Hello there and welcome to Stan's Film Blog.
I'll be posting reviews (and previews) here of current releases, news and comment, and, on a slightly less regular basis, my thoughts about old movies I see at the NFT.
2007 began for me with a showing of The Maltese Falcon at the NFT and currently concludes with a screening of Once at Odeon Panton Street. To date, I've seen 59 films this year, 21 of which were at the London Film Festival.
As a taster of what's to come, a couple of reviews of some important films I saw at the London Film Festival this year follow.
I hope they're informative and readable; if you disagree with my views or just want to add you support, then post away.
All feedback welcome!!
The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford
One of the great film’s about the death of the Wild West and therefore about American mythology, Assassination is brilliantly conceived, performed and shot, will linger long in the memory and should feature heavily come Oscar-time.
Co-produced by Brad Pitt, this is no ego trip – it is an art-house western owing as much to The Unforgiven as to The Searchers.
Writer/director Andrew Dominik (whose only major credit to date is Chopper) has worked long and hard through multiple re-shoots and re-edits (the film was meant to premiere in late 2005 if memory serves) and finally delivered a work that is probably greater than the sum of its parts.
Shot by Roger Deakins (another Oscar nom due for the cinematographer’s cinematographer) with considerable style and verve (but not to the detriment of the story), the film opens as the James Gang carries out its final job: the robbery of $3,000 from the Chicago and Alton train at Blue Cut, Missouri.
Working his way into the gang and, he hopes, into the orbit of Pitt’s intense Jesse James, is the nervous, naïve and obsessed Robert Ford, played with surely Oscar-winning intensity by Casey Affleck.
The relationship between the two is awkward, both being inclined to bouts of dis-associative behaviour, with Jesse’s threat of violence ever-present.
While there are many slow takes of strange conversations and strained silences, there are as many ‘action’ set pieces, all tense and shocking.
When Ford’s killing of Jesse finally comes, the release in tension is palpable. Jesse’s realisation that his time has come – and that he will die by the hand of a friend – is poignant (and represents Pitt’s finest performance to date), while Ford suffers the disappointment that his destiny is to kill his hero.
The question of whether Jesse has been ‘assassinated’ by the ‘coward Ford’ is one for the audience to ask itself.
This does not mark the end of the film, as we learn what happened to Ford in the remainder of his life and how complex a character he remained. This extended coda includes a telling cameo from Nick Cave, setting the story to song, at once telling us all that was wrong with the media then and now.
That America has not learnt the lesson laid before it 120 years ago is the film’s final twist.
Score: 9/10
For more info, go to:
IMdb
Lions For Lambs
Robert Redford may well be vilified by Republicans and Democrats alike for this deliberately provocative piece; he calls it a call to action – and that it is, much more so than last year’s liberal festival fave Good Night And Good Luck.
Daringly arranged Kubrick-style in three (and a half) distinct theatres of operations, the film debates American foreign policy, the inadequacy of the military top brass to do their job properly, the capitulation of the Fourth Estate, the failure of the education system to do its job and the apathy of today’s youth – and forces the audience to question every character’s motivation.
The face-offs as Redford’s right-on college professor attempts to persuade an obviously gifted student to give a damn, Tom Cruise’s ambitious senator drops an exclusive into the lap of Meryl Streep’s conflicted journalist, and two Special Forces recruits find themselves deep into enemy territory, wounded and short on ammo, become increasingly tense, the verbal brickbats of the first two mirroring the bullets flying in the latter.
Behind the camera, Redford handles the action remarkably well, but seems to have trouble enlivening his own scene. The script is arguably a tad stagey and over-wordy (and not necessarily in a Mametesque fashion) – but these criticisms pale against the power of the message.
All the cast acquit themselves well: there is something rather satanic about Cruise’s slippery senator, hectoring one minute, confessional the next (the shadow of Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men looms large here for a while..), drip-feeding his story to Streep, excelling obviously.
If Oscar wants to lean to the left this time, then Lions For Lambs will feature heavily in every major category.
Technical credits are of the highest quality – another subtle score from Mark Isham and some superb cinematography from Philippe Rousselot.
Like any liberal film, it must end with some hope – but what price that hope?
Score (as a film): 7/10
Score (as a call to action): 10/10 - every US citizen (and quite a few UK citizens as well) should be forced to watch this!
For more info, go to:
IMDb
Eastern Promises
David Cronenberg’s latest tale of violence and redemption, this time set in London, touches on the Canadian director’s usual concerns (body horror, self-loathing, deception), sometimes in subtly different ways.
Scripted by Steve Knight (the ex-journalist who wrote the Stephen Frears-directed Dirty Pretty Things), the film takes a peak at the life of Russians living in London – both legal and illegal immigrants, both law-abiding citizens and the Soviet ersatz mafia.
Naomi Watts, a midwife who’s own child was stillborn, finds herself falling into mafia circles in an attempt to trace the parents of a Russian teenager who died during childbirth. In so doing she butts up against three distinct characters: Armin Mueller-Stahl as the dangerously charismatic ‘godfather’ figure; Vincent Cassel, brilliantly seedy and needy as usual, as the son who would be king; and Viggo Mortensen’s ‘driver’, permanently clad in dark grey, whose motivations are unclear for much of the film.
Watts succeeds in what could have been a thankless role. She’s perfect casting, generating sympathy and belief in a way that Jodie ‘kick ass’ Foster can’t.
Mortensen’s accent may be an acquired taste, but once again his absolute conviction in performance makes his character believable.
The representation of the mafia suggests more than a passing nod to The Godfather’s operatic milieu, but if anything these Russian hoods are even more venal then Coppola’s familia, their baser qualities acting as a counterpoint to the affected decadence of their lives.
Of course this is a Cronenberg film, so ultra-violence is present in spades: it is shocking, awful, tense and hard to watch – but that’s simply being realistic.
Recommended.
Score: 7/10
For more info, go to:
IMDb
Stan
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