The All New Book & DVD Review Thread (And Gift Hints)

[Nick]

Tasteful and eloquent as ever 

[Barman]

Just Another Year

Watched this last night - just arrived from Amazon...

The phrase ‘national treasure’ is, inevitably, an overused one. But Mike Leigh, arguably Britain’s most consistently strong film director of the past 20 years, surely warrants the tag. His latest film, Another Year, is one of his finest, as Leigh once more draws sensational performances from his cast. The cast features Lesley Manville, Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen, and the premise of the film follows a married couple in the later years of their lives. We meet them across the four seasons of one year, and Another Year calmly explores the unhappiness, events and people that surround them during that time.

It’s a wonderfully understated piece of work. As is his usual approach, Leigh worked with his cast for months to shape the characters in the film, and they come through as fully three-dimensional human beings. They’re exquisitely played, too, with Broadbent and Manville rightly attracting awards attention for their work here. The hidden star of the piece, though, is Mike Leigh himself. His focused direction, and honest exploration of human lives, shines through once more. And while Another Year may not, ultimately, be one of 2010’s most upbeat movies, it’s undoubtedly one of its very best. --Jon Foster

Synopsis
British filmmaker Mike Leigh delivers another emotionally honest portrait of ordinary people trying to make sense of their lives in this comedy drama. Tom (Jim Broadbent) and Gerri (Ruth Sheen) are a couple who are drifting past middle age into their sixties; he's a geologist and she's a psychotherapist. Tom and Gerri have a stable and happy marriage and a grown son, Joe (Oliver Maltman), an activist lawyer who hasn't settled down yet, much to his mother's chagrin. One of Gerri's co-workers and close friends is Mary (Lesley Manville), who puts up a facade of desperate good cheer despite the fact she's been very lonely since her husband left her and has been drowning her anxieties in wine. Gerri has unsuccessfully tried to fix Mary up with Tom's sloppy but good natured pal Ken (Peter Wight), and she's startled when Mary begins openly flirting with Joe, more than 20 years her junior. Mary's troubles only grow worse when she stops by Tom and Gerri's place only to be introduced to Katie (Karina Fernandez), Joe's new girlfriend.

Perhaps you have to be a certain age to watch it - the kidz were 'still waiting for it to get going' when the end credits rolled... 

I was captivated and mesmerised by it - a standard of acting from the entire cast that is completely breathtaking! 

[Uncle Mort]

Mike Leigh films 

Didn't know it was out yet ~ shall order it now. Thanks BM 

[Barman]

Mike Leigh films 

Didn't know it was out yet ~ shall order it now. Thanks BM 

I ordered it last year and Amazon spat it out (at a reduced price) as soon as it was released... last week I think.... 

[Barman]

Doubt

Watched this in the Minema last night - another £4 bargain that LL brought back from the UK...

Written and directed by Academy Award-winner John Patrick Shanley (Moonstruck) and with an exceptional cast including Academy Award-winners Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman plus Academy Award-nominee Amy Adams, Doubt is a gripping story about the quest for truth, the forces of change and the devastating consequences of blind justice in an age defined by moral conviction.

It’s 1964, St. Nicholas in the Bronx. A vibrant, charismatic priest, Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman), is trying to upend the school’s strict customs, which have long been fiercely guarded by Sister Aloysius Beauvier (Meryl Streep), the iron-gloved Principal who believes in the power of fear and discipline. The winds of political change are sweeping through the community and indeed, the school has just accepted its first black student, Donald Miller. But when Sister James (Amy Adams), a hopeful innocent, shares with Sister Aloysius her guilt-inducing suspicion that Father Flynn is paying too much personal attention to Donald, Sister Aloysius sets off on a personal crusade to unearth the truth and to expunge Flynn from the school. Now, without a shard of proof besides her moral certainty, Sister Aloysius locks into a battle of wills with Father Flynn which threatens to tear apart the community with irrevocable consequence.

Breathtaking acting from Streep and Hoffman... in fact all the cast perform superbly... No action, no shooting, no shagging but a thoroughly engaging film. Five thumbs up! 

John Patrick Stanley's film adaptation of his own Pulitzer Prize and Tony award winning play 'Doubt: a Parable' unfortunately did not come up with any Oscars Sunday night but still deserves accolades for it's multi-layered plot, excellent performances and thought-provoking denouement.

The setting of the film at a Catholic school in a largely Irish/American Catholic neighbourhood of the Bronx in 1964 - a year after the deaths of JFK and Pope John XXXIII and the convocation of the second Vatican Council, which boldly sought a rapprochement of the Catholic church with the modern world - emphasises the central conflict of the film between:- (A) The old certainties of the past, as embodied by Meryl Streep's arch-traditionalist, stern, foreboding, ball-point pen hating nun. (B) The ever-increasing uncertainties of the present represented by Patrick Seymour Hoffman's modernist, charming and openly liberal parish priest.

The story is ostensibly a sort of 'whodunnit'? (or rather 'did-he-do-it'?) in regards to allegations of innappropriate relations with children but on a deeper level probes further into the nature of faith in an ever-changing and increasingly secularised world. Is Phillip Seymour Hoffman's character a sexual predator or merely a misunderstood victim? is Meryl Streep's character an overzealous gossip or true believer? there is indeed doubt. The film does not underestimate the intelligence of the audience and allows for several interpretations. Thought-provoking, engrossing and well-acted by a strong cast. A film that is well worth a watch.

[Miss Demeanour]

No one ever listens to me 

Watched the film  Doubt today



Not bad at all - drama set a year in 1964. A character movie with some great performances - no shagging.

Essentially Doubt tells the story of Sister Aloysius (Streep) who suspects that her school’s priest (Hoffman) has been molesting a male student. She is very much of the old school philosophy of teaching / religion whilst Hoffman represents a threat to her on many levels. She appears bitter , twisted and fierce but is very sure of her convictions and pursues her suspicions without any real evidence - just her gut feeling that she is right.

Some of the cinematography is gorgeous - although some  scenes look as if they are preparing you for a horror flick.

Hoffman really is excellent ( as ever)  and the performances of the the boys mother is brilliant and unexpected.

[Barman]

No one ever listens to me 

Watched the film  Doubt today



Not bad at all - drama set a year in 1964. A character movie with some great performances - no shagging.

Essentially Doubt tells the story of Sister Aloysius (Streep) who suspects that her school’s priest (Hoffman) has been molesting a male student. She is very much of the old school philosophy of teaching / religion whilst Hoffman represents a threat to her on many levels. She appears bitter , twisted and fierce but is very sure of her convictions and pursues her suspicions without any real evidence - just her gut feeling that she is right.

Some of the cinematography is gorgeous - although some  scenes look as if they are preparing you for a horror flick.

Hoffman really is excellent ( as ever)  and the performances of the the boys mother is brilliant and unexpected.

I forgot that... 

You are right about the mother tho - awesome performance.... 

[Just One More]

No one ever listens to me 

Eh?

[Barman]

No one ever listens to me 

Eh?

 

[Miss Demeanour]

No one ever listens to me 

Eh?

And you were one of my favourites 

[Just One More]

 

[Pastis]

Stepped back in time last night and went to see "Blithe Spirit" last night (Noël Coward 1941).  Capital! 

[Barman]

Passchendaele

The Third Battle of Ypres was fought in the most nightmarish conditions of any campaign on the Western Front, going from initial unexploited victory to muddy, bloody stalemate, yet despite the impossible conditions, the Canadian troops who fought there, like the Australians, distinguished themselves on a remarkably regular basis, inadvertently providing endless material for a truly great film. Unfortunately Passchendaele, Canada's most expensive film to date (but still mostly unreleased outside its borders), is not that film. Even more unfortunately, it has the feel of a vanity project, with Due South's Mountie Paul Gross writing, co-producing, directing, providing the end title song and giving himself a leading role with all the things actors love to do as a heroic/cynical/tragic/shellshocked Canadian soldier who falls in love with a nurse back home (Caroline Dhavernas, an appealing actress who delivers the film's most convincing performance) before being thrown back into the fray to keep an eye on her screwed up brother. Looking like Patrick Wayne and often sounding like the Duke - "Bring on the Hell!" - he's rendered as too much of a stock WW2 movie character despite being based on a real person, which keeps you from taking him or the movie seriously.

Nor do the opening heroics convince - like much of the film, too many of the attitudes ring false, from its far too modern hero to the designer cynicism. For all the sporadic faux-Saving Private Ryan combat sequences, these are always stock movie characters in stock movie situations saying stock movie dialogue like "You're looking for romance, kid, you're not going to find it in a trench." The latter might be one reason why it spends most of its running time away from the hellholes and mud of Flanders and in the gloriously photographed scenic grandeur of smalltown Alberta instead. Some occasional details are right, like the soldiers sleeping on the hospital floor because after months of trench life ordinary beds are agony for them, others are wrong (it places nurses much closer to the frontline than they were allowed to provide a romantic reunion), but while it recreates period details it often completely misses the feeling of being set in another time. Only the brashly enthusiastic British recruiting officer seems a spot on characterisation, and he's there primarily to further the melodrama, which this film has in spades. It's at its best when evoking Frank Hurley's iconic photographs of the battlefield (though Hurley's portraits were mainly of Australian soldiers), but even these are ultimately undermined by an ending that takes allegory into utter absurdity as our wounded hero carries a crucified soldier through Flanders mud as all the guns fall silent, a scene that's hard to watch without hearing John Wayne's voice in your head saying "Aw, truly this man wuz tha son of God."

Thankfully this is a lot better than Canada's last shot in the blockbuster stakes, the woeful and risible Battle of the Brave/Nouvelle France, and it's not the total misfire of Joyeaux Noel or the utter disaster of The Trench, but it is ultimately just a common-or-garden war movie: okay if you're in a undemanding mood, but constantly failing every chance to be more. For all the clichés it does work in fits and starts, but it's very much an old-fashioned war movie of the kind that would have been made in the 50s rather than the great film it at times seems to think it is. It's very easy to see it being made with the cast of D-Day: The 6th of June - Dana Andrews in the Gross role, Dana Wynter in the Dhavernas one, Edmond O'Brien as the jaded Canadian commander, Richard Todd as the British recruiting officer... But even in 1956 they'd have baled at that scene with the cross.

Unlike the Canadian and Asian DVDs, this UK release is also presented in the wrong ratio - near 1.85:1 rather than the original 2.35:1 - giving you just one more reason to wait until it turns up on TV.

This film started remarkably well and for the first hour or so was quite enjoyable - some of the scenes set in Canada were breathtaking in the Minema...

However, the last half hour was an embarrassing, absurd farce.... four quid wasted... I spilt me beer on the floor too.... 

The review above just about covers it but I would only give it two BM Thumbs Up... 

[Miss Demeanour]

I watched Made in Dagenham tonight

Not a bad movie , a bit cliched in some of the roles and and a little predictable. Not in the fact that you knew what the outcome was but in the character portrayal. A bit of a dumbed down synopsis of the whole pay equality, politics and economics of the time but watchable.

Sally Hawkins was excellent  .

No shagging.

[Barman]

I watched Made in Dagenham tonight

Not a bad movie , a bit cliched in some of the roles and and a little predictable. Not in the fact that you knew what the outcome was but in the character portrayal. A bit of a dumbed down synopsis of the whole pay equality, politics and economics of the time but watchable.

Sally Hawkins was excellent  .

No shagging.

Might pass on that then...