Jamie passion and passionfruit!

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La vereda de la sombra

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Mel Brooks returns to the big screen with a version of his Broadway hit musical and also a previous screen version.  About two producers who try to stage a musical that is so bad it has to flop, they find a work called Springtime for Hitler, gather together an appalling cast and watch it become a surprise success as a satire.  This leads them off to prison and further adventures.  Well, this is definitely different!  A spoof of the great musicals it is very well performed but can be a bit theatrical in parts.  The first part drags somewhat and some of the songs could have been shorter.  Nevertheless there are some excellent scenes and when it is really working you are truly grabbed and find yourself laughing out loud.  Highlight for me was Will Ferrell as the deranged pro Nazi composer – he is a scream.  Uma Thurman does a good Swedish sex maniac and Matthew Broderick is always fine as the straight guy.  Nathan Lane is the other pillar of the film and shows what a talent at musical comedy he is.  Worth seeing!

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Viewed on DVD because this multiple award winner never got a commercial release here probably because it is about black Africans.  As a film it is nothing original – simply a personal account of how the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 affected a hotel manager and how he sheltered over 1200 refugees in his hotel while the Hutu’s went on a massacre spree all over the country.  Among the main merits of this film is the recreation of this ghastly period and the anguish that ordinary Rwandans suffered.  Another feature is the way that hate was instilled in the public mind.  Don Cheadle does a first rate job as Paul, the hotel owner, Sophie Okenedo is fine as his wife and there are good performances from Nick Nolte and a large cast of Africans.  A film to watch for the way it portrays the horror of war.  I was moved by it, but not sent to the moon. 4 stars for the effort and commitment to making it.

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I enjoyed this film a lot and it gave me food for thought!

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Memoirs of a Geisha

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Best Film:

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Cedric Klapisch has brought us films about the European  young before, notably The Auberge Espagnole, which took a look at a Europudding flatshare in Barcelona.  He takes his favourite actor Romain Duris, in this film which revisits some of the same characters five years on.  The hero is now a struggling writer in Paris with a string of failed romances and acting as babysitter for his ex-girlfriend Audrey Tautou. Work hooks him up with the ghastly ex-flatmate Wendy in London as they do the English version of a film about romance and the scenes they write there are reflected in their own romance and that of those around them. Then there is his interview with a supermodel which inevitably leads to bed as well – poor boy, his main therapy is horizontal and it ends up all getting very complicated. It`s all a case of stories within stories a la Russian dolls.  The movie finishes up in St Petersburg (thus bringing Russia in apart from the dolls) with Wendy’s brother getting married to a Russian.  He is almost the most bearable of all the characters, having been the drunk in the first film. Played by Kevin Bishop, his scenes are great.

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Best Actor:

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The minimalist style of the Dardennes of Belgium is much revered in the cinema critics world.  In this film from 3 years ago, not an awful lot happens but the attraction of the film is what lies beneath in the history of the main characters – a man whose young son was brutally strangled five years before and the murderer, a 16 year-old carpenter’s apprentice who has just been released from jail for serving his term for precisely that murder.  Olivier is the teacher at the centre for the apprentices and his willingness to take on the boy and somehow come to learn something about what led him to such a cruel act is basically the theme of the film.  Shot in a very personal style (the camera is often just behind the shoulders of the characters and tends to move about jumpily to match their state) the film is no picnic but it has a certain quiet dignity.  I am not sure that it is the great film some critics suggest but it is honest and sobering. 

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Best Actress: 

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I saw this on a rainy day and it was perfect seasonal rainy Sunday material. The introduction of Everett`s anally retentive girlfriend to a liberal but strong minded family full of diverse personalities unleashes all sorts of unexpected mayhem and unveils family secrets.  A sort of choral comedy with a sad and meaningful base, we both laugh and cry and know we are being manipulated into it.  Good enough but nothing special.  However, we do get a sterling performance from Sarah Jessica Parker as the structured and somewhat blinkered Meredith and it is great to see Diane Keaton, Claire Danes, Dermot Mulroney and Luke Wilson in action.

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Best Director:

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Bride and Prejudice

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Supporting Actor:

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Supporting Actress:

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A strange film, this one.  A dark piece about an ex-heroin addict Tracy (Cate Blanchett) trying to make a go of it in a Vietnamese video store in the poor suburbs of Sydney, her long-suffering mother (Noni Hazlehurst), her mum’s ex who was a football star and is now a junkie (Hugo Weaving), his former squeeze and mafia boss (Sam Neill in an eerie role for him), the brother with his prosthetic leg (Martin Henderson) and Tracy’s ex – also a drug taker and wide boy (Dustin Nguyen).  It’s a great cast, many cast against type and giving some of their best performances ever or at least in a long time.  Weaving, Hazlehurst, Neill and Henderson all fall into this category.  However, as a film, Little Fish comes across as vaguely staged.  The story is nothing too unusual and only a piecemeal way of revealing the facts to us keeps our interest in the early part.  It ends up giving you the feeling that it has all been created to give the actors wow situations to show us their chops.  So, I can’t say much in favour of the film but it is great to watch Blanchett who so fits the role again that it is evidence of her supreme talent and her chameleon ability to play any role.  So, for her, I recommend it.

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Best Screenplay:  

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Gosh!  Another of those feel good movies with ordinary people being disobedient and trying to make life a bit more bearable.  The backdrop is the First World War on the border of France and Germany.  The Europudding cast is there and there are plenty of significant moments.  Moonlight opera and bagpipes, fraternization all over and the powers don’t like a bit of it.  The message is clear – no more war! 

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Best Photography:

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Don Roos made ‘The Opposite of Sex’ some years back with Christina Ricci.  An enjoyable film.  So is ‘Happy Endings’ and like the other it is hardly likely to lead to great praise but it does give us an interesting look at the concerns of a bunch of Californian misfits.  Nice to see a variety of issues dealt with including abortion, sex-workers, sperm banks and gay children disappointing their parents.  The film keeps one involved as we follow the variety of characters and their problems.  Lisa Kudrow is perhaps the most interesting character, Jesse Bradford as the bullshit artist who inveigles her into making a film is suitably intense and Maggie Gyllenhaal as the climber Jude is spot on.  Laura Dern does a nice almost cameo role but shows her limitations and Tom Arnold, Jason Ritter and Steve Coogan all do well.

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Best Music:

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A children’s fantasy book dating from World War 2, turned into a film by New Zealander Andrew Adamson, this film is more or less what you can expect in a post Lord of the Rings world.  It has plucky kids, intelligent helpful creatures, good special effects, a wicked blonde witch played by Tilda Swinton and the good old dramatic Kiwi countryside.  It is exciting enough and keeps you entertained but I can’t say that there is anything special in it to write home about.  Enjoyable and good for kids.  I never particularly went for the books as a child but this was a palatable way of seeing them. 

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Newcomer of the Year:

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Social Conscience film of the year:

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Lemon of the year:

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1. 

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