Review: Guarding Tess

Cage and MacLaine are not two actors I would have put together in a movie.  This isn't a bad movie, but it's not a remarkable one either.  There's a few nice moments of comic tension between Cage's bodyguard and MacLaine's President's wife, but were this not free on Prime I'd have asked for my money back. 

For the most of the film, I was baffled why Cage was cast in it – and then it came – the Cage moment. The Cage moment is so utterly unexpected, and transforms the film from a mildly diverting comedy to something rather darker and so making it a two tone rather than monotone film.

Verdict: Mildly diverting. 

Review: Lady Bird

This is a charming coming of age movie which unusually isn’t wholly told from the teen’s perspective.  It'll won't rival Clueless as my favourite teen movie, but it has a lot of warmth and the dialogue feels authentic and smart.  I particularly liked that it wasn't overly daft or angst ridden. There's no high drama here either. 

Ronan as Lady Bird looks slightly too old for the part in some scenes, but easily convinces in others. Her long suffering parents - Letts & Metcalf - are excellent and both dealing with their own life changes. 

I did also enjoy the period detail of the turn of the millennium. Weird that I feel nostalgic about, but things did feel simpler and in some ways better without the ubiquity of connected multi-function mobile devices. 

Verdict: Lively coming of age drama. 

Review: A Star is Born

Good modern adaptation of this classic story.  We know Gaga can sing, but it also turns out she can act too - and actually rather well.  While the romance is lightly told, I was always convinced of the relationship between her and Cooper's character.  They have great chemistry.

Jackson's path of self destruction is as hard to watch as Ally's rise to fame is invigorating.  And that's perhaps the one problem with this movie - it finishes on a down note.

The musical numbers are well staged and I liked some of the cynicism behind what it takes to make someone a star.

Verdict: A classic story worth revisiting. 

Review: A Bear Named Winnie

Amazon seems to be making it harder to find prime movies on the Fire stick nowadays and the missus wanted a thriller she hadn't seen (it seems like she's pretty much watched everything on Prime), but wasn't scary.

Somehow, we stumbled upon A Bear Named Winnie. And just to be clear, this is not a thriller.  Instead, it's a fairly gentle retelling of a "true" story about how Winnie the Pooh came to get his name. Apparently, it turns out he was named about a real bear in London Zoo - and the story of how Winnie came to be in London Zoo is the focus of the film.

It's an interesting story with a few minor points of drama and the two bears used in filming are extremely cute. I spent much of the film wondering just how they'd got them to be so tame and well trained as well as envying Fassbender for spending a movie working with a bear.

One word on the Amazon Prime copy, it's pretty blurry looking.

Verdict: Touching tale with cute bear action. 

Review: They Shall Not Grow Old

I have mixed feelings about Peter Jackson's attempt to make the testimony and footage from the first World War more accessible to modern audiences through colourisation, CGI, sound effects and even 3D.  The "restoration" is only partly successful to my eyes. For example, the blurry slow motion segments rather than adding pathos and drama only serve to make the production sag and the colourisation  - particularly the uniform washes of skin colour - can never be mistaken for reality.

More concerning is the juxtaposition of still photos of corpses with close ups of people who resemble them in group photographs - and the use of unrestored clips of black and white silent footage with a clattering projector soundtrack belies the fact that silent film can look very good indeed when sensitively restored and played at the right frame rate.

But it's not without merit, the colorisation highlights details like poppies growing on a grass verge or camouflage patterns on tanks which I would have certainly missed otherwise.  The foley effects add real atmosphere to the first hand accounts of survivors.  The story itself remains a powerful one, and the close is really strong.

Verdict: A worthy experiment

Review: 2001

I'm sure I must have seen this before, but it's recent release on 4K UHD disc makes it worth a revisit. Sadly, our projector isn't quite capable of 4K - but I'm pleased to report that except for one particularly scene where there's some quite noisy grain in an early scene 2001 looks as fresh and modern as ever.

It was the missus' first viewing and given her usual lack of patience for movies that are lengthy and with ambiguous interpretations I wondered what she'd make of it.  I also saved the story of my father walking out of a 1968 cinema showing on account of it being too boring until afterwards - and gave her the option of pausing the film for a catch up on what was going on.  We only had to stop a few times - and I relied on dim memories of my reading of the book for explanations.

Initial signs were not good as we were faced with a black screen and strains from the soundtrack - the Overture apparently. This was quickly skipped as there was no chance of the missus sitting through that.

Overall, it's held up remarkably well. It's slow and even ponderous - but the imagery remains breathtakingly remarkable in places.  It captures the sheer weirdness and vastness of space in a way that's astonishing given its age.  Truly visionary.

Verdict: Bring your own interpretation to this bona-fide science fiction classic. 

Review: Sherlock Holmes The Scarlet Claw

Atmospheric reworking of the Hound of the Baskervilles starring Rathbone and Bruce. This was our Halloween viewing  as neither of us fancied a straight out horror. This is a hugely nostalgic film for me as it evokes BBC showings of the series back in 1980s and watching them on our small black and white TV.  Viewing it on our projector recently was obviously rather different!

What I found extraordinary was that I'd quite forgotten the majority of the plot and only one or two scenes gave me vague feelings of deja vu. I think I'm long overdue a rewatch of the rest of the series.

This adventure is probably one of the better ones as it's an original tale which while being set in the modern days of 1940s, Holmes and Watson aren't being compelled to help with the war effort. Further, no one has gone overboard with the makeup, given Rathbone a distracting hair style and the script isn't too abusive to Watson. The remote Canadian village location also adds a certain timeless quality which while you couldn't mistake it for nowadays, it could easily be more period accurate for Holmes.

Verdict: Top tier Rathbone & Bruce. 

Review: The Rainmaker

The stakes in this feel lower than some of the other Grisham adaptations. But that's resulted in a more nuanced (although still occasionally implausible) film.

Damon's earnest newbie lawyer is perfectly balanced by DeVito's rather more cynical hack.  Voight makes for a good adversary.

Unusually, for these movies it finds time to weave in at least one secondary narrative.

Having watched a run of these long courtroom dramas now, I'm struck by Grisham's confidence in ordinary people doing the right thing.

Verdict: One of the more intelligent adaptations. 

Review: A Time to Kill

Another Grisham courtroom drama and it doesn't shy away from controversial topics as it deals with racism and revenge killing.  Likely, also a step up in terms of cost compared to some of the others.

As a story it's an absorbing if overwrought one as one brutal act risks escalating into a feud combined with race war.  The act which kicks it all off also made it a difficult watch for me and I'm not sure I would have chosen it had I known.

The cast are good good in this, with McConaughey showing early ability to portray complex roles and be the core of a movie.

It's odd seeing Jackson with hair and Spacey in a movie at all now.

Verdict: Good, but probably a bit overlong.
 

Review: Bohemian Rhapsody

This movie isn't quite sure if it's a Freddie Mercury biopic or a Queen docudrama.  The result is something of a compromise. The focus is very much on Freddie (some of the other band members while convincing looking are thinly drawn characterisation wise), but doesn't manage to get under the skin of what made him tick.

The other problem is that the story of Queen doesn't seem to be a very interesting one. It's basically band gets together, has some hits and becomes massive, splits and then reunites.  The snippets of insight into the how and why some of the hit songs were made was often fascinating, but probably not covered in any more depth than the relevant wikipedia article.

The film's crescendo - a performance at Live Aid - is hardly the stuff of legend to the average viewer.  I have honestly given Live Aid almost no thought in the last 30 years - and can remember nothing about the individual band performances.  Mercury, however, is genuinely interesting as a person.  For example, "What drove him creatively?" is a question which is barely touched upon.

By now you've probably realised I am at best a passing Queen fan, and I felt Malek had got Mercury about 90% right. The accent and diction is a bit variable, but his look and movement often eerily invoked the musician.  The film soars when it comes together and you realise the dent in the public conscious this band family managed to make thanks in large part to Mercury's singular vision and zest for life.

Verdict: Does the job. 

Review: Runaway Jury

Runaway Jury is yet another 90s adaptation of a Grisham courtroom novel. I can see why they were so popular with Hollywood, easy to adapt best-selling books and limited sets to worry about means you can concentrate on hiring charismatic stars old and new to get them packing the cinemas.  Hackman gets by far the most fun lines to play with.

The underlying trial around gun control remains as relevant now as then. Barely a week goes by without a mass shooting in the US and fingers being pointed regarding responsibility.  This time its the gun industry itself on trial.

With such high stakes, it's no wonder that the opposing lawyers worry about jury selection and decision making. So when someone promises to fix the jury, it must be very tempting...

Verdict: Implausible but fun ride. 

Review: The Rosie Project

Amusing romantic comedy featuring high functioning Aspergers academic, Don Tilman in his pursuit of a wife. What makes the project so charming is the insights into Tilman's daily routine, his unique approach to life and social ineptness. In many ways, he feels not dissimilar to my younger self.

Less well drawn is the object of his affections and that's just about forgivable given the Tilman's eye view of proceedings.

Verdict: Charming and unconventional romcom. 

Review: Shooter

Shooter is a bit of a oddity in that it has some care and attention to the details, but it all seems to go a bit James Bond towards the end.  The basic premise of this film ie "what would it take to beat all of the various measures that are currently in place to prevent the assassination of a US President?" is an intriguing one as is the solution.  The resulting JFK like conspiracy, something which the characters are somewhat self-aware of, is rather less so.

Enter Wahlberg to take of business in another loner underdog (anti)hero role.  Predictably increasing levels of action, mayhem and twists result as he goes in pursuit of justice while evading the long arm of the law.  He's never less than convincing in a way that Dwayne Johnson isn't.

Verdict:  Passable action thriller.