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Reviews
Sang sattawat (2006)
Interesting but so what
While the experiments with memory and non-sequential progress through the film are interesting, my final reaction was so what.
What was Weerasethakul trying to achieve that Resnais had already done far better in L'Année dernière à Marienbad. The formalisms explored through the retelling of stories at a different time and place were intriguing but there were none of the power of the imagery of Marienbad. Images from Marianbad live with me 30+ years later. These ones won't and not only because I'll be dead by then.
It was two hours on the edge of tedium, but the skill was you stayed on the edge not fell into ennui. But I had no sense when I left the cinema that I had had a true aesthetic experience or provided me with images to refract new experiences through.
Maybe hotels do more for me than hospitals, I don't know.
The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
What an awful film - a walk in a blizzard would be more fun
I watched this yesterday because my daughter insisted on us turning it on; the film failed miserably to reach my very low expectations.
A diabolic mix of bad science, weak plotting, worse dialogue and ethno-centrism. Some people have praised the special effects but I found them tedious and uninspiring and about as scary as a sleepy kitten. There was a montage of a snowbound New York that would not have looked out of place in the cardboard sets of a worse than average 1950s sci-fi film.
The science started poor and got worse, the north Atlantic currents were shown going anti-clockwise instead of clockwise, hurricanes which get their energy from warm water somehow started over ice-cold land and so on. When Sam climbs his way round a ship in far sub-zero temperatures he puts his bare hand onto metal without his skin being ripped off, nice trick if you can manage it, and everyone gets soaked in freezing water without any fear of hypothermia...
Plotting, Jack sets off to walk to New York, will he get there? Well, I won't ruin the suspense for anyone not able to work out the answer.
Ethno-centrism: after cursory chaos in India and Japan we concentrate on the US with short asides to Scotland, suddenly on the same latitude as northern Canada and Siberia, where the surprising reaction to disaster is to pour three stiff glasses of 12 year old scotch.
When half the population of the US migrates to Mexico we see the heroic feeding of the refugees, but what happened to the Mexicans in the freezing cold?
As far as the dialogue goes - not very far I must say - I have managed not to remember any of the lines that made me groan out loud. I've just looked at the 'memorable quotes' and I can't bear to type any of them out. If those are the high spots, imagine the rest.
There are good films to be made on global warming that are more thrilling than Al Gore's, what a pity they wasted money on this instead.
The Constant Gardener (2005)
A very good adaptation of an excellent book
How do you translate 500 pages of dense plotting into 2 hours of screen time - you don't. You produce a very fine film with a few of the themes of the film picked out. While the book is equally detailed on the personal journey of Justin's self re-discovery and redemption on the one hand and a corporate political thriller about corruption on the other, the film sacrifices the detail of the thriller to allow luminous performances of Feinnes and Weitz to flourish. One cost is the virtual disappearance of Arnold, the black doctor, as a character he is confusingly referred to as the Belgian in the film, but the history of this appellation is never explained. Even more seriously Kenny is given a, totally out of character, crisis of conscience as a transparent plot device to cover many chapters of missing story where Justin painfully learns what to do next, rather than being told by his nemesis. Ghita's character is also marginalised is this a pattern that it is the non-white characters who disappear into the background In exchange we get brilliant cinematography (and if one of the film's Oscar's doesn't go to César Charlone there is no justice). The vibrant colour of the scenes in the Kenyan shanty townships, and particularly the image of the railway track through them, the oppressive muted tones of the London club and the rapid fire images from the Eurostar train are three of many that stand out. Bill Nighy does supercilious better than anyone else in the industry and does all that we expect of him, but Feinnes is a revelation doing far more than expected, subtly growing and changing through the film. Weitz also does very well, but her character changes less in the screenplay than it does in the book, where her perseverance is gripping in the film the evidence appears on a plate, not wrung out drop by drop from a corrupt and all-enveloping net of corporations and governments. My advice is to read the book, so you know the subtleties of the story; then do not miss this magnificent, if abridged screen version and enjoy the sounds and colours of Africa and Europe.
This is Le Carre at his best, much darker than even the grimmest of his cold war thrillers.
Vera Drake (2004)
There is more to this than Imelda Staunton's outstanding performance
Other comments have paid full and appropriate tribute to Imelda Staunton's Oscar winning (if there is any justice in the world) performance. I want to talk about some other aspects. The camera work and lighting capture on screen all the textures of working class London of the 50s. It is striking how much less nuanced and sensitive is the cinematography when it ventures into middle-class London. The dinginess, muted colours and cramped interiors of the flats is palpable. Nothing is flooded with light, it is always partial as though light, like sugar and tea were rationed.
The actors say much with their expressions and mannerisms, which is fortunate when the film depicted a time when much could not be said. In the first half of the film Stan and Reg only become animated when they talk about their war service experiences, a time when, at risk of death, they were allowed to be alive but tellingly they were in the Royal Service Corp and the Pioneer Corp performing essential, dangerous but totally unglamorous duties.
The references to class while sometimes overt the rich are allowed abortions, but the poor are not but sometimes very subtle. Doctors in the film, like other professionals at the time, ask for their fees in guineas (One pound and one shilling, £1.05p). POSSIBLE MARGINAL SPOILER When Lily asks for fee for an abortion Vera will undertake she asks not for two pounds, but for two guineas. You can take this two ways, maybe she wants the extra two shillings (and since she prices her tea at a very precise one shilling and thrupence halfpenny we know she looks after her pennies) but maybe she is insisting she is selling a professional service which should be denominated in guineas not pounds. The quality of the currency is important, not just its quantity.
A couple of reservations. Joyce, Vera's appalling upwardly mobile sister-in-law is too easy a caricature, with all her appalling airs and graces and she would have noticed that her neighbour's new telly would have cost 30 guineas, not 30 pounds. Also the coincidence of prior acquaintance which reveals Vera's name easily to the police is forced and unnecessary, someone as venal as Lily would have named Vera to the police without batting an eyelid.
These are minor points this is a great film, it was clear from the heavy silence of the audience as they left the cinema this evening that they all knew they had seen something remarkable and important. We all were weighed down by tragedy that had befallen the Drake family and by the studied uncertainty about how far any one of them would survive the devastating events described.
Mou gaan dou (2002)
Excellent tight thriller
There are themes resonant of Heat and Donnie Braso but this is in no way derivative. It is a tightly paced reflection on role and identity and the existential pain of concealment.
The acting is excellent and the photography more so. If there is a problem it is that the symmetries of the plot are a bit too neat and the use of the female characters to underline the situation of the leads rather too facile.
However that said I was gripped for the whole of my trip to the cinema and although I suspect that this film would lose less that some in viewing on TV screen, the use of exteriors is good enough to justify a walk in the cold.
I see that Hollywood want to remake it, sad people should go and see the original.
Touching the Void (2003)
Much more tense than most thrillers
The film has its own spoiler. You know that both Joe and Simon survive because much of the film is their talking heads and Joe wrote the book this film is based on. Despite that you are on the edge of your seat throughout, wondering how they could possibly have got off the mountain alive.
I have never felt physical pain in the cinema as I did when Joe fell time after time on to the hard rocks as he tried to limp down.
Leaving all the talking to the real Joe and Simon was inspired, leaving the actors free to display emotion (mainly fear and despair) through movement and expression, which they do to enormous effect.
The other key feature is the stunning cinematography, you will never have been as physically drawn into a harsh and inhuman environment than Kevin Macdonald and Mike Eley manage here. The cold and disorientation of the high Andes is palpable.
A must see film - and must see on the big screen, it will be a pale imitation of itself when it is released on TV.
Finally it reminds us again what a creative disaster the winding up of Film Four Productions has been and how lottery funding for films sometimes enables real gold to be produced (and this time distributed).