A brilliant film, well acted by Cranston and an excellent supporting cast including Helen Mirren as Hedda Hopper, the gossip columnist and anti-communist, and Diane Lane as his wife Cleo. Recommended.
Tuesday 22 November 2016
Trumbo
It's not often that Hollywood explores the darker side of it's past. There's films like The Player and Bowfinger, but they're comedies satirising, rather than narrating. This is a biopic of Dalton Trumbo, played by Bryan Cranston, a screen writer who was blacklisted in the late forties for being a communist, but who continued to work under pseudonoms for B-Movie studios, eventually earning two Oscars for Roman Holiday and The Brave One. He finally recieved credit for Spartacus, breaking the blacklist and allowing him to work again under his own name.
A brilliant film, well acted by Cranston and an excellent supporting cast including Helen Mirren as Hedda Hopper, the gossip columnist and anti-communist, and Diane Lane as his wife Cleo. Recommended.
A brilliant film, well acted by Cranston and an excellent supporting cast including Helen Mirren as Hedda Hopper, the gossip columnist and anti-communist, and Diane Lane as his wife Cleo. Recommended.
Monday 21 November 2016
Captain America: Civil War
The latest in the Avengers series out on DVD (Dr Strange is out at the Pictures) sees a plot to implicate the Winter Soldier, a.k.a. Captain America's (Chris Evans) friend and former comrade Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), in a series of terrorist attacks, forcing th' Cap into a confrontation with Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), a.k.a. Iron Man.
This is a real step up from Avengers: Age of Ultron, with a complex (for Marvel) plot and the usual characters having to deal with personal conflicts, giving the actors something to bite on for a change outside of the action. The action scenes are well catered for, although I thought the airport scene was a bit drawn out, as if to fill out the perceived lack elsewhere. All-in-all, a superior pizza movie and recommended.
This is a real step up from Avengers: Age of Ultron, with a complex (for Marvel) plot and the usual characters having to deal with personal conflicts, giving the actors something to bite on for a change outside of the action. The action scenes are well catered for, although I thought the airport scene was a bit drawn out, as if to fill out the perceived lack elsewhere. All-in-all, a superior pizza movie and recommended.
Monday 14 November 2016
The Big Short
There aren't many films about the 2008 crash and what caused it, apart from the odd documentary (notably Inside Job, a 2010 film by Charles Ferguson), but there have been many books and one, written by Michael Lewis, who wrote Moneyball and Liars Poker, has been turned into a movie starring Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt.
Analysing the existing mortgage bond market, eccentric hedge fund manager Michael Burry (Bale) decides to "short" i.e. bet against the market, which he thinks will shortly collapse. He is followed by other hedge fund managers Mark Baum (Carell), Charlie Geller (John Magaro) and Jamie Shipley (Finn Wittrock).
It must have been very difficult to portray the intricacies of what happened to an audience munching on their popcorn, but the use of celebrity asides, although corny, does work quite well and the moral outrage is expressed by Baum on the one hand and Ben Rickert (Pitt) on the other rings true. That it was allowed to happen at all and that others didn't spot the problems sooner is the truly amazing part.
Analysing the existing mortgage bond market, eccentric hedge fund manager Michael Burry (Bale) decides to "short" i.e. bet against the market, which he thinks will shortly collapse. He is followed by other hedge fund managers Mark Baum (Carell), Charlie Geller (John Magaro) and Jamie Shipley (Finn Wittrock).
It must have been very difficult to portray the intricacies of what happened to an audience munching on their popcorn, but the use of celebrity asides, although corny, does work quite well and the moral outrage is expressed by Baum on the one hand and Ben Rickert (Pitt) on the other rings true. That it was allowed to happen at all and that others didn't spot the problems sooner is the truly amazing part.
Saturday 12 November 2016
Comfort and Joy
From my Amazon subscription, this is a light comedy og the 1980's by Bill Forsyth (who directed Local Hero and Gregory's Girl). Radio presenter, Alan "Dickie" Bird (Bill Paterson) is having difficulty adjusting when his girlfriend suddenly leaves him and gets involved in a conflict between two rival ice cream van families.
Perhaps a little too light for my taste (as where the other films from Forsyth), it is a bit of a relic of a previous age. It's acted well enough by Paterson and the rest of the cast (Clare Grogan, from Altered Images, plays the femme fatale, so it's worth watching for that alone), but the ending does seem to be a bit false, given the violence and the reality of the so-called Ice Cream wars in Glasgow at the time.
Perhaps a little too light for my taste (as where the other films from Forsyth), it is a bit of a relic of a previous age. It's acted well enough by Paterson and the rest of the cast (Clare Grogan, from Altered Images, plays the femme fatale, so it's worth watching for that alone), but the ending does seem to be a bit false, given the violence and the reality of the so-called Ice Cream wars in Glasgow at the time.
Friday 4 November 2016
Nebraska
No, not the Bruce Springsteen album, but a light comedy starring Bruce Dern, who played the Cop in The Driver all those years ago. A confused Woody Grant (Dern) keeps trying to get to Lincoln, Nebraska to claim a $1 Million prize, much to the consternation of his wife (June Squibb) and his sons David (Will Forte) and Ross (Bob Odenkirk, better known as Saul Goodman from Better Call Saul). David eventually relents and takes his father on a road trip via the town where he grew up.
Although a slight film, it does have it's moments, such as when the boys steal a compressor to get back at old rival of their fathers', and the criminally inept cousins, and it does have a genuine warmth. Dern acts a great role effortlessly and ably supported by June Squibb and the rest of the cast. Recommended.
Although a slight film, it does have it's moments, such as when the boys steal a compressor to get back at old rival of their fathers', and the criminally inept cousins, and it does have a genuine warmth. Dern acts a great role effortlessly and ably supported by June Squibb and the rest of the cast. Recommended.
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