Films, films, films
As promised here are my brief reviews of the 8 films we saw at the London Film Festival. They are quite a mixed bag but not as mixed as in previous years as there is only one foreign language film on the list which surprised us when we realised as usually we go for foreign language films.
Anyway behind the cut, in the order that we saw the films, are my comments on The Personal History of David Copperfield, The Song of Names, Mr Jones, The Perfect Candidate, Bad Education, Uncut Gems, Fanny Lye Deliver'd and Knives Out.
The Personal History of David Copperfield dir. by Armando Ianucci. Starring Dev Patel.
I was particularly looking forward to this one and it did not disappoint. The director Armando Ianucci used the fact that this was Dickens’s most autobiographical novel to open the film with a reading in a London theatre of the kind that Dickens used to do but in this case it was Dev Patel as David Copperfield. The film stressed throughout the fact that David was a writer and there were lots of lovely little meta touches. It didn’t try to be a straight rendition of the novel but used many of the incidents, reordering them in some cases and leaving out some of the enormous cast of characters. I thought this worked well with the conceit of David as a writer and the fate of Dora (delightfully played by Morfydd Clark, who also played David’s mother) was particularly clever. Dev Patel and the little boy who played him as a child were both wonderful and the colour blind casting worked very well. Rosalind Eleazar was a very sprightly Agnes and Ben Whishaw was an extremely creepy Uriah Heep; Peter Capaldi was not quite the Micawber we are used to seeing but was very funny though I regretted losing Micawber’s role in the downfall of Uriah Heep; Aneurin Barnard caught Steerforth’s desperation well, but for me, the standout performance, apart from Dev Patel, was Hugh Laurie as Mr Dick, making him both loveable and disturbed. The film gets particular kudos for including the drunk scene from the book which I think is one of the best and funniest descriptions of being drunk ever written. I also really liked the way the film highlighted the many names that David was given by many different people but how, in the end, he needed to find out what to call himself. A very good stab at adapting my favourite Dickens novel (of those I’ve read) for the screen but my criticism would be that overall good humour and frenetic pace of the film lost some of the darkness and sadness of the novel. Still an excellent film to watch.
The Song of Names dir. Francois Girard. Starring Tim Roth and Clive Owen.
Based on the book by Norman Lebrecht this tells the story of Martin and his friend Dovidl. The two boys grew up together when Martin’s father took in the Polish Jewish violin prodigy as a young boy to prevent him going back to Poland on the eve of World War II. Despite initial hostility the two boys became very close until Dovidl disappeared just as Martin’s father had put all his money into financing Dovidl’s debut concert. The story is told in flashback as the adult Martin (Roth) tries to find out what happened to Dovidl. His journey takes him to the concentration camp in Treblinka where Dovidl’s family perished and then on to New York.
Obviously for a story involving a virtuoso violinist the film is full of music, partly composed by Howard Shore, and Luke Doyle who plays the younger Dovidl is actually a violinist himself so the music aspects are very well done. The growing friendship between the two boys is very believably shown with Dovidl’s genius, charm and arrogance shining through. For a film showing the after effects on survivors’ lives of the Holocaust there were some powerful moments, notably when Martin visits the memorial at Treblinka and when Dovidl finds out what happened to his family but the slightly slow pacing meant that for me the film didn’t have quite the impact it should have done. I was also handicapped by finding Dovidl an unlikeable character and the casting of Clive Owen felt particularly odd. The remembrance of the Holocaust is massively important, particularly now, so I wanted to feel more at the end of this film than unfortunately I did. Some nice performances from the younger actors and the excellent music made it very watchable but the emotional fallout should have been stronger.
Mr Jones dir. Agnieszka Holland. Starring James Norton.
This film is based on the true story of the young journalist Gareth Jones who broke the news of the thousands of people who died in Ukraine and other parts of Russia due to Stalin’s policies, which is a story that should be better known and has plentiful resonances for today on the subject of news reporting and journalistic truth, but unfortunately, while parts of it were very good, the pacing seemed off and the ending dragged. It was the screenwriter Andrea Chalupa’s first film and I think that showed in the awkward inclusion of George Orwell and the fact that the whole thing felt rather disjointed. The section set in Ukraine itself (and filmed there) was very powerful and well done but it unbalanced the film and meant the long end section really did not have much impact and felt far too drawn out. James Norton’s performance as Gareth Jones was very good as was Vanessa Kirby as Ada Brooks, a female journalist, presumably included for gender balance as I think she was an invented character. The direction worked best when it was at its sparest in Ukraine but in other sections there were some visual tricks that really added nothing to the film. It wasn’t a bad film but I just thought that given the subject matter it could and should have been stronger.
The Perfect Candidate dir. Haifaa al-Mansour. Starring Mila Al Zahrani
A Saudi Arabian film by the director of Wadjda, which I loved when I saw it a few years ago. Maryam, a young female doctor in Saudi Arabia, becomes a candidate in the local council elections almost by accident. She finds a cause she wants to support and recruits her sisters and various friends to help her despite having to lookup how to run a political campaign on the internet. Warm and funny but highlighting the limitations on women in Saudi Arabia this was a very enjoyable film to watch as it used humour and characterisation to make its points. I particularly liked the way it showed the warmth of family life and how Maryam found the confidence to be herself. A favourite.
Bad Education dir. Cory Finley. Starring Hugh Jackman and Alison Janney.
This is an HBO film so I don’t know if it will get a theatrical release, which would be a pity. The film is based on a true story of a school superintendent and a corruption scandal. When the film opens all seems well in the world of Hugh Jackman’s character Frank Tassone, the man in charge of pushing Roslyn School to ever higher levels of educational achievement. The goal is to be the top school in the district which has massive benefits for the whole area in terms of house price rises and generally raised levels of affluence. Jackman’s character seems to care greatly about the school, pushes its students to succeed and seems a generally nice guy. Appearances, which are very important to him, can be deceiving however and when his close friend Pam Gluckin (played by Alison Janney) the school administrator gets caught embezzling money, he at first contains the situation as he plays on the possibility of ruin for the school board members. A student journalist on the school paper won’t let the story rest and gradually things spiral out of Frank’s control. Based on a true story (the writer Mike Makowsky went to the school) this is a fascinating account of the flaws in the education system that let this happen and the pressures on a school to succeed. Both Jackman and Janney are excellent as not particularly likeable characters but not totally unsympathetic characters who got away with something for a long time because of lack of sufficient scrutiny and vested interests. The 2002 “period” setting is very well evoked and the director uses film to add to the early 2000s feel. A very absorbing film.
Uncut Gems dir Benny and Josh Safdie. Starring Adam Sandler.
This was the Surprise film otherwise we would not have chosen to go and see it. I suspect this is a film that people will either love or dislike intensely. J hated every moment of it but I found it quite amusing at times. It is the blackest of black comedies, if comedy is even the right word, about Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler) a completely unpleasant New York jeweler who lives life very much on the edge cheating, lying and trying to defraud everyone he knows while always trying for the big score Fortunately, everyone he knows is as unpleasant as he is. The whole film is incredibly loud, everyone talks and swears at once and there are very few moments of calm as Howard screams his way through the entire thing. There is quite a lot of basketball and sports betting in the film which added to J’s dislike as he is completely allergic to sports films. I didn’t really understand the whole spread betting (I think) aspect but the whole frenetic atmosphere added to the tension at the end. Not a film I’d have chosen but as I said to J it’s good to see films outside our comfort zone occasionally.
The upside of a film we didn’t particularly like was that the cinema was fabulous. In the last few years the Odeon Leicester Square has been quite an uncomfortable venue but now, due to a multi-million pound refurbishment, it has recliner seats, oodles of leg room and even an adequate quantity of ladies’ loos!
Fanny Lye Deliver’d dir. Thomas Clay. Starring Maxine Peake, Charles Dance, Freddie Fox and Tanya Reynolds.
I approached this film with caution as I don’t have a good history with films set during the 17th century (apart from Richard Lester’s version of The Three Musketeers) but it was rather better than I feared it was going to be.The film (shot on 35mm) is set in Shropshire in 1657 where Fanny Lye (Maxine Peake) lives in an isolated farmhouse with her strictly Puritanical husband John (Charles Dance) and young son. Into their strictly regulated, godly lives come two strangers Thomas and Rebecca (Freddie Fox and Tanya Reynolds) who claim to have been robbed and need shelter but soon prove to be a very disruptive, dangerous element in the staid lives of Fanny and John. This played very much like a western with horror elements but had the distinct spin on it given by its setting in the aftermath of the English Civil War with its ferment of new ideas which Thomas and Rebecca espouse. It is very tense throughout and there is some violence which is nasty but not gratuitous. Like The Perfect Candidate it showed both the subjugation of women and the ways in which they could overcome that when they started to question it and find inner strength. The acting was excellent throughout but the film did have problems with pacing and some moments of humour which were probably meant to lighten the mood but instead felt as if they’d stepped out of a Monty Python film and were irritating.
The Guardian Review https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/oct/10/fanny-lye-deliverd-review-maxine-peake-thomas-clay gave the film 3 stars but I think I’d give it 3.5 for the acting and making a good stab at an interesting and underused period of history.
There was a Q&A afterwards with the really fairly inarticulate director but some of the information he did give was that they had to build the farmhouse setting as it turned out to be cheaper than using the set. The sect that Thomas and Rebecca belonged to were the Ranters. He had to write the music himself as he couldn’t find a composer who could do what he wanted.
Knives Out dir. Rian Johnson. Starring Daniel Craig, Ana de Armas, Chris Evans and Christopher Plummer.
This was our last film and it turned out to be the best one. A delicious homage to whodunnit films and TV series from Agatha Christie to Columbo it touched on nearly all of the tropes from the rambling mansion to the denoument in the library. The victim, found dead at the beginning of the film, was octogenarian mystery writer Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) but unlike many whodunnits he turned out to be a decent guy with a ghastly family who all had motives to do away with him. Lots of nice acting from his family members played deliciously by Jamie Lee Curtis, Don Johnson, Toni Collette, Michael Shannon and Chris Evans. There was a lovely performance by Ana de Armas as Harlan Thrombey’s nurse Marta and a hilarious one from Daniel Craig, who should give up Bond straight away and take to comedy, as private detective Benoit Blanc. Lots of sparkling dialogue, plentiful twists and turns, excellent pacing and some laugh out loud moments made this a really enjoyable film to watch. We both loved it.
It was good to end on a high note though we are now rather missing the intensity of watching a film every day. We may have to have our own mini film festival :)
Anyway behind the cut, in the order that we saw the films, are my comments on The Personal History of David Copperfield, The Song of Names, Mr Jones, The Perfect Candidate, Bad Education, Uncut Gems, Fanny Lye Deliver'd and Knives Out.
The Personal History of David Copperfield dir. by Armando Ianucci. Starring Dev Patel.
I was particularly looking forward to this one and it did not disappoint. The director Armando Ianucci used the fact that this was Dickens’s most autobiographical novel to open the film with a reading in a London theatre of the kind that Dickens used to do but in this case it was Dev Patel as David Copperfield. The film stressed throughout the fact that David was a writer and there were lots of lovely little meta touches. It didn’t try to be a straight rendition of the novel but used many of the incidents, reordering them in some cases and leaving out some of the enormous cast of characters. I thought this worked well with the conceit of David as a writer and the fate of Dora (delightfully played by Morfydd Clark, who also played David’s mother) was particularly clever. Dev Patel and the little boy who played him as a child were both wonderful and the colour blind casting worked very well. Rosalind Eleazar was a very sprightly Agnes and Ben Whishaw was an extremely creepy Uriah Heep; Peter Capaldi was not quite the Micawber we are used to seeing but was very funny though I regretted losing Micawber’s role in the downfall of Uriah Heep; Aneurin Barnard caught Steerforth’s desperation well, but for me, the standout performance, apart from Dev Patel, was Hugh Laurie as Mr Dick, making him both loveable and disturbed. The film gets particular kudos for including the drunk scene from the book which I think is one of the best and funniest descriptions of being drunk ever written. I also really liked the way the film highlighted the many names that David was given by many different people but how, in the end, he needed to find out what to call himself. A very good stab at adapting my favourite Dickens novel (of those I’ve read) for the screen but my criticism would be that overall good humour and frenetic pace of the film lost some of the darkness and sadness of the novel. Still an excellent film to watch.
The Song of Names dir. Francois Girard. Starring Tim Roth and Clive Owen.
Based on the book by Norman Lebrecht this tells the story of Martin and his friend Dovidl. The two boys grew up together when Martin’s father took in the Polish Jewish violin prodigy as a young boy to prevent him going back to Poland on the eve of World War II. Despite initial hostility the two boys became very close until Dovidl disappeared just as Martin’s father had put all his money into financing Dovidl’s debut concert. The story is told in flashback as the adult Martin (Roth) tries to find out what happened to Dovidl. His journey takes him to the concentration camp in Treblinka where Dovidl’s family perished and then on to New York.
Obviously for a story involving a virtuoso violinist the film is full of music, partly composed by Howard Shore, and Luke Doyle who plays the younger Dovidl is actually a violinist himself so the music aspects are very well done. The growing friendship between the two boys is very believably shown with Dovidl’s genius, charm and arrogance shining through. For a film showing the after effects on survivors’ lives of the Holocaust there were some powerful moments, notably when Martin visits the memorial at Treblinka and when Dovidl finds out what happened to his family but the slightly slow pacing meant that for me the film didn’t have quite the impact it should have done. I was also handicapped by finding Dovidl an unlikeable character and the casting of Clive Owen felt particularly odd. The remembrance of the Holocaust is massively important, particularly now, so I wanted to feel more at the end of this film than unfortunately I did. Some nice performances from the younger actors and the excellent music made it very watchable but the emotional fallout should have been stronger.
Mr Jones dir. Agnieszka Holland. Starring James Norton.
This film is based on the true story of the young journalist Gareth Jones who broke the news of the thousands of people who died in Ukraine and other parts of Russia due to Stalin’s policies, which is a story that should be better known and has plentiful resonances for today on the subject of news reporting and journalistic truth, but unfortunately, while parts of it were very good, the pacing seemed off and the ending dragged. It was the screenwriter Andrea Chalupa’s first film and I think that showed in the awkward inclusion of George Orwell and the fact that the whole thing felt rather disjointed. The section set in Ukraine itself (and filmed there) was very powerful and well done but it unbalanced the film and meant the long end section really did not have much impact and felt far too drawn out. James Norton’s performance as Gareth Jones was very good as was Vanessa Kirby as Ada Brooks, a female journalist, presumably included for gender balance as I think she was an invented character. The direction worked best when it was at its sparest in Ukraine but in other sections there were some visual tricks that really added nothing to the film. It wasn’t a bad film but I just thought that given the subject matter it could and should have been stronger.
The Perfect Candidate dir. Haifaa al-Mansour. Starring Mila Al Zahrani
A Saudi Arabian film by the director of Wadjda, which I loved when I saw it a few years ago. Maryam, a young female doctor in Saudi Arabia, becomes a candidate in the local council elections almost by accident. She finds a cause she wants to support and recruits her sisters and various friends to help her despite having to lookup how to run a political campaign on the internet. Warm and funny but highlighting the limitations on women in Saudi Arabia this was a very enjoyable film to watch as it used humour and characterisation to make its points. I particularly liked the way it showed the warmth of family life and how Maryam found the confidence to be herself. A favourite.
Bad Education dir. Cory Finley. Starring Hugh Jackman and Alison Janney.
This is an HBO film so I don’t know if it will get a theatrical release, which would be a pity. The film is based on a true story of a school superintendent and a corruption scandal. When the film opens all seems well in the world of Hugh Jackman’s character Frank Tassone, the man in charge of pushing Roslyn School to ever higher levels of educational achievement. The goal is to be the top school in the district which has massive benefits for the whole area in terms of house price rises and generally raised levels of affluence. Jackman’s character seems to care greatly about the school, pushes its students to succeed and seems a generally nice guy. Appearances, which are very important to him, can be deceiving however and when his close friend Pam Gluckin (played by Alison Janney) the school administrator gets caught embezzling money, he at first contains the situation as he plays on the possibility of ruin for the school board members. A student journalist on the school paper won’t let the story rest and gradually things spiral out of Frank’s control. Based on a true story (the writer Mike Makowsky went to the school) this is a fascinating account of the flaws in the education system that let this happen and the pressures on a school to succeed. Both Jackman and Janney are excellent as not particularly likeable characters but not totally unsympathetic characters who got away with something for a long time because of lack of sufficient scrutiny and vested interests. The 2002 “period” setting is very well evoked and the director uses film to add to the early 2000s feel. A very absorbing film.
Uncut Gems dir Benny and Josh Safdie. Starring Adam Sandler.
This was the Surprise film otherwise we would not have chosen to go and see it. I suspect this is a film that people will either love or dislike intensely. J hated every moment of it but I found it quite amusing at times. It is the blackest of black comedies, if comedy is even the right word, about Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler) a completely unpleasant New York jeweler who lives life very much on the edge cheating, lying and trying to defraud everyone he knows while always trying for the big score Fortunately, everyone he knows is as unpleasant as he is. The whole film is incredibly loud, everyone talks and swears at once and there are very few moments of calm as Howard screams his way through the entire thing. There is quite a lot of basketball and sports betting in the film which added to J’s dislike as he is completely allergic to sports films. I didn’t really understand the whole spread betting (I think) aspect but the whole frenetic atmosphere added to the tension at the end. Not a film I’d have chosen but as I said to J it’s good to see films outside our comfort zone occasionally.
The upside of a film we didn’t particularly like was that the cinema was fabulous. In the last few years the Odeon Leicester Square has been quite an uncomfortable venue but now, due to a multi-million pound refurbishment, it has recliner seats, oodles of leg room and even an adequate quantity of ladies’ loos!
Fanny Lye Deliver’d dir. Thomas Clay. Starring Maxine Peake, Charles Dance, Freddie Fox and Tanya Reynolds.
I approached this film with caution as I don’t have a good history with films set during the 17th century (apart from Richard Lester’s version of The Three Musketeers) but it was rather better than I feared it was going to be.The film (shot on 35mm) is set in Shropshire in 1657 where Fanny Lye (Maxine Peake) lives in an isolated farmhouse with her strictly Puritanical husband John (Charles Dance) and young son. Into their strictly regulated, godly lives come two strangers Thomas and Rebecca (Freddie Fox and Tanya Reynolds) who claim to have been robbed and need shelter but soon prove to be a very disruptive, dangerous element in the staid lives of Fanny and John. This played very much like a western with horror elements but had the distinct spin on it given by its setting in the aftermath of the English Civil War with its ferment of new ideas which Thomas and Rebecca espouse. It is very tense throughout and there is some violence which is nasty but not gratuitous. Like The Perfect Candidate it showed both the subjugation of women and the ways in which they could overcome that when they started to question it and find inner strength. The acting was excellent throughout but the film did have problems with pacing and some moments of humour which were probably meant to lighten the mood but instead felt as if they’d stepped out of a Monty Python film and were irritating.
The Guardian Review https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/oct/10/fanny-lye-deliverd-review-maxine-peake-thomas-clay gave the film 3 stars but I think I’d give it 3.5 for the acting and making a good stab at an interesting and underused period of history.
There was a Q&A afterwards with the really fairly inarticulate director but some of the information he did give was that they had to build the farmhouse setting as it turned out to be cheaper than using the set. The sect that Thomas and Rebecca belonged to were the Ranters. He had to write the music himself as he couldn’t find a composer who could do what he wanted.
Knives Out dir. Rian Johnson. Starring Daniel Craig, Ana de Armas, Chris Evans and Christopher Plummer.
This was our last film and it turned out to be the best one. A delicious homage to whodunnit films and TV series from Agatha Christie to Columbo it touched on nearly all of the tropes from the rambling mansion to the denoument in the library. The victim, found dead at the beginning of the film, was octogenarian mystery writer Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) but unlike many whodunnits he turned out to be a decent guy with a ghastly family who all had motives to do away with him. Lots of nice acting from his family members played deliciously by Jamie Lee Curtis, Don Johnson, Toni Collette, Michael Shannon and Chris Evans. There was a lovely performance by Ana de Armas as Harlan Thrombey’s nurse Marta and a hilarious one from Daniel Craig, who should give up Bond straight away and take to comedy, as private detective Benoit Blanc. Lots of sparkling dialogue, plentiful twists and turns, excellent pacing and some laugh out loud moments made this a really enjoyable film to watch. We both loved it.
It was good to end on a high note though we are now rather missing the intensity of watching a film every day. We may have to have our own mini film festival :)