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Reviews
The Secret Life of Bees (2008)
A moving story about family, female solidarity, and race.
This movie just misses 10/10 for me. It's a beautiful story, the movie is stunningly shot and all the actors are brilliant, especially Sophie Okonedo. I'm docking a point because it centres Dakota Fanning's character, Lily, a young white girl, instead of centring the stories of women of colour, which is crucial for a film exploring issues of race during the civil rights movement. In all other respects, however, this film is fantastic. The inevitable violence that any civil rights story has is counterpointed by the safe, secret world which August, May, and June create. Beekeeping acts as a metaphor for female solidarity. I would definitely recommend this film.
Womb (2010)
Great idea, medium success
Tense, harrowing, subtle...and just a teeny bit boring. Aesthetically it's beautiful, the acting is great on all sides, although Matt Smith is occasionally just Matt Smith. This is a wonderful idea, and you can really see what they tried to do with it. The problem is that the meat of the movie is just not there. Endless silences do build tension, and reinforce the atmosphere of secrecy, but honestly after an hour you'll find yourself distracted. Much more could have been made of this spectacular idea, especially with this cast, if only the script were just a little bit more dense and satisfying. Ultimately I was interested, but bored.
Jane Eyre (2006)
Astonishing
This four-part mini series is an exciting and interesting adaptation from the book. Jane's childhood is squashed into the first episode, and fans of the book will find that a lot is missed, especially the Lowood years. Having said that, they had only four hours and otherwise stuck to the plot very well.
Ruth Wilson is a believable and compelling Jane - she reduced me to tears twice - though perhaps a little gutsier and less self-deprecating than Bronte's Jane, for me that was an improvement. She is the highlight for me - a very straight, honest performance with good understanding of her character and brave delivery. Toby Stephens is also wonderful as always, he plays a rather ironic, mischievous Rochester.
Other notable performances: Lorraine Ashbourne is an excellent Mrs Fairfax, bringing some life and personality to a rather dull role. Pam Ferris is a frankly terrifying Grace Poole - I jumped in episode four when I saw her carrying the baby and rather wanted to snatch it out of her hands - so great work there, and Cosima Littlewood was born to play Adele. You grow to love her as Jane does, and she is extremely funny, though she always retains an infuriating materialistic and coquettish nature.
My only downvote would be for Andrew Buchan as Mr Rivers. He rises to the challenge of cold and aloof so well that he in fact ends up with no presence at all, sucking warmth and interest from the screen. I would have liked to see a more Ralph Fiennesey Mr Rivers, but there we are, it doesn't spoil the series at all.
If you like good drama, watch this series, it's wonderful.
We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011)
Badly paced but interesting
This movie, based on the book of the same title by Lionel Shriver is a fascinating exploration into what makes somebody a killer. It is intentionally left for the viewer to decide whether Kevin became a killer because his mother did not love him, or if she did not love him because he was born evil. The movie's protagonist is Eva Khatchadourian, and it covers Kevin's life from Eva's pregnancy to the moment at which he murders 15 students and his father and sister with a crossbow.
The movie does an average job, in my opinion. Tilda Swinton is excellent as Eva, and Ezra Miller plays Kevin pretty well. Eva's husband, Franklin Plaskett's role is really underplayed in the movie, having only a few lines. It's very hard to believe that Eva and Franklin have ever had a good relationship and this somewhat undermines the tragedy of his death.
The movie builds suspense slowly and has a lot added (not from the book) about Eva's life after Kevin's spree. This is frankly quite boring and I found myself wanting to skip forwards.
The blood symbolism is clumsily overplayed - almost every five minutes we have to watch Eva cleaning red paint off her house or smothered in some red goo at a non-descript 'foreign' ritual, or Kevin piling jam onto a slice of bread. It isn't needed and I found it patronising.
It's hard to believe that a fantastic cast working very hard, and an amazing novel could produce a disappointing film, but for me it was. It still gets some marks for the plot and the acting, but everything else seems like a director's wet dream and a viewer's worst nightmare.
Cloud Atlas (2012)
Ambitious, beautiful, mixed results
First thing you should know is that this movie is made up from multiple stories, and some of them are seriously ambitious cinema. Some of the stories are great, really fantastic. Others...well they don't quite pull it off. Nevertheless, I really respect the actors and directors for such a brave and different movie.
As there are several different stories, I will review each separately
South Pacific Ocean, 1849 - Seriously predictable, mushy, sentimental and very difficult to believe. Good anti-racist message though. 4/10
Cambridge, England and Edinburgh, Scotland, 1936 - Charming, well acted, delightful. Gorgeous depiction of a homosexual relationship, no cheese. 9/10
San Francisco, California, 1973 - Pretty average. Pretty good performance from Halle Berry but comes of a little conspiracy theory- est. Not Berry's fault, but her character kept changing. I didn't feel like I knew her. 5/10
United Kingdom, 2012 - I know most people found this part boring because it was about old people, but I thought this was hilarious. I could have watched a whole movie about just this. Stunning performance from Jim Broadbent. 10/10
Neo Seoul, (Korea), 2144 - This was by far the most ambitious plot thread and I thought they really pulled it off. Beautiful special effects and a gruesome, haunting vision of the future. Also a fantastic performance from newcomer Bae Doona. Gives Bladerunner a run for its money. 9/10
The Big Island (dated "106 winters after The Fall", in the end credits and book cited as 2321) - Again this was very ambitious but this time with less success. Truthfully I thought it was silly. 4/10
Obviously all these stories link together and it's WAY too complicated for me to explain how. Because of this complexity, the movie is very long and yet seems to skip over everything quite quickly. Not a lot they could have done about that though. Movies are movies. I'm not sure I really understand Cloud atlas, but I would advise anybody to see it because I think we could learn a lot about the future of cinema.
Sweet Home Alabama (2002)
A hot-shot designer and gets engaged to the son of the mayor. Heading back home to divorce her ex-husband properly, she falls back in love with him.
This movie is extremely predictable. The protagonist, played by the charming Reese Witherspoon, is nonetheless selfish, thoughtless and bitchy. She is rude and hateful to all her friends, her parents and her boyfriends' mum, not to mention breaking the hearts of two perfectly nice men. I was crossing my fingers that she'd find herself without either of them, and realise she had to be a bit nicer in future.
It seemed to me as though Melanie having a gay friend and being an animal lover was supposed to make up for her otherwise crap personality. Unsucessfully, needless to say.
The dialogue is clichéd and tedious; all the good lines are in the trailer.
There's also a huge amount of stereotyping about new yorkers and the south (*SARCASM ALERT* a male new york designer is gay? :o Wow, never expected that!)
I think the only good thing to say about it, is that the acting is pretty good from everybody. Dempsey is a little wooden, as usual, but it's even a fairly good performance from him. As always, Witherspoon is delightful. Lucas was vaguely charming and handsome, which was all the part demanded. I actually rather liked Candice Bergen's character (we're supposed to hate her because she hates Melanie, but as I hated Melanie too I kinda cheered her on) and Bergen was great as another powerful woman.
Ultimately this movie has nothing to offer in terms of morals, humour or romance. I was not moved a single time. Don't be taken in by the fun and sweet trailer. It's a really bad movie.