CINEMA: The Proposal

Whatever happened to the romcom?

Back in the days of Katherine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy and Cary Grant romcoms like Adam’s Rib and His Girl Friday were dingdong battles of the sexes with witty one-liners whizzing around so fast you had to keep on your toes to keep up with them, while the women gave as good as they got and almost whisked the guys’ pants off in order to show who wore the trousers. Nowadays we get the likes of The Proposal, which isn’t bad as far as modern romcoms go, but is limp and emasculated compared to its forebears.

Here’s a short synopsis of the plot of any modern day romcom: she’s a bitch, preferably a hard working, high achieving bitch who has never had time for babies or men; he’s either a sexist slob or a bloke in real life she’d never even consider as a mate. They meet, they bicker a bit, there are some lame sex jokes probably involving nudity, inappropriate clothing or a sex toy, then he realises underneath her ball-breaking exterior beats the heart of a little lady who just wants to be lurved, while she (because she’s not getting any younger and her biological clock is ticking) lowers her sights and decides he’ll do as well as anyone else as a sperm donor.

Most of these movies star Katherine Heigl (watch out for The Ugly Truth coming your way soon) but The Proposal stars the once feisty and fabulous Sandra Bullock, now consigned to wearing inappropriately high heels and acting with her little finger as (you guessed it) the high powered, ball-breaking Canadian book editor Margaret, who is about to be thrown out of the States because her visa has expired. Enter her mousy assistant Andrew (Ryan Reynolds) who agrees to marry her so she can stay in the country.

So, it’s off to Alaska so Margaret can meet her prospective in-laws, which is when she discovers (shock, horror!) Andrew isn’t the nobody she’s always thought, but actually the son of a mega-rich clan who live in a castle on an island. Cue misunderstandings, shared bedrooms but no nookie, yes, that inappropriate nude scene, and the sudden realisation that they’ve actually fancied the pants off each other all this time but never realised it.

There are one or two laughs and some nice supporting work from Mary Steenburgen as Andrew’s mum, but the movie runs out of steam halfway through, while Reynolds has all the emotional flexibility of a handsome man who has got by all his life on a winning smile.

So, it’s mildly amusing and entertaining, but it should have been so much sharper, quicker and more biting. It’s about time Hollywood woke up to the realisation successful, intelligent women don’t have to be bitches and can actually possess a sense of humour but, like women finally managing to break through that glass ceiling, don’t expect it to happen any time soon.

Dee Pilgrim

CINEMA: 35 Shots of Rum

This small French charmer is full of silences, pauses and scenes where nothing much happens at all, but it oozes a comforting Gallic ease, like the shrug of a shoulder, a cloud of Gauloise smoke and the chink of shot glasses.

The main storyline centres on a widower (Alex Descas) who lives with his daughter in a block of flats where one neighbour has secretly been in love with him for years, while the young man in the penthouse spends his inheritance aimlessly travelling the globe.

The characters drink endless cups of coffee and rum, eat their steamed rice in companionable silence, or simply watch the trains go by. Although their lives are unremarkable what director Claire Denis has managed to do is to capture perfectly a slice of French life in all its banal detail.

Were aliens to watch this film it would tell them more about a certain section of French society than they would ever be able to glean from shots of the Eiffel Tower, the Moulin Rouge or the Pompidou centre, and the fact you leave the cinema liking these people so much is tribute to the movie’s big heart.

Dee Pilgrim

CINEMA: The Private Lives of Pippa Lee

Poor old Pippa (Robin Wright Penn) is having something of a mid-life crisis. Once a loving daughter (played by Blake Lively) driven from home by her pill popping and manipulative mother (Maria Bello), the young Pippa proceeded to drift through life hanging out with musicians and artists.

However, meeting and marrying the much older Herb (Alan Arkin) made Pippa settle down into family life. Now Herb’s retired and they’ve moved to the country, but Pippa is no longer content. For a start Herb’s heart is playing up, his best mate Sam (Mike Binder) is clearly in love with Pippa while hanging out with the just as clearly bonkers Sandra (Winona Ryder), and Pippa herself has started to sleepwalk. It’s when she awakens to find herself standing in the convenience store in her nightie, and has to be driven home by the clerk Chris (Keanu Reeves), that she realises her life is unravelling. While she desperately tries to hold things together she knows in her heart she must confront her past if she is going to sort things out in the present.

With a magnificent central performance from Wright Penn, the movie is a wonderfully wry, slightly skewed look at the way life continually throws curveballs at us all. Her Pippa is a complex, multi-layered woman who is used to sorting out everybody else’s lives, so when her own falls apart she is appalled and baffled and rather scared, and Wright Penn manages to convey all this with just a tight smile.

Director Rebecca Miller handles the large ensemble cast with aplomb, making them all rounded characters in their own right. Ryder and Reeves give their best performances in years, Bello is a monster as the mother and yet also pitiable, while cameos from Julianne Moore and Monica Bellucci make this a movie with the strongest parts for females in years.

It’s dark but in places laugh out loud funny and by rights should earn Wright Penn an Oscar nod.

Dee Pilgrim

CINEMA: Sunshine Cleaning

From the producers of Little Miss Sunshine comes this equally quirky, poignantly funny film about sisterhood, motherhood, small dreams and big amounts of mess.

The sisters are Rose (Amy Adams), a single mum working as a maid, and slobby slacker Norah (Emily Blunt), who is so incompetent she can’t even keep her job as a diner waitress. Rose works hard and tries to remain cheery about life, mostly for the sake of her son Oscar (Jason Spavack), a young boy who is old before his time and dad (Alan Arkin), whose get rich quick schemes usually end in disaster.

But money matters weigh Rose down, so when she hears big bucks can be made in the crime scene clear-up business she peels on her Marigolds, packs the vacuum in the boot of her car and gets ready to scrub. She enlists Norah’s help in this new venture and the sisters are soon up to their elbows in homicides, suicides and bodily fluids.

It’s at this point Rose realises she needs some help and a visit to the local cleaning product wholesaler sees her meeting Winston (Clifton Collins Jr.) the one-armed sales assistant who not only points her on the straight and narrow as far as bleaches and cleaning foams are concerned, but also makes her reconsider her long-term and unsatisfying affair with a married man.

This is a small film dealing with the minutiae of real people’s lives; the daily upsets and setbacks, and the struggle to just keep going. However, far from being a thoroughly depressing experience, it’s actually incredibly cathartic and moving, mainly because Amy Adams is such an adorable character. She makes Rose naturally attractive with an openness and honesty of spirit that makes the audience get firmly behind her. Blunt has a slightly harder job of it with Norah, whose awkwardness and laziness initially make her less easy to like, but who seems to wake up on screen as the film progresses.

Then there’s the uncanny chemistry between Oscar and his granddad, both dreaming of a better life and bigger opportunities. The excellent acting is complemented by some stunning location work in and around Albuquerque that almost becomes another character in the movie.

There’s nothing big or clever about this film, just a whole lot of heart, making it a really satisfying cinema experience.

Dee Pilgrim

CINEMA: Rudo Y Cursi

In which director Carlos Cuaron and actors Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna are reunited after the success that was Y Tu Mama Tambien.

The story here is a lightweight tale of two footballing brothers who both become stars for opposing teams in the Mexican domestic league.  Rudo (Luna) is the more talented of the pair, although he has problems with his mercurial temper, but it is baby brother Cursi (Bernal) who becomes the biggest star, giving him the clout to launch a doomed foray into music.

Like many brothers, Rudo and Cursi love each other and are fiercely loyal to each other, but they are also fiercely competitive and their bids to gain the upper hand produce much of the movie’s humour. You don’t actually get to see much football action, but the brothers’ frequent spats certainly make the time pass quickly. There’s also the rather incongruous sight of Bernal, in outsize cowboy hat, slaughtering I Want You To Want Me – in Spanish of course.

Even a more serious storyline about gambling debts and throwing games can’t dim the film’s lightweight sunny nature, which Cuaron handles with delicately deft fingers. So, it’s not what you’d call compulsive viewing, but it is entertaining in a sub-Premier League kind of way.

Dee Pilgrim

CINEMA: Transformers Revenge of the Fallen, Part 2

As I left the press screening for Michael Bay’s first foray into the toy market, I noticed four nerds walking out in single-file, each loudly decrying Bay’s bombastic robot epic as ‘The worst film I have ever seen’. I knew at that point that 1) Michael Bay had done something right; and 2) Transformers was going to make an awful lot of money.
And lo, the latter came to pass. With a worldwide gross of some $700 million, Paramount had clearly struck gold and the inevitable sequel was greenlit. More of the same, please. What made the original so successful both critically and commercially? Simple. Bay and his crack team of writers took a leaf from the Bryan Singer book of genre adaptations and stayed true to the inherent core of the franchise knowing that if you do that, well, you can pretty much do anything. And so they did, jettisoning decades of continuity and streamlining an origin story that let everyone in on the ground floor. The result? An accessible, fun Summer event that delighted in giving its audience sensory overload while paying faithful homage to what has gone before.

And if you thought Bay’s first try was an aneurysm waiting to happen, your eyes are going to bleed when they feast on the explosion of metal and colour that permeates virtually every single frame. That trailer footage of the construction site Decepticon playing havoc in Shanghai? It looked like an amazing finale. Wrong: it’s the first scene, the camera drifting slow and wide across a fairly innocuous excavation vehicle encircled by the US military and a few familiar Autobots. Bay plays the moment to perfection, an eerie silence being allowed to settle for just seconds before cogs whirl and a two hour 27 minute orgy of Making Things Explode Loudly kicks off. You’ve not seen anything like this before.

Unfortunately, bigger and louder does not necessarily mean better. Tenuously-held together as the first film was, there was some semblance of a plot to latch on to. Exposition is thin on the ground in Revenge of the Fallen, with plot points dished out in tiny morsels before an explanation comes two-thirds of the way through at which point it’s hard to care because all you’re gagging for is next fight between two titanic gladiators all of whom like to posture a bit before going for the throat.

It’s also a disappointment to find so many Autobots sidelined, no doubt firstly because they cost so much to animate and secondly because they just don’t sell as much merchandise. Much like X-Men 2 got rid of anyone who wasn’t Wolverine, so the Transformers sequel relegates Ironhide and Ratchet to nothing more than cameos while Sideswipe shows up as the Hot New Car (about the only one, GM cars aren’t on the whole known for being exotic. But that’s the fickle world of the movie tie-in for you) but spends most of his time parked up or lost in the swooping camera work which is so kinetic that a lot of the visual impact is lost as you recover from your last dizzy spell. Instead, the film focuses on Bumblebee (y’know, for the kids) and two annoying newcomers, Skids and Mudflap who belong in the Jar Jar Binks Hall of Shame. Yes, they’re that bad and yes, you’re going to spend a lot of time with these vaguely racist stereotypes. What about Big Blue & Red? Don’t get too attached.

Fortunately the Decepticons get a little more time to shine (when they’re not being blown up) and it’s nice to see a little verbal interplay even if it is Megatron and Starscream doing a little turn in the name of fan-service. Overarching nemesis The Fallen is a spindly creation who never really appears too threatening until the final reel (and even then, he’s just something for Prime et al to smash). The real plaudits are reserved for Devastator, the Constructicon gestalt made up of six individual robots who appears only for the sake of topping everything that’s gone before him. And he does with aplomb, every last penny is up on screen animating this goliath. Industrial Light & Magic should just go ahead and accept the Oscar now – if anything else pinches the golden statuette, it’s a fix. These are benchmark-raising effects.

Perhaps the most damning criticism one can lay at the door of Revenge of the Fallen is that, whisper it quietly, it’s just not as cool as the first. Sure, it’s easily up there as one of the great summer thrill rides but any of the élan that the first film had has gone, sucked up in a balletic hurricane of testosterone and metal. There’s nothing that comes close to the giddy glee you got from the Bumblebee/Barricade chase in the original save for a rumble between Optimus and three ‘Cons that finally gives Prime a chance to shine.

For a film about a bunch of aliens named Transformers, there’s not a great deal of transforming. Bay and co. have bet the farm on your investment in the characters without realising why they were so appealing in the first place. Instead the audience is just handed a series of explosions punctuated by the occasional pretty picture filled with characters you don’t really care about, and asked to accept it. And accept it you will, because the film barely leaves you any time to think.

So, what are we left with? If you’ve come for Citizen Kane, the exit is right behind you. It’s difficult to bring standards to a movie like this when its chief protagonists are Big Fucking Robots. It’s bold and bright and wicked fun but ultimately the most vacuous thing you will see all year, there’s scarcely anything keeping it tethered to the ground.

What we have is pure popcorn escapism, nothing more, nothing less and sometimes, that’s really all you need.

David Lillywhite

CINEMA: Kisses

Another small and rather delightful film is Lance Daly’s Kisses, a tale of two runaways who discover the streets of big cities aren’t always paved with gold.

Young Dylan (Shane Curry) and Kylie (Kelly O’Neill) live on a dilapidated estate on the outskirts of Dublin. He’s being abused by his drunken violent pa, while there’s something even darker happening in Kylie’s life. When Dylan’s dad threatens to kill his son, the youngsters decide to run to the heart of the city where they think they will be able to find Dylan’s older brother who also ran away a few years earlier.

So begins an almost enchanted journey marked by adventures and encounters with good people (the immigrant worker on a rubbish barge, a kind hearted prostitute and a singer who may or may not be Bob Dylan) and the more malevolent. During the course of one night Dylan and Kylie learn all about life, love, trust and the mysteries of kissing, emerging from the experience wiser and having been touched by magic.

Lance Daly’s story is sad and sweetly funny by turns and is absolutely made by its two central performances. Shane Curry and Kelly O’Neill may, at times, boast the broadest Irish accents it will ever be your displeasure to decipher, but they are charmingly natural and their young faces mirror every emotion they are feeling. Their friendship is innocent and joyous and as a modern day ‘fairytale’ this works on nearly every level. However bad the situation Dylan and Kylie find themselves in, the real message of the movie is all about hope and the triumph of true spirit over adversity.

Kisses says more in its short 72 minutes than Harry Potter manages to fit into almost twice that length and I know which I’d rather spend my money on going to see.

Dee Pilgrim

CINEMA: Moon

Whereas the latest Harry Potter is big budget and bloated, Moon is small and perfectly formed.

This intense sci-fi drama doesn’t need mega-buck special effects to be successful; it depends much more on a wonderful double starring performance from Sam Rockwell and some tightly controlled direction from Duncan Jones, son of one Mr David Bowie.

On the far side of the moon astronaut Sam Bell (Rockwell) lives alone on a base with only the all-knowing computer Gerty (perfectly voiced by Kevin Spacey) for company. Sam is overseeing the mining of Helium-3, a much-sought after commodity back on Earth, and between shifts he is building a miniature town to while away the time before his three-year contract is up. But Sam is beginning to feel below par, and his mind is starting to play tricks on him – is it just cabin fever or is something really wrong? It’s when he wakes up in the infirmary after an accident to find himself in the company of a younger Sam that things get really weird. However, as Sam is about to find out, his life is far stranger than fiction, or should that read “lives”…. ?

With a budget of just $5 million and a shoot of only 33 days, Duncan Jones has kept the special effects necessarily lo-fi, but this is actually to the overall film’s benefit because it means you concentrate on the human, emotional side of the story and Sam Rockwell is very affecting. His Sam is a man you really connect with and sympathise with, stuck all by himself on a chunk of barren rock with only a computer for company. Sam’s emotional development, his self-questioning and eventual enlightenment, suck you in. There’s something oddly unsettling about Sam’s mundane existence and you end up feeling as disturbed as he is by the arrival of an interloper into his ordered life.

Then there’s the touching bond between Sam and Gerty – a human and a machine that actually care for each other. This little film tackles really profound themes such as what does it mean to be human; how “real” are human desires and longings, and why do we all feel this need to belong?

This is a film that will still resonate in your mind many days after you’ve seen it and let’s hope Duncan Jones continues to make similarly thought-provoking movies and doesn’t get sucked into the Hollywood machine.

Dee Pilgrim

CINEMA: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Part 3

If you’re one of the people who has trawled through the print version of this latest instalment of Harry P, then you’ll know the book takes forever to say very little.

The same is pretty much true of this rather dreary and plodding episode of the Potter saga that is shot in varying shades of dark brown and features many of the established characters talking very slowly indeed. In fact, in some sequences the dialogue is so ponderous you may find yourself nodding off between sentences.

Once again we are back at Hogwarts where the principal, Professor Dumbledore (Michael Gambon), needs Harry’s (Daniel Radcliffe) help in luring retired potions Professor Slughorn (Jim Broadbent) back into his old job. Dumbledore believes Slughorn may be able to shed some light on what the evil Lord Voldemort is up to. However, Harry and his cohorts Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermoine (Emma Watson) are now entering puberty and are much more concerned with affairs of the heart than wizardry and while Harry’s eye is off the ball Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton) is up to some rather dastardly tricks.

At more than two-and-a-half hours you’d expect The Half-Blood Prince to be packed with full-on action and loads of SFX-enhanced magic scenes. However, despite a rather destructive opening sequence, one Quidditch match, and two clashes between the forces of good and evil (both over before they have truly begun) nothing much of anything really happens. This is because the focus of the film is very much on the rapidly changing emotional entanglements of the central trio of characters rather than the bigger plot. With so many small scenes not adding to the forward impetus of the story the film itself feels stodgy and pedestrian – a mere stepping-stone between the last two films.

Younger fans of Harry may find it difficult to stay awake long enough for the rather significant ending and the plea of many to the movie’s makers will be more magic less snogging next time round please!

Dee Pilgrim

CINEMA: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Part 2

Having read all the books and seen all the films this latest installment had a hell of a lot to live up to, but amazingly it nearly delivers on all counts.

This time around Harry and co. are back at Hogwarts and with the Dark Lord Voldemort out and about causing all kinds of mischief and mayhem it’s safer in the school than anywhere in the real (muggle) world. But with growing up comes raging teenage hormones and these character are no different. Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) fancies Ginny (Bonnie Wright), Ron’s (Rupert Grint) younger sister and she fancies him. Hermione (Emma Watson) realises she fancies Ron, while Ron has the unwanted affections of one Lavender Brown who is determined to get her ginger prince.

Romance aside, Dumdledore (Michael Gambon) needs Harry’s help once again to persuade Professor Slughorn (Jim Broadbent) to return to teach at the school, as one of his memories may hold the key to finally defeating Voldemort for good.

Voldemort also has his plans and favourites and chooses Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton) to carry out an evil task within the school walls that will change everyone’s lives forever should he succeed. Will the kids kiss? Will Draco win? And what is in store for Dumbledore?

Phew! The sixth film in the series finally feels like a real Harry Potter film again after the political shenanigans of the last one. There is lots of humour from a wonderfully witty script and performances from the three leads who finally show they can really act, bless them.

While the book lacked action sequences and confrontations, screenwriter Steve Kloves and director David Yates have taken incidents only referred to in the text and blown them up so we can see them on the big screen. Take the opening sequence which sees Voldemort’s Death Eaters spiral out of control through London and trash the Millennium Bridge then attack Diagon Alley in a full frontal assault that is exciting, expertly realised and shows how Voldemort truly is the threat everyone says he is.

But the film really comes alive thanks to the brilliant performances from the whole cast. Luna Lovegood played by Evana Lynch gets a bigger role and steals every scene she is in and hopefully will play a bigger role next time around. Felton as Malfoy finally takes centre stage and puts in work that equals Radcliffe’s. Grint is a comedy genius in the making and deals with unwanted girl action well, allowing us to fully believe in his story arc, while Watson has matured well as Hermione and has a big emotional scene that will have you dabbing your eyes for sure. Gambon as Dumbledore is excellent in his role and Broadbent is a hilarious addition to the film series.

(Kind of) SPOILER

As for the finale where a major character dies, it has been changed and tweaked from the book version but makes much more sense in this format and the scene itself and the aftermath are epic and not dissimilar to the death of Gandalf in LOTR. The direction is tight and well paced by Yates and the cinematography and set design stunning.

But overall this is a middle section film and merely the warm-up for the mother of all battles to come. And although it flies through its long running length, you are left at the end wanting a conclusion to this epic teenage saga sooner rather than two years away!

Mark Cappuccio