thoss-1 Reviews

Mrs. Ratcliffe's Revolution (2007)

Carry On Up The DDR

[1/10 · 21 October 2007]

After The Lives of Others and Goodbye Lenin, two good films about the old East Germany produced in the home country, along come the Brits with "Carry On Up The DDR", a truly shameful piece of "work." If there's anything interesting to write about this completely dreadful movie which I saw last night at the splendid Ritz in Belper, I can't think of it. So why write a review? Merely to accentuate the message from the one previous IMDb commentator here before me and urge you to avoid it at all costs. Waiting in a dark alley to get mugged would be better usage of time and money than paying for this shocking dreck.

If there's an interesting question to pose about it, it would be this: how could the two writers of Sixty-Six, a very good and at its conclusion really quite moving film, go on to produce this heap of amateurish, chronically scripted, sloppy, wildly historically inaccurate, half-dimensional, miserably thought-out garbage? My guess is that after the critical, if not commercial success of that soulful, intelligent Jewish father-son World Cup '66 movie, one that captured the spirit of the times quite uncannily well, they were asked by someone or other wanting to make a movie, 'what else have you got?'. Surely on the point of throwing away the script for Mrs R's R - something they wrote as fifth formers in between their Physics and Maths homework - they said, 'well, we've got this...'

What more to say? Perhaps someone should report the Worst Scene From A Movie in 2007, the Oughts, the 21st century, Cinematic History, etc: the one where to let the audience know what a dump of a state flat the Radcliffes were stuck in, a rat appears on the record player, disrupting the music. Wait: that's not it. Next shot is the East German neighbour bashing to death said (enormous) rat - rat out of shot, with heavy object. Cue next scene.

That was it. That was supposed to be funny (I promise you), on its own. No witty out-line, no cut to (the pretty bad, here) Catherine Tate making funny facial expression, no blood and guts-spurts-out-of-rat-into-rat-killer's-face (if only). Nothing.

Two cheerier things to finish with: one, the movie got some laughs from the Derbyshire audience, so it's possible that the film won't be as depressing an experience for you as it was for me if anyone forces you to go see it; two, the price of a Ritz ticket is one of the cheapest in the UK.

So, a grim embarrassment for the British film industry then: 'Carry On Up The DDR' pretty much sums it up for this writer, but with no Sid James,Kenneth Williams or Charles Hawtrey to redeem it.

T

The Good German (2006)

Soderbergh's Masterpiece

[10/10 · 30 April 2007]

Many of the low score crits here reveal more about the level of intellect and understanding of cinema history than they do of this film. One can only laugh at the guy from NYC bemoaning the lack of anyone 'to cheer for' and pity the person who described the cinematography as 'poor'.

I think the point they're missing is a blindingly obvious one: that Soderbergh has gone hell for leather at making a 1940s film noir fully aware of all - or rather, almost all - the strengths and weaknesses that are going to accrue from that. He has perfectly understood and re-created the genre. Thus, to criticise the mannered, stage acting is to open your mouth about a subject when you weren't at the lecture; to comment on the newspaper article when you haven't even read it. What Soderbergh has produced here is arguably a masterpiece of lovingly crafted pastiche and yet, being from the modern age he has been able to – and has the taste and intelligence to – create something that is beyond pastiche. Note how he reins in the melodrama of the period to give the movie a more realistic texture: He allows the characters to talk more realistically to each other than is the norm by allowing the use of profanity (though there is not enough casual profanity for perfect naturalism) and to let in the daylight of sexual realism. However, his noirish values prevent the film being as bleak as a more naturalistic approach would have required. The Berlin of 1945 was much more desperate than this, the poverty of its people heartbreaking and inhuman. This, however, does not mean we should criticise the film for its lack of naturalism: such a film would have been almost unbearably bleak. Further, if Soderbergh had tried to show us Berlin '45 truly in the raw, it would be a different movie: it wouldn't be noir. To his credit we do see some of the poverty: the food lines and other forms of the material deprivation of a bombed out city. Within the confines of the genre, he has made the effort to show the uninitiated a line drawing at least of Berlin at the end of the Second World War.

To criticise the visual aesthetic of The Good German is bizarre. Perhaps such critics are not fond of monochrome. The cinematography is actually masterful, the sets a triumph bordering on the miraculous. Berlin's destruction is there in front of us in every frame. The only problem is that far from being hard on the eye, many, many shots here work as high art. Some, like a shot of a car arriving at a building at night with its headlight shining like otherworldly stars are out and out ravishing; a daylight pull away rostrum shot to reveal an applauding audience unaware of the skulduggery in their midst and its exiting perpetrator is sheer brilliance. Noir, visually, is all about contrast, about shadows and revelatory, illuminating light. Soderbergh's understanding of this is flawless. The Good German is a visual feast. The problem, however, is that the more sumptuous the viewing, the further away from naturalism we get. And it terms of Berlin at this time, the further you move from truth to untruth. Perhaps one should be telling Steven that we should have seen some vermin every couple of minutes or so. But even so: the dark and light of noir is essentially to create and highlight the drama taking place between characters and to create atmosphere. You can't have the visual benefit of the monochrome of true noir without losing emotional truth.

In terms of acting criticisms of Clooney and Blanchett are facile and idiotic. Clooney is a faultless noir lead male for modern times. Strikingly handsome, possessor of a voice like strong continental coffee laced with something stronger and is perfectly capable of rendering emotional resonance. He has a magnificent presence few actors on both sides of The Pond could have matched here. If you don't think his emotional range isn't broad enough here, then you don't understand the genre. His performance was a perfect rendition of the American noir actor of the period and that, is exactly what Soderbergh wanted. He Jacob is a Steady Eddie, adept and persistent at digging out the story's truth. I very much enjoyed the presentation of a male lead absorbing pain rather than dishing it out in historically expected cartoon fashion. The director may simply be following the book, but I enjoyed this subversion of a noir norm very much. Soderbergh's Jacob ploughs on, dignified and knowingly world-worn in the classic manner.

Blanchett is brilliant. Required to hit a Dietrichesque note, no more, no less, she nailed it in the wood: luminous, sensuous and depressed in true casual, world-weary 40s-noir fashion – you're not supposed to believe she's one step away from the asylum or the suicide's bullet, folks. Achieving the right look, the right walk, the right physical notes is not as easy as she makes it look. Like a truly great actress, she makes it appear that any actress could do what she did, but, like Clooney, she achieved a real depth of presence on screen, something that owes far more to technique, talent and hard work – and indeed intelligence - than luck or nature's bounty. She's a better noir lead than Bergman, creating a fuller, truer, more rounded character. In short, she was perfect - where was the Oscar nomination?

In summation, this film is both a cinema history lesson and thoroughly entertaining 105 minutes of cinema. The plot is convoluted but hey – that's noir. The acting is mannered but hey – that's noir too. It's a noir experience from start to finish. That's the point of the movie, and it's a point that the director makes with exceptional skill and taste. Of how many Oscar nominated films and directors can one say that?

The Holiday (2006)

Why isn't there a '0-10' button on this thing?

[1/10 · 22 December 2006]

Since seeing this dreadful heap of muck last night as a favour to a young relative I have racked my brains for a reason this garbage was made. Thanks to IMDb I now know why: there are clearly enough utterly and completely stupid people in the world to make it some money. But: shame on all of you IMDb users who have boosted The Holiday right here: shame on you for being lame brained, feckless and dim. This movie is less intelligent than a Lassie movie, and I tell you this: far less entertaining.

The word 'money' has also been revolving around my brain, as in this sentence: 'Why did these stars do it? They don't need the money, surely?' What in the name of all that is an actress with the talent of Kate Winslet (who I last saw in Extras, for goodness sake)doing in this dog-muck? And Jude Law also? Their careers deserve a couple of years of freefall after this. And Jack Black? The magnificent tyro of School of Rock? Your cred is in the shredder, baby (Mind you, he did, come to think of it, at times look embarrassed, so perhaps there is hope for him after all). Did someone threaten to kill their parents or children if they didn't do it? It must be that or something like that: there is no other rational explanation.

I was in physical pain whilst watching it in Chesterfield last evening. If the extraordinary cynicism of its religious adherence to every immoral and unethical strand of formula-Hollywood drek in here isn't bad enough: if the fact that the script that could have been written by a 12 year old dewy-eyed girl weaned and educated on every piece of schlock Disney every produced, or some kind of parodist with nothing better to do, but was apparently written by an adult isn't bad enough; if the torrent of clichés isn't bad enough - including the intensely vomit-inducing, utterly laughable inclusion of olde-tyme Golden Age of Hollywood writer winning a lifetime achievement award scene - AND CAN I TELL ANY American READING THIS THAT IT HASN'T SNOWED IN THE COUNTY OF SURREY BEFORE AND AROUND Christmas FOR ABOUT 40 YEARS?; if the complete lack of verisimilitude to real life, like the fact that women of thirty-odd don't make love in bra-tops, isn't bad enough; if the fact that Jude Law's character begins as a woman-a-night beer-slugging rogue then by half way becomes a winsomely sincere widowed single Dad who adores his two girls (and one is called 'Miffy' in real life: for God's sake, what next?!)isn't bad enough; if the fact that Cameron Diaz's 'performance' was the most embarrassing I've ever seen isn't bad enough; if the woolly mammoth-esquire touch of the miserable, shoddy direction isn't bad enough; if the fact that the studio thinks this pathetic nonsense is so good they let it stretch on for over two hours isn't bad enough, then the fact that these film-makers actually gave this evil monster of a movie pretensions to intelligence and relationship-profundity most certainly is.

I was going to say that The Holiday is an insult to anyone who ever went to school and earned a single GCSE pass or a 25-metre swimming certificate, until I logged on here and found that people presumably over the age of 12 actually liked it. Tell me again: you actually liked this film?

And to pass off Cary Grant as coming from Surrey - "I know!" pipes Kate, ecstatically when the old geezer tells her this - is mind-numbing is what is tells us about the attitude of studio producers (and for good measure, this director and screenplay writer)to all of us: factual accuracy in movies: "Forget it, it doesn't matter, because you numbskulls, chuckleheads, mimbos and bimbos chewing popcorn and sucking down Coke won't notice and don't matter." For the record, just in case no-one else has mentioned it in this review section - and do forgive me for not reading every single one because to me, suicide is immoral - Cary Grant was brought up (or 'raised' for you USA'ers) in Bristol, which is a port in Gloucestershire, which is in the west of England and therefore, nowhere near bloody Surrey.

So The Holiday takes its place in my pantheon of the absolute and utter crap where it joins Orlando, The Piano and Cronenberg's Crash. It makes for a very strange bedfellow. I suppose this proves that if there's one thing worse than a supposedly intelligent art-house movie that stinks the place out from sheer badness and pretentiousness, it's a movie which by all that is sacred should be presented as being as dumb as it looks and which doesn't so much insult the intelligence and good nature of the audience as trample up and down on it with hobnail boots with sharp nails sticking out of the sole, pointy end down.

I came home, switched on the TV and watched an hour of House. All, thankfully, is not lost. Yet.

PS Since more and more people have logged on to the website to sing the praises - supposedly - of this film, I have become completely convinced that all of them, especially the one's saying, 'Phew, thank Heaven for romance', are kidding. No one intelligent enough to press the 'On' button on a computer can possibly like this movie: it is, simply, the worst movie ever made.

Separate Lies (2005)

Top First Effort From Fellowes

[9/10 · 18 October 2006]

How on earth can people give this movie a low rating. Unbelievable. The performances of Wilkinson and Watson are so full of merit that I can only imagine that these detractors were weaned on blockbusters and porn. (If this sounds bad-tempered, it's because I just wiped my original 400-worder just now) I was so impressed by Tom Wilkinson. All hail the guy. This is a performance of considerable subtlety and massive skill. His development as an actor from The Full Monty to this masterpiece of a performance is amazing; one of the best things to happen in film-making in the last ten years.

Emily Watson is somewhat less commanding, due to that glint in her eye that says 'see me? this cheeky woman, here? You can't guess what I'm going to do next because I don't know either!' It seems to be something she can't help showing us in every role, but still, she's an actor of terrific ability and presence. She is very sexy here, as she needs to be, and fair play to her for this: this is a screen quality that normally, for me, she doesn't have in previous films.

As you might expect, Rupert Everett, required to play an upper-class late-30 something who could give tutorials at Phd level in How Not To Give a Toss About Heading to Hell On Account of Total Selfishness, delivers. He is so thin here, throughout the movie, however, I'm worried for him. Linda Bassett's housekeeper is also excellent: a smallish role but with a major plot twist to deliver, she makes you ponder how much talent we have in Britain in terms of character acting. I want to see more of her.

The narrative arc is fine; it's an interesting enough plot, given that no-one in film-making seems to be trying to convince Joe Public that there's nothing new under the sun, though it does stray towards 40s melodrama in the last 'reel.' But never mind that - this is a terrific 80 minutes worth of anyone who has half-a-brain's money. Congrats to Julian Fellowes on his first directorial effort: o how we need more films of substance like this. He shows a lot of skill in terms of adapting the original novel, telling a story with much effectiveness and subtlety. And congrats too on conjuring an immense display of the film actor's art from Mr Tom Wilkinson. What a geezer.

T.