More films
All my film reviews should be read in the knowledge that I absolutely loved The Island, and therefore apparently have no taste by any normal human standards.
The Darjeeling Limited - ****
This is the latest Wes Anderson written/directed film (he of Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic). I never "got" Rushmore at all, and every time I see another of his films it convinces me more that I should give it another chance. I felt coming out from this film as if I was the only other person in the theatre who'd really enjoyed it, though. Everyone seemed extremely bemused. Anyway, it's about three brothers who go on a train ride through India. Visually it's beautiful and otherwise it's sometimes slightly funny and sometimes very sad. There is a scene at the beginning, which is framed as a short, between one of the brothers and Natalie Portman - which is a really great little scene, and it turns out right near the end of the whole film to be possibly not real. The brother in question is reading one of his many short stories to the other two, and all of the dialogue is word-for-word the same. They can always recognise who he is talking about in his stories, despite his protestations that all the characters are fictional: but does that recognition really mean that the events are exactly real? I think not. So you can see that opening short as either an actual event, or as a fantasy of the character which still informs you about the film's reality. The Darjeeling Limited is best described as beguiling.
Earth - **
Groan. A big disappointment. Earth is a feature film made from the same raw footage as the amazing David Attenborough Planet Earth series that was on BBC1 a year or two ago - which was a truly awesome piece of television and if you didn't see it at the time I urge you to get hold of the DVD set. But don't watch this film as a substitute, even on the big screen. It doesn't feature any footage that wasn't in the TV series, replaces the series' fine music with an overblown and invasive score, and Attenborough's voice (although not, I think, in many cases his words) with Patrick Stewart - who whatever he might be like as Lear, really isn't great as Attenborough. And he talks the whole way through, the only times he's not talking, the music builds up ludicrously. I wish I hadn't gone to see it, to be honest. A really amazing film could have been made out of that footage. here is the original tv series box set, here is the conservation website the film was promoting.
Ratatouille - **
Lots of people told me I had to see this, and they knew I probably thought I wouldn't like it, but I should. They were wrong. I wish Pixar would make a lot of new shorts.
There Will Be Blood - ****
Beautifully shot and scored and Daniel Day Lewis is fantastically seething in it. It was unclear at times what was motivating him (when he finally kills the preacher, for example), which made the film seem kind of existentialist, and that made me want to read the book (Oil! by Upton Sinclair) to see if his motivations are clearer there.
My Kid Could Paint That - ***
A sad film about a very young girl (Marla Olmstead) who has become famous for her abstract paintings - only about halfway through the film doubts began to surface as to whether, in fact, her father was helping her more than he was admitting to. It seemed as if - and this is what I'll think until I'm shown otherwise, or Marla gets old enough to tell us her own story - Marla was capable of producing abstract canvases rather more impressive than you'd expect from the average four-year-old, but then her father was transforming them into paintings that were impressive by any standard. When a 60 minutes documentary was broadcast that first cast this doubt, the paintings (which had been going for tens of thousands of dollars, and for which there was a long waiting list) stopped selling overnight.
The saddest thing about this is that you suspect that if they'd been honest about this from the outset, they could have still been successful as a father-daughter team. Certainly the few paintings we saw that we knew were made by her father alone weren't a patch on Marla's. Anyway they made a film that they said showed Marla doing the whole thing (which still didn't have the impact of the others), and sales seemed to start to pick up again. It will be very interesting to see if she chooses to keep painting when she's older, and if she has anything to say about these early days.
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford - ****
This was a superb film which Mark Kermode had down as his film of the year, and you could see his point. It shared with No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood, a combination of excellent direction, cinematography, scoring and acting: but in contrast to the other two (and particularly There Will Be Blood) was carried along by something other than sheer nihilism. The film re-evaluates the Jesse James legend and presents him as not so much as a rebellious outlaw but as a dangerous criminal whose antihero status was an accident. Then it makes you consider the infamy of his assassinator, Robert Ford, who was widely hated for the killing, despite the fact that James was not only a bank and train robber but a mass-murderer with it. Ford's own assassin, it transpires, was pardoned by the state governor after a petition over 7,000-strong was got up for him. It is an excellent portrayal of the distorting nature of fame. Also Brad Pitt is excellent as Jesse James and although he sometimes makes stupid choices of films I think he is a far better actor in general than he's made out to be, one of those things where people are jealous of his looks and think surely he can't really act AND look that good, I think.
That is all the films for nowww..