The Phantom of the Opera

 The Phantom of the Opera 2004

• Director: Joel Schumacher
• Seen by this director: Veronica Guerin, Flawless, A Time to Kill, The Client
• Based on the book by Gaston Leroux
• Cast: Emmy Rossum, Gerard Butler, Patrick Wilson, Miranda Richardson, Minnie Driver, Ciarán Hinds, Simon Callow, Murray Melvin, Paul Brooke
• Personal “oh yeah him/her” reaction, i.e. have seen this actor in:
• Emmy Rossum – Beautiful Creatures, Day After Tomorrow, Mystic River
• Gerard Butler - Coriolanus, Dear Frankie, Tomorrow Never Dies, Mrs Brown
• Miranda Richardson - Testament of Youth, Harry Potter etc, Made in Dagenham, The Young Victoria, Paris je t’aime, Gideon’s Daughter, Wah-Wah, The Hours, Get Carter, Sleepy Hollow, The Crying Game, Enchanted April, Black Adder, Dance with a Stranger
• Minnie Driver - I Give It a Year, Ella Enchanted, Return to Me, Good Will Hunting, Grosse Pointe Blank, Circle of Friends
• Ciarán Hinds - First Man, The Woman in Black, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Harry Potter, Life During Wartime, Margot at the Wedding, Hallam Foe, Amazing Grace, Calendar Girls, Veronica Guerin, Road to Perdition, Titanic Town, Cold Lazarus, Mary Reilly, Circle of Friends, Seaforth
• Simon Callow - Victoria and Abdul, Doctor Who, Bright Young Things, Shakespeare in Love, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Postcards from the Edge, A Room with a View, Amadeus
• Murray Melvin - The Devils, Alfie, A Taste of Honey
• Paul Brooke - Alfie, Bridget Jones’s Diary
• Why? I want to like it more than the first time
• Seen: Once before. Now 7 August 2022      

       This is such a classic, and the title song is so good that I was disappointed the first time I saw the film (I’ve not seen it on stage). But musicals sometimes need to be seen several times. I won’t tell you the story. If you don’t know it, Google it.

       The problems begin early in the film:

·       The two young lovers (Rossum and Wilson) are tepid at best. Sugar-coated wimps, to be honest.

·       Minnie Driver, Ciarán Hinds and Simon Callow, all good actors, are just silly here.

·       It’s altogether too lavish. I’d like to see it in black and white with minimalist settings.

·       Male domination and violence, female submission – do NOT romanticise this!

·       Much too long. Cut half.

·       Most of the songs are clumsy with boring melodies and inelegant lyrics.

·       Lame story

·       The funny parts aren’t funny.

·       It’s winter and she’s walking along in the snow with her bosom mostly bare. Stupid and sexist.      

       The title song is still good, and the ending is quite dramatic. But nope, it’s not better this time. Is it worth watching a third time?      

2* of 5.

 

Still Walking

 Still Walking 2008

• Director: Hurokazu Koreeda
• Seen by this director: Shoplifters
• Based on the book: no
• Cast: Hiroshe Abe, Yui Natsukawa, You, Kirin Kiki, Yoshio Harada
• Personal “oh yeah him/her” reaction, i.e. have seen this actor in:
• Kirin Kiki - Shoplifters
• Why? Good reviews, possibly interesting
• Seen: 6-7 August 2022      

       Father: retired doctor

       Mother: housewife, excellent cook

       Daughter: married, two kids, uninterested in cooking

       Son: art restorer, married to a widow with a son

       Other son: dead hero 

       Family dinner. Conflicts. With slow subtle nuances their story is woven. Families, so filled with resentment, blame, guilt, regrets. And then it carries on into the next generation.

       It is so well acted that it could be a documentary on this family’s life. But my advice is to be well rested when you watch it because it can lull you to sleep. It did me yesterday evening, and I had to watch it again this morning.      

4* of 5.

 

 

Good Morning, Vietnam

 Good Morning, Vietnam 1987

• Director: Barry Levinson
• Seen by this director: Liberty Heights, Rain Man
• Based on the book by: John Guy
• Cast: Robin Williams, Forest Whitaker, J T Walsh
• Personal “oh yeah him/her” reaction, i.e. have seen this actor in:
• Robin Williams – The Butler, House of D, Insomnia, Good Will Hunting, Hamlet, Hook, Dead Again, Awakening, Dead Poets Society, The World According to Garp
• Forest Whitaker – Black Panther, Rogue One, Arrival, The Butler, Out of the Furnace, Repo Men, The Great Debaters, The Last King of Scotland, Smoke, The Crying Game, Bird, Good Morning Vietnam, Platoon, Fast Times at Ridgmont High
• J T Walsh – Pleasantville, Sling Blade, The Client, Red Rock West, The Grifters
• Why? Remember it as good.
• Seen: Once before. Now 5 August 2022      

       For those of us who were young during the Vietnam War this doesn’t seem so long ago. For today’s youth it’s ancient history.

       Saigon 1965. This was before the anti-war movement got going. I remember only starting to become concerned. Later I became active in the movement. Eventually my husband Hal and I moved to Sweden in protest against the war and much else that was wrong with the US. We have never regretted it.

       But the film. Williams plays Adrian Cronauer (a real person), a hyper maverick comedian deejay for the US military forces in Vietnam. He’s hated by the brass, who expect mild humour and Lawrence Welk and Perry Como. He’s loved by the soldiers for his vulgar humour and Martha and the Vandella’s ‘Heat Wave’ and James Brown’s ‘I Feel Good.’

       Meanwhile the war escalates.

       I can understand why I liked it the first time but now I find the brash humour borderline homophobic, racist and misogynistic. However, there are political points made. The film does have a place among the key films about the Vietnam War, but I don’t think it’s as important as it thinks it is. It’s a bit too formulaic, too many clichés. Still, it has its merits, not the least of which are the glimpses of the brutal maleness of the US military and its war against the Vietnamese people.  

 3* of 5   

 

 

 

 

 

The Luzhin Defence

The Luzhin Defence 2000

• Director: Marleen Gorris
• Seen by this director: Antonia’s World, Mrs Dalloway
• Based on the book by: Vladimir Nabokov
• Cast: John Turturro, Emily Watson, Geraldine James, Kelly Hunter
• Personal “oh yeah him/her” reaction, i.e. have seen this actor in:
• John Turturro – God’s Pocket, The Miracle at St Ana’s, Margo at the Wedding, Romance & Cigarettes, Secret Window, The Man Who Cried, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Cradle Will Rock, The Big Lebowski, Clockers, Barton Fink, Jungle Fever, Miller’s Crossing, Mo’ Better Blues, Do the Right Thing, Desperately Seeking Susan
• Emily Watson – Testament of Youth, The Theory of Everything, The Book Thief, The Politician’s Husband, Fireflies in the Garden, Wah-Wah, Punch Drunk Love, Gosford Park, Cradle Will Rock, Hilary and Jackie, The Boxer, Breaking the Waves
• Geraldine James – Rogue One, Alice in Wonderland, Robot Overlords, Utopia, Sherlock Holmes Game of Shadows, Made in Dagenham, Sherlock Holmes, Calendar Girls, TV series
• Kelly Hunter – Doctor Who, Elizabeth the Golden Age, Les Misérables
• Why? The cast
• Seen: 4 August 2022      

       Natalia (Watson) is in Italy with her mother (James) at the same time as the World Chess Championship is taking place. She meets the master Luzhin (Turtorro). They’re both Russian émigrés. He’s a mad genius, she’s a beautiful but bookish society lady. Within days he proposes, and she accepts.

       I’m sorry, it’s putting me to sleep.

       Many IMDb viewers are lyrical, loving it passionately. A few seem to hate it. I’m somewhere in between. I have several problems with it. Love stories bore me and this one isn’t even convincing. Rich Russian émigrés swanning around the palaces of Europe in the 1920s bore me. Watching chess bores me. Snobbish antisemitic aristocratic mothers bore me. Mad Luzhin and stalwart Natalia bore me.

       Nope. Not for me. 

2* of 5   

 

 

 

  

Out of the Furnace

 Out of the Furnace 2013

Director: Scott Cooper

• Based on the book: no
• Cast: Christian Bale, Casey Affleck, Woody Harrelson, Willem DaFoe, Zoe Saldana, Sam Shepard, Forest Whittaker
• Personal “oh yeah him/her” reaction, i.e. have seen this actor in:
• Christian Bale – The Dark Knight Rises, Public Enemies, The Dark Knight, The Prestige, Batman Begins, Equilibrium, American Psycho, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Velvet Goldmine, Prince of Jutland, Swing Kids, Henry V
• Casey Affleck – Light of My Life, Manchester by the Sea, Interstellar, Gone Baby Gone, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Lonesome Jim, Hamlet, Good Will Hunting
• Woody Harrelson – Zombieland 1&2, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, The Glass Castle, Hunger Games 1-4, 2012, Battle in Seattle, No Country for Old Men, A Scanner Darkly, Prairie Home Companion, North Country, EDtv, White Men Can’t Jump
• Willem Dafoe – The Lighthouse, Murder on the Orient Express, The Fault in Our Stars, Fireflies in the Garden, Paris je t’aime, Manderlay, the Aviator, Once upon a Time in Mexico, American Psycho, eXistenZ, Lulu on the Bridge, The English Patient, Wild at Heart, Cry-Baby, Born on the Fourth of July, Mississippi Is Burning, The Last Temptation of Christ, Platoon, Streets of Fire
• Zoe Saldana – Guardians of the Galaxy, Pirates of the Caribbean Black Pearl
• Sam Shepard – August Osage County, Hamlet, Snow Falling on Cedars, The Pelican Brief, Steel Magnolias, Frances
• Forest Whittaker – Black Panther, Rogue One, Arrival, The Butler, Repo Men, The Great Debaters, The Last King of Scotland, Smoke, The Crying Game, Bird, Good Morning Vietnam, Platoon, Fast Times at Ridgmont High
• Why? The cast
• Seen: 3 August 2022      

       Russell (Bale) is released from prison and starts working in an Appalachian steel mill. His brother Rodney (Affleck) has done four tours in Iraq and is now bitter, angry, unemployed and in debt. Their father has died, and Russell’s girlfriend Lena (Saldana) is now together with police chief Wesley Barnes (Whitaker).

       Rodney tries to deal with his debts by knuckle fighting and gets into trouble with vicious sadistic Harlan’s (Harrelson).

       It’s a classic story of brothers, both caught in the bottom ranks of a rotting economic system, one trying to survive with dignity, the other fighting back knowing he will lose.

       It’s a grim and bleak look at how masculinity and poverty destroys men. The vigilante hero theme diminishes the political strength of the film and the gun chase ending detracts from the taut psychological drama. Despite the good performances of the cast, it doesn’t reach as high as it should have. 

3 ½* of 5   

 

 

Clouds of Sils Maria

 Clouds of Sils Maria 2014

• Director: Olivier Assayas
• Based on the book: no
• Cast: Juliette Binoche, Kristen Stewart, Chloë Grace Moritz, Lars Eidinger, Johnny Flynn, Angela Winkler
• Personal “oh yeah him/her” reaction, i.e. have seen this actor in:
• Juliette Binoche – Ghost in the Shell, The 33, Dan in Real Life, Breaking and Entering, Paris je t’aime, Chocolat, The English Patient, The Rd, White and Blue films, Wuthering Heights, Les amants du Pont-Neuf
• Kristen Stewart –The Runaways, Welcome to the Rileys, Twilight, Jumper, Into the Wild, Undertow
• Chloë Grace Moritz – The Fifth Wave, Dark Shadows, Hugo, 500 Days of Summer
• Johnny Flynn – Song One, Twelfth Night
• Why? Binoche and Stewart
• Seen: 2 August 2022      

       Maria Enders (Binoche) is a renowned film actor. Val (Stewart) is her personal assistant. Maria is on her way to accept an author’s award for her dear friend Wilhelm when she’s reached by the news that he has been found dead in the snow near his home in Sils Maria.

       Her first starring role was as a young woman in one of Wilhelm’s plays twenty years earlier. She is now offered the role as the older woman in a revival of the play starring an up-and-coming actor Jo-Ann Ellis (Moritz). She reluctantly agrees. To prepare for the rehearsals Maria and Val go to Wilhelm’s home in the Alps.

       The friendship and professional relationship between Maria and Val are complex and often tense. Maria’s confrontation with her own profession, past and present, is even more so.

       The film is multi-layered and intelligent. Binoche and Stewart carry it, together with the Alps, but everyone is good.

 5* of 5   

 

 

 

 

 

 

L'Hermine

 L’Hermine 2015

• Director: Christian Vincent
• Based on the book: no
• Cast: Fabrice Lucini, Sidse Babett Knudsen
• Personal “oh yeah him/her” reaction, i.e. have seen this actor in:
• Neither of them
• Why? Of possible interest
• Seen: 1 August 2022      

       A French judge (Lucini) recognises a jury member (Knudsen) as the doctor who had treated him several years before. He was in love with her then. They meet, not illegal but unethical for judge and jury member to socialise privately.

       That’s one part of the story. The other part is the trial itself of a young man accused of kicking his baby to death.

       It jumps back and forth, giving an impression of poor editing and lack of focus. The acting is good but there is little substance to the story. 

2 ½ * of 5