Mr. Turner
Mike leigh (2014)
Opening to rave reviews back in Cannes, Mike Leigh’s staunchly crafted, wonderfully shot, study of
the great Romantic landscape painter’s later years triumphs as both a detailed, almost Dickensian styled, period piece but also as a contemplative look at artistic inspiration in later life.
Leigh’s script shows us the artist from a number of angles. We see his unhealthy relationship with his lowly housekeeper; a late, tender love for a landlady he boards with; his relationship with his father; his non-relationship with two illegitimate children and, of course, his rock star persona in the Royal academy of arts. Leigh cobbles these scrappy pieces together to show a ramshackle life. He shows a troubled man who finds majesty in nature, and harnesses it on the canvas while lacking the patience or disposition to harness much else.
Alongside his great old mugger Timothy Spall- all grunts, strops and strokes in the lead role-, Leigh has delivered a biopic of great rigor and detail. He leaves the lower middle classes of contemporary England for only the second time in his film making career, but this feels no less personal or authentic for it. It’s simply a film about a brilliant, difficult, septuagenarian artist by a brilliant, difficult septuagenarian artist.
The Wonders (Le Meraviglie)
Alongside his great old mugger Timothy Spall- all grunts, strops and strokes in the lead role-, Leigh has delivered a biopic of great rigor and detail. He leaves the lower middle classes of contemporary England for only the second time in his film making career, but this feels no less personal or authentic for it. It’s simply a film about a brilliant, difficult, septuagenarian artist by a brilliant, difficult septuagenarian artist.
The Wonders (Le Meraviglie)
Alice Rohrwacher (2014)
A Jane Campion led jury awarded Alice Rohrwacher with Cannes’ Grand Prix back in May for this beautiful piece of magical realism about a young girl and her family in rural Tuscany.
The film focuses on young Gelsomina: a 12 year old girl getting to grips with life and helping out on the family farm. We see her relationship with her mother; her eldest sister; and her hermetic father; who is determined to see her take over the lot. One day out swimming the girls happen upon a Felliniesque TV shoot with Monica Bellucci as its Dolce Vita. It’s an advert for an upcoming competition of local wonders and since Gelsomina has a particular knack for keeping bees, she decides to throw in.
Having grown up with a bee keeping father herself, Rohrwacher has crafted not only a refreshingly personal film here, but one which feels steeped in authenticity too. The clothes, colour palette and grainy 16mm photography perfectly capture the era but it is in the surrealist touches that the film soars. We feel the beauty of a beam of light; the weight of spilled honey; and, most startlingly of all, the aching anxiety of growing up. Life affirming stuff.
The Homesman
Tommy Lee Jones (2014)
Distilling the scattered plotlines of his promising directorial debut, Tommy Lee Jones returns to the big chair with The Homesman; a streamlined, sombre western which confirms his abilities with the megaphone, even if it does try a bit too hard.
Hillary Swank plays Mary Dee Cuddy, a hardy, successful farmer in her early thirties who still hopes, perhaps in earnest, to wed. Everyone calls her bossy; it’s difficult to disagree. A cruel winter leaves three of her community's young women in various degrees of mental disrepair and when their utterly useless husbands decide that enough’s enough, they draw to determine who will escort them to an asylum across state. Cuddy ends up with the job. She finds Tommy Lee Jones strung up to a tree and agrees to free him if he'll come along for the ride.
Distilling the scattered plotlines of his promising directorial debut, Tommy Lee Jones returns to the big chair with The Homesman; a streamlined, sombre western which confirms his abilities with the megaphone, even if it does try a bit too hard.
Hillary Swank plays Mary Dee Cuddy, a hardy, successful farmer in her early thirties who still hopes, perhaps in earnest, to wed. Everyone calls her bossy; it’s difficult to disagree. A cruel winter leaves three of her community's young women in various degrees of mental disrepair and when their utterly useless husbands decide that enough’s enough, they draw to determine who will escort them to an asylum across state. Cuddy ends up with the job. She finds Tommy Lee Jones strung up to a tree and agrees to free him if he'll come along for the ride.
There’s a sense Jones is fancying himself as quite the contemporary here, delving into subjects which classic Hollywood would have considered quite taboo, but, regrettably, these depictions of insanity are rather crude. Still, like an easy read, The Homesman is a film worth getting lost in; both in Rodrigo Prieto’s finely photographed landscapes, and in the deep contours of that magnificent, weathered face.
Butter on the Latch
Butter on the Latch
Josephine Decker (2014)
The first of two Josephine Decker films to feature at this year’s Berlinale, Butter on the Latch follows a pair of young cosmopolitan New Yorkers on a strange trip. We quickly learn that their lives are a touch debauch- waking up in strangers’ beds and so forth- so we join them on a cleansing spiritual retreat to upstate New York. Odd things happen; little is explained. It might look all Mumblecore indie on the surface, but a sexualized pagan horror lurks just beneath.
Hercules
Brett Ratner (2014)
It’s “Lions and hydras and boars, oh my!” as the usually likeable Johnson and the much maligned Ratner join a selection of fine British thesps for this moderately diverting retelling of the demi-god’s slightly latter years. Taking place after his widely eulogised trials, we find Hercules as a myth turned mercenary; trekking the wilderness with his grumbling comrades until that one last lucrative job offers an early way out. Credit for choosing to debunk the hero’s mythology: aside from that, we all know the drill.
If I Stay
R.J. Cutler (2014)
The ever ubiquitous Chloe Grace Moretz (she’s still 17) stars as a sensitive cello player who gets to view her life from above when a car accident leaves her in a life threatening coma. Much like the recent, far better, The Fault in Our Stars she’s got the hip uber-left-wing parents and the brooding babe boyfriend who sees something in her which, apparently, no one else sees. Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 rears its head the expected number of times. You get the gist.
Director R.J. Cutler might just be fancying himself as a Frank Capra for the YA generation here, but It’s A Wonderful Life this certainly is not.
Hercules
Brett Ratner (2014)
It’s “Lions and hydras and boars, oh my!” as the usually likeable Johnson and the much maligned Ratner join a selection of fine British thesps for this moderately diverting retelling of the demi-god’s slightly latter years. Taking place after his widely eulogised trials, we find Hercules as a myth turned mercenary; trekking the wilderness with his grumbling comrades until that one last lucrative job offers an early way out. Credit for choosing to debunk the hero’s mythology: aside from that, we all know the drill.
If I Stay
R.J. Cutler (2014)
The ever ubiquitous Chloe Grace Moretz (she’s still 17) stars as a sensitive cello player who gets to view her life from above when a car accident leaves her in a life threatening coma. Much like the recent, far better, The Fault in Our Stars she’s got the hip uber-left-wing parents and the brooding babe boyfriend who sees something in her which, apparently, no one else sees. Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 rears its head the expected number of times. You get the gist.
Director R.J. Cutler might just be fancying himself as a Frank Capra for the YA generation here, but It’s A Wonderful Life this certainly is not.
