The Kids are All Right (Lisa Cholodenko, 2010)

Having seen barely any of the Oscar nominated films I am slowly getting around to them now. And The Kids are All Right was the first on the list. I love Lisa Cholodenko. High Art is one of my favourite films, but it is hardly mainstream. So I was interested to see what she would do with a film that was going to be easier to handle for a wider audience but still have lesbian themes in place.

I suppose one of the things that make this film a bit ground-breaking is that no time is really spent on explaining the set up. Obviously the fact that the parents are gay gives the film the plot, with the introduction of the donor and what that does to the family being the main thrust, but the family set up is shown to actually be less dysfunctional than more regular families. And it becomes more about how the relationships between a couple and their children are complicated regardless of gender and sexuality. By not making a drama about sexuality and crediting an audience with an acceptance of the family structure normalises it which is no bad thing.



So, the plot is that two teenagers from a lesbian couple decide to look up their donor father, and in so doing put the stability of the family at risk. And the father, who has avoided the stability of family life for the alternate pleasures of freedom and younger women, starts to question whether he made the right decision and if he wouldn’t quite like a family after all, particularly now that he has gone some way to helping to create one. It manages to feel quite real and heart wrenching while also being very entertaining.



Annette Bening has been widely praised for her performance and she is spectacular. Her character is a bit uptight as the high achiever, bread winner and stricter parent, Nic. She is a little difficult to love and her wife, Jules, is infinitely more laid back and instantly likeable. So it is clever that it is Jules who does the most to put the family in jeopardy, as we see the devastation it causes to Nic and the scene where she realises what the situation is is utterly crushing. To sympathise with one and then the other is an effective way of demonstrating what the implications are. And Bening plays both the hard and the soft to great effect.

Julianne Moore has a role that is much more fun, and the hippy-ish slacker type that I came across a lot when I lived in Santa Cruz. She has that California slang and intonation down. And it is also funny to see a woman who maybe hasn’t grown out of those youthful traits that I always assume get forced out of you with age and responsibility.



Mark Ruffalo’s character is also well done. The idea of the man who hasn’t applied himself but is doing ok, sleeping with young beautiful women (like the insanely beautiful Yaya DaCosta), riding about on a motor bike and thinking that he has this great life of freedom and lack of responsibility finding himself face to face with his children and the representation of the other path he could have chosen. It is a credit to the film that this long-admired male figure, who hasn’t bowed down to the constraints of family life, is seen as a little bit pathetic and not necessarily to be envied at all.



Mia Wasikowka and Josh Hutcheson are great as the children, both remarkably mirroring the traits of their mother as each of the women used the donor sperm to have a child. The perfect, high achieving Joni is Nic’s daughter and Laser (best character name ever?!?) with his aimlessness is of course Jules’s son. The sibling rivalry of their relationship and their differing experiences of teenage life all ring incredibly true.



So all in all a really lovely film about a slightly unconventional, but actually probably not that unconventional (Cholodenko herself is a lesbian mother) family and the troubles that come with that proximity level of expectation. In terms of being purely enjoyable, I think this film has succeeded more than many others I have seen recently. And it just happens to have lesbians in it.

Nenette (Nicolas Philibert, 2010)

Is it disengenuous to suggest, as a documentary maker, that you have no agenda and you are letting a story tell itself without trying to make the story follow your idea of what it should be? This is the claim of Nicolas Philibert. That he wants the story to tell itself and for the audience to make of it what they will. While I don't feel that Philibert forces his opinion I do think that as a director you chose the scenes, you chose the order and you edit as you wish. Which provides, in some small way, a structure and story of your choice.

But honestly, that is nit picking (orangutans - nit picking - geddit?!) at best. Because in comparison with a lot of what passes for cinematic entertainment this film is thought provoking, intelligent and achingly original.



It brings up questions of the justification of keeping animals enclosed for human entertainment and/or education, how apes become a mirror to ourselves and how we feel as humans, whether work and a purpose is more pleasurable than leisure and even incest and contraception. I kid you not.

The camera shows the inhabitants of the enclosure only. Nenette, a 40 year old orangutan who has been in captivity for 38 years, her son and another mother and child. We hear human voices, school children, a Japanese tourist, a romantic widow, and Nenette's keepers but we don't see them. The incredibly bored and sad seeming face of Nenette dominates the screen for much of the time. And in this I fall into one of the traps that the film sets, or at least raises for our contemplation. Is she bored or sad? Because she is close to a human genetically can we relate our emotions to her? Are we mistaking inactivity for morose behaviour? Really, the answer we come to is entirely up to us.



While one commentator seems slightly unhinged as she relates herself to the orangutan are we that far off as the audience in wanting to apply meaning to everything. In apparently not doing it himself is Philibert making us question our navel gazing nature? Our absolute insistence that we must assess and make sense of everything. Or is she just a personable animal in a cage who likes to drink her tea, eat her yoghurt and take it easy, giving her old bones a rest for the final years?

The Brothers Bloom (Rian Johnson, 2008)

I just came back from a holiday in Nepal, and on my Gulf Air flight I caught The Brothers Bloom (Dir: Rian Johnson, 2008). Well blow me if I haven't been on the edge of my seat about this film since I first heard about it. Which feels like years now. I had a bit of a kip on the flight and it was half an hour in by the time I started watching it. So after watching the credits I let it play through again and caught the first half hour. So then on getting back to London I got super excited that it must be out in cinemas, or nearly out, and that I would rush to see it as fast as my little legs could get me to the multiplex.



But here came the nasty surprise. I would not be tottering to the multiplex or anywhere else, because the film doesn't have UK distribution. WHAT?!? The mind boggles, because from what I could make out on the tiny, rubbishy little plane screen, this film might well be a work of genius. My excitement, long built up, for this film might easily have been toppled by excitement, and yet it was not. In fact, having seen it once I might actually be even more so. But where will I get my next fix? Nowhere, apparently. Nowhere. Gah!



I'm not quite sure why no one wants it. Brick was pretty awesome, and critically acclaimed. And Rian Johnson seems to be being hailed as a director to watch. So what's the beef?

Well, I'll stop moaning anyway, and talk instead about how utterly wonderful I found the film. Wouldn't that be far nicer? Yes, I thought so.



There is something so utterly charming and fairy tale like about it. A whimsical atmosphere that just suffuses it with excitement and sweetness, and yet it is also prerry dark and perverse and willfully naughty at the same time. And that combination is right up my street!

The film inhabits a reality that isn't quite ours, entirely specific to itself. This affectation is almost reminiscent of the kind of worlds created by Wes Anderson and while I love his films and the worlds he creates, there definitely feels to be less pretension or superiority, or... something, in Johnson's creation.

Maybe because the characters appear to have such a wide eyed outlook on the world. An enthusiasm and a pleasure in the simplest of things that seems quite fresh and delightful. But whatever it is I was utterly drawn in.



There is something quite familiar about the plot machinations, the back story and the set up call to mind a number of different films, and that familiarity almost gives you a feeling that you know what is going to happen and that it is like a fairy story that you have heard a thousand times before and is comforting in its familiarity. Which of course allows the film to quietly pull the rug out from under you without you even noticing.

Because it is quite dark in parts, and what seem like happy endings are not necessarily to be trusted. But the films desire to play with that leaving you both satisfied and a little unnerved is one of the things that ends up making it so unique and interesting.



One of the things that excited me most about the film when I first heard about it was the cast.

I am a die hard fan of Mark Ruffalo, having first fallen at his feet when I saw You Can Count on Me, and Adrien Brody is just so heart breaking in almost everything he does. So the combination was pretty thrilling for me. It probably didn't hurt too much that they are both pretty dreamy to look at too...!



You know...?!



Then Rinko Kikuchi's next role after Babel (which, whisper it, I was otherwise pretty underwhelmed by) was going to be worth watching. But more of Miss Kikuchi later.

And they didn't let me down. They also seemed as though they were having a blast. You know, really getting a kick out of the film, which is always enjoyable to watch. It was particularly nice to see Rachel Weisz in it as I just feel as though she never gets a role that is quite right for her. They are either horribly lightweight or a bit grim. But she was lovely and playful and adventurous and fun and I liked her just fine!



The plot is like a dark little twisted fairy tale, but one that is innocently told. It is not really like anything I have seen before. It is silly and frivolous and delightfully entertaining. Its lack of distributor boggles the mind as I am sure there is an audience for it.



The styling of the film is definitely one of its hightlights and most easily demonstrated in the styling of Rinko Kikuchi. She is so quirky and marvellous. Not least because her character's name is Bang Bang.



And she loves blowing things up.



And she wears lashings of red lipstick and has a fag dangling from her lips at all times and that she doesn't speak but still makes herself abundantly clear.



I don't know that I remember a character whose styling I have preferred.



So all in all, I can't say enough about this film. It ticks all the boxes for what I am looking for in a cinematic experience, except, you know, the cinema...

Read My Lips (Jacques Audiard, 2001)

Read My Lips (Dir: Jacques Audiard, 2001) comes remarkably close to film perfection. Many of my favourite, top 10 type films are from the 40s or 50s and there aren't many contemorary films that come close. This however is one of them. It ticks the boxes on plot, script, visuals, acting, tension, a little bit of slightly dark romance. Ding, ding, ding! It's got it all.



I think I saw it for the first time having seen Audiard's later film, The Beat That My Heart Skipped, which I also enjoyed. In looking to see what other films he had directed I found this one, and didn't expect to like it as much, but it exceeded my expectations entirely.



I once dated a man who, culturally speaking, only seemed to be interested in gangster movies and books about Yardies. While crime and criminals are undoubtedly quite fascinating, and some gangster movies are very entertaining, Goodfellas for example is a glorious film, after a couple of years of frequently being subjected to them after a jaunt to Blockbuster I really felt I’d had enough.

It helps that Read My Lips is not a conventional crime film. None of your old “career criminal does one final job before going clean” nonsense for M. Audiard. No, instead we have the concepts of what might drive a law-abiding woman to crime and what might drive an ex-con back to it. The criminal aspect, however, merely sets the scene and drives the plot but the film’s most interesting theme for me is that of isolation and loneliness.



Carla is almost entirely deaf which separates her from the world around her leading to colleagues and acquaintances to take advantage of her and mocking her until she reaches breaking point. And Paul’s isolation, due to his imprisonment, puts him in a position where he becomes initially subservient to a woman who he would have seen as his inferior in any other context.

While the plot machinations might seem theoretically clunky the film has enough style to carry them off. Basically what we’ve got is: Ex-con gets job for deaf girl. Deaf girl hates her bosses. Guilt trips ex-con into intimidating colleague. Ex-con owes money. Guilt trips girl into lip reading in order to help him plan robbery. During which they undertake a slightly twisted will they/won’t they romantic journey. With a slightly strange side story about his parole officer having done something untoward with his wife and sitting round in his pants a lot with his gut hanging out...



The film is so taut and tense and seedy and sexy and gripping in a way that few manage to carry off. And one of the main reasons has to be through the impeccable casting of France’s very own, Mr Vincent Casell as Paul. As you can see he is not styled to be an attractive character. He is dirty, intimidating and threatening but through Vincent’s latent charm you can tell why there is enough sexual chemistry to choke on between the two main characters. While I do have some friends who like a pretty boy most women I know go week at the knees for a bit of rough around the edges, ugly-beautiful brutal manliness as he epitomises. Seriously, someone should write a thesis on the mysteries of female sexuality and attraction in relation to Vincent Cassell. The man has pure female catnip running through his veins. Grrrrr!

Anyway, phew, where was I?



Emmanuelle Devos as Carla is also a delight. She is by turns both sympathetic and mean. Having been treated badly by those around her she thinks nothing of manipulating the one person who is perceived as being lower than her. But her loneliness and guileless attempts at finding affection ultimately make you warm to her.

Particuarly in a film where the (really) bad guys are repulsive and utterly without charm. It is a film where nothing is black and white or entirely transparent. People's motives and actions aren't always obvious. And that's what makes it so fascinating. Leave the good guy bad guy simplicity to American cinema. Give me some grimy, opaque, lusty, vigour that this film supplies any day of the week.

I urge you - go see it!

Two Lovers (James Gray, 2008)

I haven't really felt the urge to watch James Gray's earlier films. His interest in people being torn apart by their desire to preserve or corrupt the law just doesn't get me hot under the collar. But for some reason Two Lovers (Dir: James Gray, 2008) lured me in, and I'm so glad it did as I found it a really different, thought provoking, affecting and mature film.

I can be an absolute sucker for a well made chick flick. Priceless with Audrey Tatou is the lightest piece of fluff but I love it all the same. What I don't love about chick flicks is that the depiction of relationships and love are so utterly unrealistic. While we want a bit of escapism, of course, the tendency to gloss over the real life trials and tribulations of finding that one person mean they end up as lightweight fantasy and nothing more.



This is certainly not the problem in Two Lovers. While the central themes are love and relationships the vision is almost unremittingly bleak and for the most part focuses on how they can fuck you up. The film starts with the main character Leonard attempting suicide and then he reconsiders it again later in the film. It tackles loving the wrong person, of whether or not you should open yourself up to love without a consideration for being hurt, how people justify adultery, and the ease rather than the passion of falling in love with a convenient person. It almost feels like a French film the way it takes time over its subject, it is unpeturbed to be examining the minutiae and mundanities that can sometimes be life and love.

But it is undeniably an American film, being set as it is in a Jewish neighbourhood in the far reaches of Brooklyn. But even this sets it apart. While we are so used to seeing New York on the big and small screen to the extent that it is almost a cliche there are still areas of New York that are less familar to a cinema going audience. Brooklyn mostly seems to be depicted as a poor and gritty borough if it is seen on screen at all. But here there is something that is both whimsical, delicately real as we see through Leonard's beautiful and stark black and white photographs, but also representing a trap, an area that people are attached to but also yearn to leave.

Brooklyn is becoming more and more what I think of when I think of New York, with all of my New Yorker friends now living there, and I really can't get enough of seeing it, even though it makes me pine for it and them desperately.


Joaquin Phoenix is startlingly good as Leonard. I have read some reviews that say he is a revelation, but I think he has always had that. Ever since To Die For I have had a real crush on his acting chops. And this is another great, meaty part for him to get them into. Comparing the two characters reveals just how different they are, but he nails them both. What Jimmy and Leonard have in common, though, is a vulnerability and willing to wear their hearts on their sleeve in an almost disturbingly naive way. Even though you can see the mistakes that Leonard makes before he even makes them your heart bleeds for him, and you want him to get what he wants even though you know it will all end in tears.

Which it does. And it doesn't. This is another great thing that makes this film really stand out for me. The ending. Through the second half of the film I was filled with a sense of dread and the final moments stopped me in my tracks to such a degree that even some time after watching the film I don't yet know whether the end is the most glorious end to a film almost ever, or depressing and frustrating and heartbreaking. I think my inability to work it out suggests that it is both. I won't give it away, but if you watch it or have already seen it please share your thoughts.




When it comes to the love interests I found both of the performances outstanding. It is quite rare for a film to have such complicated female roles, but I think I have established that this film is quite unique. Gwyneth Paltrow's character is infinitely more glamourous and screwed up, but she is played believably and you can understand Leonard's draw to a beautiful but unstable woman. It is nice to see Gwyneth actually acting again, and in a pretty gritty role that reminds just what a good actress she can be. Vinessa Shaw's character is the polar opposite but equally well developed and while her neuroses might be better hidden she definitely reveals them and proves to be a real character in her own right, not just a foil for Gwyneth's louder one.

The family setting that much of the film takes place in really grounds the film, giving it an atmosphere of normality, but also of quiet dignity. It feels totally real in a way that few films achieve.

And of course, the mother is played by the indomitable Isabella Rossellini. How glorious it is to see her beautiful face growing old gracefully. I really do adore her!

So, goodness me, I seem to have banged on rather. But even a couple of months after watching this film I am still in love with it. So my recommendation would be to rent it immediately. Although probably best not to if you are feeling at all emotionally fragile, I'm sure there is some chick flick that would be a better diversion...

Hail the Conquering Hero (Preston Sturges, 1944)

I do love Preston Sturgess. His films satisfy part of me that is very rarely catered too by modern cinema. With the exception of the Coens' Intolerable Cruelty (why don't more people love this film? I personally can't get enough of it.) and, to a lesser extent, Burn After Reading. And they have been directly influenced by him.

But while some of his films are movie heaven for me (Sullivan's Travels, The Lady Eve, The Palm Beach Story, Unfaithfully Yours) there are others that just don't do it (The Great McGinty). Unfortunately I think Hail the Conquering Hero (1944, Dir: Preston Sturgess) is more likely to come into the second category. I found myself fairly indifferent to it.

I think it is just a bit all over the place. It gets the crazy full pelt comedy moments just right. The marines talking ten to the dozen and inventing heroics make for great moments and the welcome home scene with all the bands playing at the wrong time is wonderful, but when it comes to the hero and heroine and the political element it seemed difficult to really care.

Eddie Bracken plays the fool and hams it up for the camera, but you don't get too much of an idea of the character, or why he makes the decisions he does. You also don't feel that he is that bothered that his girl is engaged to someone else. And when they inevitably get together there is little passion or even interest demonstrated.

The army theme sometimes gets a bit heavy handed, and while relevant at the time now feels quite strange to be talking about patriotism in that way. Although, you probably have to make concessions to the time it was made in it does feel as though it is very much of that time and it is inevitable that it won't translate in the same way now.

William Demarest is, as always, hilarious and gruff and crass and probably the highlight of the film.

One of the big disappointments was the dame. The female roles in Sturgess films are usually pretty ballsy and feisty, playing against more naive men, but Ella Raines barely gets a look in. She's awfully pretty and all but infinitely forgettable, which is a shame.

I think the film gets all the additional bits right but the central characters are just a bit dull and I think the film suffers for that with all the good bits forgotten so that you come away feeling that the whole venture was fairly pointless. A few laughs but if you are new to Sturgess I would give this one a miss.

State of Play (Kevin Macdonald, 2009)

According to fans the original State of Play (2003, Dir: David Yates) was pretty much the best thing on tv ever. I am rubbish at cottoning on to good stuff on tv, so I didn't watch it. I wanted to see it before the film version came out this year (2009, Dir: Kevin Macdonald). Its kind of that feeling you get with a literary adaptation. I would much rather read the book first than see the film. But I didn't manage that either.

But when the lights went down that was the last thing I was thinking about, because boy does this film know how to make a first impression. Probably within about 20 seconds my heart was hammering, I was on the edge of my seat and I was entirely drawn in. I don't think I can remember quite such a visceral start to a film. And before the opening credits I was hooked.


Sadly that positive feeling didn't last entirely through the film, but its a bit of a belter and sweeps you along quite pleasingly for about three quarters of the film until it all turns a bit stodgy, makes one final twist too many and ends with a decidedly underwhelming reveal.

Is it just me or is Russell Crowe basically playing the same character nowadays? The slobbiness he brings to Cal McAffrey really reminded me of the slobbiness he brought to Richie Roberts in American Gangster. Fortunately I like his schtick.

Weirdly one of the things I liked best about this film was the architecture and building interiors. Washington DC looks really great on film. A bit of a mish mash of architectural styles. My favourite being the interior and exterior of the newspaper office. It is seriously retro! One retro step too far was his computer. I can't believe that anyone actually has those computers that don't have Windows on them, just a black screen and a bit square curser.

I generally quite like Rachel McAdams and while she was ok the most notable thing about her performance was probably how much she struts about. I wasn't wild about her performance. The part itself was not particularly meaty. She did just feel to be prettying up the place and not much more.

Dame Helen of course can do no wrong. A couple of good stinging one liners and I was happy.

Ben Affleck seems to have recovered from the Bennifer debacle, and with Gone Baby Gone to have resurrected his career somewhat. He handled it all pretty well, and I didn't hate him or start thinking about him stroking J-Lo's arse in the Jenny From the Block video, so he must have been pretty good.

I adore Robin Wright Penn, it was love ever since The Princess Bride, and I don't think she is in anywhere near enough films. So I really liked seeing her in this. She has a quiet dignity and repose which I think was just right for the role of the wronged wife.

I probably shouldn't delve too deeply into my psyche to find out what this means but I love a sleazy character on screen. I also love Jason Bateman, from the bottom of my heart. I wasn't sure he would be able to carry it off, but he sleazed all over that film in the grossest way possible, then wept quite a bit, then got good and beat up. Job done!

As to the film itself I think it is let down by the plot, I have to say that I don't have overwhelming levels of patience with conspiracy theory films, although the mercenary angle was very interesting. But the final twist just revealed something that, while a surprise, was far less interesting than what most of the audience was probably guessing at. And a bit of hackneyed "friendship should be more important than your quest for the truth. - Nothing is more important than the truth!" message felt a bit laboured. So all in all entertaining but not earth shattering. I think I might go and rent the original...