulsive one. But D didn't think it was that good either, and had a lot of questions about bits of the plot that were unexplained.

Kazuo Ishiguro's book is however, very very good.  What the film lacked was the feeling of looming, confusing tragedy. Because of the time constraints it really had to cram in the Hailsham days, which I think in the book is a really wonderful evocation of how normality is whatever you experience as a child. The film did attempt to put all the important bits in, but it felt a little bit like a montage and failed to build an atmosphere. To little time spent here, and to much spent as an adult. 

Carey Mulligan put in a great performance, and Izzy Meikle-Small was a real find as the child Kathy. I felt that Andrew Garfield was mis-cast as Tommy, and it jarred the whole way through.  

Having said all that, the scene where Kathy and Tommy are trying to justify addition to the Gallery as adults is so well done.  Absolutely perfect.

In short, read the book and don't bother with the film.

Film Review - Wanted (2008)

This was D's film choice and to be honest neither of us knew anything about it except D had seen a tiny bit of it involving a sort of gun-holder with an LCD screen that let you shoot round corners and thought it might be good.

Um.  Well.  

 

I need to start out by saying that in my film reviews I like to give NO SPOILERS.  This means I don't discuss plot.  At all.  I think the best films are when you go and you have no idea what is about to happen.  It does make it rather hard to discuss something critically though.  So here goes...

The main character is played by James McAvoy which is fine.  You are watching it quite happily thinking 'well this is a bit rubbish, but you know, he wasn't always a star', and then next minute Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman turn up.  And you look it up and it's from 2008, which is, you know, not that long ago. And it's a really crazy mix of people.  It's got Marc Warren in it, which I always find a bit strange because he's a very weird looking man, and a good TV actor, and I'm sure everyone deserves their chance, but really Marc, stick with Hustle.

I know, I'm rambling here, but it's hard to find what to say about this film.  It's very violent, when you aren't expecting it, and it's very post-Matrix which is also strange because the Matrix was in 1999 for goodness sake!

Apparently it's based on a comic series.  Which is probably it's saving grace.  Visually there are some really beautiful scenes which must have been lifted straight of the page.  It's based loosely on a comic series.  Very loosely it turns out.  It's a funny thing to make a movie based on a comic series but completely make up the key component. That's right I'm talking about The Loom Of Fate.  Was ever a more bizarre plot device invented?  That wasn't taken from the comic?

Look at it!  This scene is beautiful and D and I even commented on how graphic it was.  But no, totally made up!  Disappointing.

All in all, unless it is your mission to watch the entire filmography of James McAvoy...I wouldn't bother.

Les Mis - Film Review

Before I start I should admit I have never seen the stage show.  There, I've said it.  I know, it's disgraceful etc. etc. but the fact is I had a teacher in school that absolutely drooled over it and it put me off for life.  Only the epic movie trailer changed my mind.

I think I must be the only person in the world that didn't like the Les Miserables movie.  More and more facebook statuses are coming at me with tales of floods of tears and hearts touched and I'm starting to think I have a heart of stone.  But then I remember that, no, I actually just don't like Acting.  The culprit here is Hugh Jackman.  What's so disappointing here is that he can actually sing (check Happy Feet and Flushed Away for example), but in Les Mis he gives such a Performance and really puts his all into Singing that it leaves me cold. I don't have anything against vibrato per se, it's just not necessary on every single note, and when it is clearly not natural for your voice, but put on for the Musical Performance, it really ruins it.  Honestly it's not over stating it to say I was relieved when he died.

Now the even more controversial part....I liked Russell Crowe's performance. Here is a man that can play a baddie so sensitively that you totally understand where he is coming from.  I mean the words are all there in the songs, but I believed it from Crowe. And yes, I nearly shed a tear at his demise. I felt more akin to him than to Jean Valjean.  Maybe that says more about me than about the acting.

Yes, Hathaway was incredible, and the fact that everyone is saying it might water it down a bit but it's true.  Who knew?  She was amazing.  Ditto Eddie Redmayne.  Beautiful.  However the real star of the show for me was Aaron Tveit.  Who?  Indeed.  Young American, and boy can that guy sing.  I could have watched the revolutionaries for the entire movie.  I actually wished I had done I'd have left feeling happier.

As a side note, Samantha Barks has the thinnest waist I think I have seen in the modern age.  Apparently she was discovered on a reality talent show.  She was fabulous and let's be honest here, given the choice between Eponine and Cosette only a fool would go for the latter.

And finally...why make the first scene so epic when the rest of it is quite stagey?  How incongruous and misleading to those of us quite uninitiated.