Review No.155: Delicacy

Ever since she made her name with Amelie it seems that Audrey Tautou has carved out a career by mainly playing kooky yet likeable French Women there are obvious exceptions such as The Da Vinci Code but on the whole she does portray a certain character type. Her character Nathalie certainly fits the usual Tautou mould as we see her in the opening scene accosted and kissed by a stranger only it is actually her boyfriend because they were playing one of those kooky games that only seem to exist in the movies. Nathalie, who at the start of the film sells programmes at the theatre, is swept off her feet by Francois with the two marrying pretty swiftly before talking about having children. There is tragedy though as Francois is killed and Nathalie goes through a three year grieving process which we the audience don't witness on screen but is instead represented by the fact her pregnant friend now has a two year old daughter. Nathalie, who has now moved up job wise, surprises new Swedish co-worker Markus one day by laying a kiss on his lips but as fate would have it the two end up falling for each other. So follows a quirky romance involving bottles of wine being knocked over, the giving of Pez dispensers and a lot of faux pas at the hands of the clumsy yet charming Markus. Thankfully Delicacy doesn't just follow a whimsical romance but rather tells the tale of how you pick yourself up again after the love of your life is no longer with you and more importantly are you ready to love once more. Nathalie's friends voice their concerns about her new romantic partner while her boss, who is also in love with her, tries to find a way to put a stop to the partnership. Though it is Nathalie herself who has to battle through and it is up to her whether she is ready to say goodbye to her late husband before moving on with her new beau.

Delicacy is obviously a very precious project to directors David and Stephane Foenkinos as it is adapted from a book written by the former who I'm guessing wants to keep as much of his initial story in the film as he possibly can. I feel that this is a mistake as the romance between Markus and Nathalie is built up far too long before anything happens but maybe this is because I found the whole courtship about too quirky or kooky. The best parts of Delicacy are the beginning and ends of the film which look at how hard it is to cope with grief and how at the end of the day we have to move on with our lives. Tautou is most comfortable in the middle section however she is stretched more by the other parts of the film and therefore is able to demonstrate why she is such a talented actor. I also thought Francois Damiens was excellent as Stefan the slightly slovenly and overweight gent who just happens to be in the right place at the right so is therefore the perfect man for Nathalie to move on with. It is interesting that Damiens is portrayed as a romantic lead however this is addressed by Nathalie's boss, and Markus' romantic rival, as he questions why she wanted to romance someone so ugly when she has the option to date him instead. Another problem Delicacy has for me is that there are too many narrators as the film kicks off with a voice-over from Francois before Nathalie takes over but gives the reigns to David for the final part of the film including the ending which I enjoyed very much. I also felt that the use of music throughout was excellent as the different parts of Nathalie's life are illustrated through what is heard while Markus introduces her to a new world of audio delights with his slightly offbeat taste in bands. The Foenkinos' have given us an enjoyable little film which survives on the performance of the two actors and the beginning and ending of the film which deals with the grief process as well as the readiness to find a new love. The problem is that they're too close to the story to realise that the middle section needs cutting down and the film unfortunately suffers as a result. The star of the show once again though is Tautou who is at her more interesting when she stretches herself rather than playing the kooky character that she normally portrays.

Verdict: An excellent first and third part are spoiled by an extremely baggy middle section thankfully Tautou and Damiens are both great so therefore Delicacy receives 6/10

Review No.154: I Am Bruce Lee

At the moment one of the trends in documentary film-making seems to be that of producing biographies of famous men who left us too soon with last year's award-winning Senna setting the way while Kevin McDonald's Marley has also received plenty of critical praise this year. Looking to follow this success is Kevin McCormack, who directed a 2009 film about Muhammad Ali told from the perspective of his opponents, by bringing us I Am Bruce Lee which tells the story of the small lad from Hong Kong who went onto be one of the most famous martial artists of all time. I Am Bruce Lee starts by showing Bruce's funeral before back-tracking to tell of us his childhood where we learnt, something that I wasn't aware of, that he was a big child star in his native Hong Kong with one of the talking heads describing him as the Macauly Culkin of his day. It then went on to see him journey over to America where he met his future wife when he was a teacher and then finally his big break as Kato on The Green Hornet with everybody questioned saying that they watched the programme for him rather than for the titular hero. After the show finished Lee became a martial arts teacher to several big Hollywood stars including James Garner, James Coburn and Steve McQueen all of whom wanted to toughen up. Lee's massive career break came when he went back to Hong Kong and restarted his acting career which finished with Enter the Dragon but sadly he died just after filming it a death that to this day is still unexplained. Though McCormack does cover his acting career the majority of I Am Bruce Lee focuses on his fighting style and how the elders didn't want to teach Lee as he wasn't of pure Chinese blood as he was one quarter German. The middle section of the film also looks at how Lee's style influenced the now highly popular MMA fighting and this is confirmed by UFC president Dana White as well as some high profile fighters from the organisation including Haywire star Gina Carano who is able to comment on moving from fighting to acting. The tone of the film then is much about Lee's influence as it is a biography of his life and in that way I found it a little unsettling.

I feel the reason that Senna and Marley both worked so well was that they put their main focus on what their subjects were famous for as we saw plenty of race footage in the former while the latter was packed with Bob's back catalogue. In the case of I Am Bruce Lee the majority of the public know him primarily as an actor and for me it is those bits of the film that focus on his early career, his time on The Green Hornet and his rise to super-stardom that are the most interesting. The part of the film that lost me was the middle section which seemed to be as much of an advert for Dana White's UFC organisation than it did to be about Lee's fighting style. I am aware of MMA and also don't have a problem with McCormack providing a link between the two however I feel it is the part of the documentary that loses focus. The MMA fighters are also possibly some of the less interesting talking heads while Lee's family, in particular his wife, are able to provide insight into his life. It is the more famous faces though that a lot of people will watch this for in particular the actors who also have a fighting background and while Mickey Rourke was an obvious choice somebody who I didn't know had a fighting background was Modern Family actor Ed O'Neill maybe because his most famous role was as a hen-pecked husband on Married with Children. The prize for oddest talking head though is Black Eyed Peas member Taboo who talks about how Lee's footwork influenced him and in particular Bruce's background as a Cha Cha Dancer as one of the things I learned was that he was actually the Hong Kong Cha Cha champion of 1957. Though the talking heads add insight it is the archive footage of Bruce that provide the most compelling moments of the film namely a 1964 screen test as well as an interview in which Lee talks about his famous martial arts pupils. I feel it a little harsh to compare I Am Bruce Lee to Senna or Marley as they both had blatantly higher production budgets than this film did however McCormack makes the most of his lot by combining interesting talking heads with some fascinating archive footage. The big problem with the film is the reliance on UFC footage to bulk it out as I feel that's where it loses its way a bit but luckily the final 20 or so minutes brings it back to focus on Lee the actor something that I'm a lot more interested in.

Verdict: Fight fans will probably enjoy this more than film fans however there's enough to satisfy both because while I didn't enjoy the blatant UFC adverts there were enough revelations about Lee to keep me interested throughout so for that reason I will award it 7/10

Review No.153: Return

The story of a soldier returning home from war and trying to adjust to new surroundings isn't an original filmic concept indeed we've seen it in two best picture winners 1946's The Best Years of Our Lives and to an extent 2009's The Hurt Locker. Liza Johnson's Return does flip the idea on its head slightly as the returning war veteran is a woman, Kelli played by former ER actress Linda Cardellini, coming home after a year serving in the army supplies unit. Kelli's husband Mike, played by the always brilliant Michael Shannon, has essentially been filling the roles of both parents two their two young girls as well as attending spouse group and denying his wife sex when she first comes back. It is the resentment that Mike has had to play, in his own words, Mr Mum that starts to wreck the couple's relationship as does the fact that Kelli doesn't really want to open up about her experiences leading him to think that she may have had an affair. Kelli's experiences at war have changed her and she feels she no longer knows her daughters or her husband while she finds her warehouse job monotonous eventually quitting an action that adds further problems to her marriage. Over the course of the film Kelli essentially has a mini breakdown as she basically loses everything after drinking and driving so is sent to an AA meeting where she meets John Slattery's Bud a fellow veteran who is the only person that she really confides in over the course of the film. Return is about how emotion gets sapped out of you after seeing truly horrific things that others around you just understand and to that extent it does work as a film.

I feel that the best thing about Return was also the element about the film that bothered me the most namely the fact that Kelli is so emotionally detached throughout the film. Though the film is built around the fact that Kelli's inability to open up about what's happened to her over the last year after a while I felt a little alienated by the character to the point that I wasn't really that bothered about what happened to her. That's no fault at all though of Linda Cardellini who gives a career best performance of Kelli a woman who has a lot going on behind her eyes and is unable to convey the true horrors of what she has seen. Michael Shannon was also perfect casting as Mike as he is an actor that can do placid one minute before completely snapping the next and Johnson's script meant that he could portray a whole range of emotions. To me Return loses its way when Mike and Kelli's marriage starts to fragment as from that moment on it lapses slightly into cliché save the charismatic turn from John Slattery as the still suffering war veteran Bud. Anne Etheridge's cinematography captures Kelli's struggle to go back to her mundane existence as it slips between gloomy shots of factories, bars and the family home. I personally enjoyed the fact that this was about a female officer as it's about time that the movies recognised that the military isn't simply a boy's club having said that there's nothing too memorable about this film which ends in a way that most of us saw coming from the very first scene.

Verdict:Return's meandering structure and alienating lead character means that at some points I found it hard to care about those involved in the films however due to the fantastic work by the cast I can't mark this lower than 6.5/10

Review No.152: Mozart's Sister

Now it's time for a bit of culture with a look at the story of Mozart from another angle and no it's not Amadeus 2 but rather a look at Wolfgang's sister Maria Anna, nicknamed Nannerl, in the imaginatively titled Mozart's Sister. Rene Feret's coming-of-age drama sees his daughter Marie portray Nannerl who when we first meet her is in the midst of a family tour accompanying her supposedly more talented brother on the harpsichord and also singing while he plays the violin. In the film Feret seems to tell us that Nannerl was the more talented of the two however her father Leopold was more interested in presenting her brother as a child prodigy ignoring the fact that she had produced some of the compositions that had been attributed to Wolfgang. As the Mozarts seek refuge in an Abbey, Nannerl befriends a young girl who turns out to be Princess Louise Marie of France whose father has sent her to live with the nuns and who tells her to deliver a letter to her young lover when they get to court. As Nannerl slowly becomes a woman she at first has to hide her femininity from the young Dauphin however after she realises that he will hear her accompany Wolfgang he finds out that she is indeed a girl of his age. As the two continue to meet in private her love of music entrances him and it seems as if the two will embark on a grand romance however as this is the time of marriages of convenience he ends up having to marry for politics rather than love. Another meeting with Louise Marie sees the girls lament on their lot in life as they realise that neither will really be given the chance to love mainly due to their pushy fathers.

Mozart's Sister is an odd film on one hand it's a coming-of-age story of a girl who is becoming a woman and who isn't quite sure how old she actually is as her father seems to lie in order to create more hype around the Mozart siblings' performances. Nannerl's almost romance with the Dauphin is to an extent slightly odd as the two are never believable as anything other than friends if even Feret wants us to think that they have a connection between the music. The film is also partly historical biography looking at a female figure who isn't well known in most countries, save France and Austria, and another person who seemingly had more talent than Wolfgang Mozart but suffered from having a father who only saw that he had one talented child rather than two. One of the more powerful scenes in the film sees Nannerl tear up all of her composition sheets as she vows never to write or teach music again ultimately ending marrying a man much older than her before settling down as a housewife. The film's final theme is that of the friendship between Nannerl and Louise Marie, real life sisters Marie and Lisa Feret, who despite being related off screen don't have that much chemistry on screen which makes their scenes together a little stilted. Even though I've been a bit harsh on it Mozart's Sister does have quite a lot going for it namely the costumes and make-up in particular the spectacular wigs that the majority of the characters wear throughout the film. As you would imagine the music is also splendid and in some places adds historical context to those who are watching this primarily as a biopic. Marie Feret gives a good accounting of herself as Nannerl while Marc Barbe shines as the pushy Leopold and David Moreau is fun to watch as the petulant Wolfgang. While good in parts Rene Feret's screenplay struggles to stretch a very thin story across an almost two hour running time which makes the film feel baggy. Though very stylish Mozart's Sister ultimately suffers from a lack of chemistry between the main players and a running time which is far too long for this very small story.

Verdict: Good to look at with an impressive central performance Mozart's Sister is let down by being overlong as well as suffering from unconvincing chemistry between many of the main players so for those reasons it gets a 6/10

Review No.151: Blood Car

Though this is the Films of 2012 blog if you have a look at the list I’ve compiled on imdb the majority of these actually were released somewhere in 2011. Going back the earliest film thus far was the Bradley Cooper movie American Evil which finally got a release due to the star’s newly found popularity. Now we have a Blood Car a low budget indie feature whose imdb release date is listed as 2007 although back then it seemed to have been toured mainly around the festival circuit. The film, a comedy horror of sorts, sees Mike Bruene play Archie Andrews a kindly vegan kindergarten teacher who regularly purchases Wheatgrass juice from the stall off Anna Chlumsky’s nerdy vendor Lorraine. The reason for Archie’s purchase is the hope that he can convert the wheatgrass into fuel to run a car as this is the near future in which gas prices are astronomical so most people get round via other means. Archie has little success with the wheatgrass until he accidentally cuts his finger and mixes his blood in with the liquid which sees the car suddenly start. As the title of the film would suggest his car then runs on blood and as he drives around people start to pay more attention to him namely Lorraine’s rival Denise who runs the neighbouring ‘Meat’ stand. Denise promises Archie sexual favours for drives in his car where she feels like she’s looking down on other people but this means that he has to hunt down more people in order to power his car. Originally his kills are justified, the old woman upstairs whose already dead or a man attempting to rob him, but after a while he starts to pick on the weak and vulnerable till finally he’s drinking on school nights as well as  eating meat. As you would imagine things come to a head pretty rapidly, as this is a budget feature it runs to just over an hour long, as the shadowy figures that have been spying on Archie come forward while his relationship with the two women in his life approaches a cross road.

From the opening scene in which we the audience are addressed  by a man who I can only assume is director Alex Orr I felt that Blood Car had sense of its own self-importance. While Orr may feel that the idea of a car that is fuelled by blood is highly original and very cool it is in fact just a riff on the story of Little Shop of Horrors as both feature geeky guys trying to win over girls out of their league by randomly murdering people. Obviously Orr didn't have a lot to work with in terms of budget however I find that at sometimes the cinematography is just appalling and whoever is behind the camera obviously has very little experience of using it. All the cast try their best with what their given however the majority of the dialogue feels stilted rather than realistic and Orr and co-writer Hugh Braselton struggle to write for the female characters in particular. The most baffling thing about the whole affair is why Anna Chlumsky was involved but looking at the release date it seems that this was made before her comeback in In The Loop and Veep. At times it seems that Orr is going out to shock with scenes involving people having sex in car junkyards or the finale which sees lots of kids comically slaughtered. Blood Car isn't without slightly redeeming features and at some points I quite enjoyed it however I feel it tries too hard, is poorly written and shot while most importantly has a central concept that isn't as original as it thinks it is. 

Verdict: Poorly written, poorly shot and with a sense of its own self-importance Blood Car is saved by a game cast plus a couple of memorable moments so for that reason it gets 3.5/10

Review No.150: LOL

It’s fair to say that the progression between child star and proper grown up actor is a perilous one though Kirsten Dunst and Natalie Portman have both managed it there have been others that are less successful. It’s now time to see if and how Miley Cyrus can make that progression haven grown up on screen in Hannah Montana she has recently been seen in increasingly saucier music videos as well as recently getting engaged to Liam Hemsworth. The first film I saw her in was the one in which she met Hemsworth, the laudable The Last Song, and know she’s back on the big screen in LOL an adaptation of a French film in which she plays the daughter of Demi Moore. Cyrus’ character Lola narrates the piece as she introduces her to her friends and her boyfriend Chad who she promptly splits up with after she finds out he cheated on her over the school summer holidays. Thankfully she has another hunky friend Kyle who has always been in her love with her and the two briefly have a fling though it seems she can’t keep a man for long after she believes  he’s had it off with the school ‘post-it’, so called because she sticks to anything, Ashley and in the girls toilets of all places. It seems a case of like mother like daughter as Moore’s Jane briefly reunites with the father of her children but finds out that he’s been seeing random women but luckily help is just around the corner in the form of a hunky copper. When Lola discovers that it was in fact her friend Emily who’d hooked up with their geeky friend in the bogs she forgives Kyle an act which coincides with a trip to France. On this trip everyone smokes pot, gets drunk before Lola pops her cherry to Kyle before he promptly ignores her when she gets back. There’s a lot of other stuff going on around the story of Lola and Jane including Emily’s infatuation with her improbably handsome maths teacher and Kyle’s stereotypically harsh father’s instance that he can’t carry on the rock band that he has with Chad. As you’d expect all of these storylines combine in a big battle of the bands finale as the parents and children learn that they’re not that different from each other.

LOL is definitely one of those films that I would stay right away from if I wasn’t doing something like this but sometimes you can’t always judge a book by its cover, or a movie by its poster in this case, however there was no pleasant surprise here as this Miley Cyrus vehicle was almost exactly what I was expecting. First off having Miley Cyrus narrate this film was a mistake as her voice is definitely not her best attribute, due to it being husky and manlike, and the sound of her voice detracts from the action every time. Secondly the acting from the teens is on the whole atrocious however they’re not given a lot to work with other than a basic outline of each character – virgin, slut, musician, bad boy, nerd, in love with teacher and random couple who don’t really do anything in fact I’d be happier if this was Cabin in the Woods so they could be picked off one by one. The film sells itself on being a representation of teenage life in the age of the internet however aside from a few scenes where instant messaging is used LOL is a traditional coming of age film with the Paris scenes in particular demonstrating this. The film’s one saving grace is Demi Moore who at the moment seems to be attempting a comeback although this seems like a step in the wrong direction after a standout performance as a ruthless banker in Margin Call. Here she tries to make Cyrus a better actress by association and there’s no doubt the scenes that feature the pair are some of the film’s best, better still are the ones in which Cyrus doesn’t feature at all, and I did feel Moore did a good job of portraying what life is like for a single mother. Generally though LOL plays to its demographic and seems to be a film about teenagers written by people who have long past their teens but instead seem to know how teens speak but suffice to say they don’t. Tween girls may enjoy it, don’t ask me why, but outside of Demi Moore’s gallant try to salvage the film there’s not much you can say in defence of this shoddy film. So in conclusion Cyrus’ first venture into cherry-popping territory is likel to sink without a trace I’m just hoping she has more in the pipeline to salvage her already flagging movie career.

Verdict: Terrible performances and unconvincing dialogue are slightly rescued by the reliable Demi Moore so due to her I’m going to be generous and award this 3/10

Review No.149: Hollywoo

As a fan of the screwball comedies of the 1930s and 1940s I'm always skeptical when somebody tries to reinvigorate the genre as generally it doesn't really work. After watching French film Hollywoo I'm convinced that directors Frédéric Berthe and Pascal Serieis are trying to recreate a screwball in their film which features a mismatched pair of French outcasts coming together through a series of misadventures in LA. The film stars   Florence Foresti as Jeanne an actress who specialises in re-dubbing American TV star Jennifer Marshall for a French audience so she is horrified when Marshall quits acting and the show as this means she is out of a job. After several failed auditions Jeanne travels to Hollywood in the attempt to confront Jennifer and convince her to return to the show in order for her to work once again. Initially she fails to get a meeting with either Jennifer or her agent but she does meet Jamel Debbouze's Farres another foreigner who has been in LA for several years now ducking and diving while in addition he tries to get into as many parties as he can in order to rub shoulders with the rich and glamorous. It is at one of these parties where Jeanne finally tracks down Jennifer Marshall but instead of revealing her true identity she poses as someone from the fashion world after the actress goes potty over the comfortable shoes that she is wearing. Farres helps Jeanne become close to Jennifer by posing as her driver while Jeanne discovers that the reason the show went off the air is that Jennifer discovered that her ex-boyfriend and co-star Mike was cheating on her while in addition he is planning to sell the sex tape that the two made. Though Farres continues to befriend Jeanne there is an ulterior motive behind this as he and his friend realise that they could make serious money if they themselves got their hands on the sex tape. As Jeanne and Jennifer become even more friendly the former wrestles with her conscience and tries to decide whether she should reveal her true identity as she eventually realises that it might not be the best idea if Jennifer does in fact return to the show. 

I wasn't expecting to like Hollywoo as, from the brief plot description that I read, it didn't sound like my sort of film however I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. Part of the reason that the film works so well is due to Foresti who is a brilliant physical comedienne and is able to portray the fish out of water role superbly. Throughout the film watching her interact with some of the American characters, including a rather rough looking gang, was a joy and her friendship with Nikki Deloach's Hollywood starlet was both endearing and fairly amusing. I also enjoyed watching Jeanne's various misadventures in the fleapit motel that she had been staying in due to it being the only accommodation that she could afford especially her relationship with the establishment's apologetic owner. Debbouze also shines as the chancer Farres constantly on the run from somebody he excels in the scenes in which he poses as a member of the upper classes and tries to compete with an old rich gentleman at a charity auction in order to win over a very attractive woman. The main problem I had with the film is that I didn't believe that Jeanne and Farres could ever be a romantic couple and while I could see the pair forming a friendship the fact that both actors had to portray a love story seemed to be fairly uncomfortable for them. In addition I found some of the scenes were purely there because somebody thought that situation would be funny rather than them being there in order to advance the plot. The greatest offender is the scene in which Farres and Jeanne sit atop the Hollywood sign before disaster falls as I think it only exits in order to come up with the title. Overall though Hollywoo had enough laughs to make the 100 minute run time fly by due to its two central actors' comic timing throughout though as there was no attraction between the pair this can never be compared to the screwball comedies of old. 

Verdict: Two likeable and amusing leads are let down by an uninvolving romantic subplot and some scenes that really didn't need to be in the film so for that reason I will award it 6/10