Filmography
Jan. 12th, 2007 03:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_lady_lilyThese are all the films I saw on the plane during the return journey.
The Queen
This, as you all know, looks like it has a very good hope of getting a Bafta. I meant to watch it when it came out here and failed miserably, so picked it up as my first film of the flight. I was a bit worried about how it was going to work, as the period around Diana's death is such a highly-strung one, and generally might have all gone Horribly Wrong.
I'm delighted to announce that it didn't, and generally this was a wonderful film. Helen Mirren's Queen is wonderful, and Michael Sheen's Tony Blair is actually pretty darn accurate. The site of him drinking tea in Sedgefield with the family and phoning the queen was - well. It really did highlight the differences in family life that the Royal Family and 'normal' lives had. That was really the strength of the film - showing precisely how the social format of the Royal family led to the events surrounding the death, especially the lack of public appearance. It was eye-opening, although how truthful it was, I don't know. Certainly a very sympathetic portrayal, and one that made the Queen very approachable and understandable.
The only slight weakness, I think, was the film's focus on purely Diana-related events. It makes perfect sense considering the scope of any film, which is a good encapsulated 'lump' of event to cope with. However, it is a very British film, in that only people who were around at the time can wince at Alastair Campbell, nod sagely at the actual television footage they themselves may have seen, relish the thought of the sibling rivalry between the Queen and Princess Anne, and enjoy the anti-Monarchist Cherie Blair. It's not universal, but in a way it was never meant to be. However, part of me longs to see more of the life of this most reclusively family, and the relationship between the Queen and her Prime Minister politically during the period of constitutional change, rather than just during this very emotive, very intense event at the start of Blair's premiership. Four and a half stars.
Little Miss Sunshine
Ah. Um. Really not particularly taken with this. It's been billed as the Sundance champion, the under-dog film that's unexpectedly hitting Americans well enough to score awards at the Golden Globes and plenty of other awards and nominations. But. But but but. Somehow it just flops. It all scrabbles towards being a brilliant film along the lines of The Royal Tenebaums, but doesn't reach it. It's quite hard to explain why, and it's probably just me, but it really doesn't deliver on the very promising cast.
It's not like the elements aren't there. Olive, the little girl, has been selected by surprise to compete in the final of the Little Miss Sunshine competition in California. Her disfunctional family set out to get her there, in their BMW minivan. Grandpa, addicted to cocaine and kicked out of his nursing home for lots of sex with elderly female pensioners, has been training Olive's talent routine, but carks it on the way. The family somehow get there in the end, but it turns out that a) Olive is not one of these child beauty queens, thank goodness, and b) Grandpa has taught her a completely inappropriate routine to the tune of Can't Touch This. I couldn't actually watch, and zoomed to the family sitting in the police station.
The silent teenager, Dwayne, is pretty darn good, as is Uncle Frank, collected from hospital after trying to kill himself, after a trail of events beginning when a handsome grad student decided to have an affair with the number two expert on Marcel Proust in America (Frank being the number one expert). But, as I say, this film continually feels like it's trying to be The Royal Tenebaums and failing. Three stars.
John Tucker Must Die
This was the 'um, four hours of flight left, um...' film. Actually better than it looks like it should be, but still fundamentally rather formulaic and not actually covering terribly new social ground than The Breakfast Club. Still, it's a nice enough riff on the genre, and Jesse Metcalfe is pretty cute as John Tucker, particularly in a lady's thong. The plot is that Tucker is a serial dater, claiming to all girls he can't have a proper relationship with them yet continuing to have relationships with as many girls as he can balance without (supposedly) one finding out about the other... ooh, seventeen, eighteen? Typical Head Of School idiot form. Three girls (head cheerleader, 'ethical slut' vegan type, academic and social overachiever) find out, try to destroy Tucker, have no luck, and decide instead to set him up with a New Girl (Kate Spencer), who will thus break his heart.
The methods they use to try to destroy Tucker are pretty innovative, the ways that they experiment with making Tucker fall in love aren't bad. The subplot about Tucker's younger-but-still-very-sexy brother is irritatingly thin. The acknowledgement that socially, this serial dating lark is actually accepted As Is and no-one actually cares is a nice, bitter touch at the end, strongly in contrast to the Outrage the trio first feel upon discovering his cheating. But in the end, it's another teen movie, even if quite a good one for the type. Three stars.
Oooh, and I watched a couple of the David Tennant Doctor Who episodes, namely the one at the 2012 Olympics and the one with Madame de Pompadour. I could have done with a sofa to hide behind at some points, but they were pleasingly scary and very good otherwise. Edit: Wahey! Netflix now has the new Doctor Who, seasons 1 and 2! It's going to be a while until I get there, but it's still quite exciting :)
The Queen
This, as you all know, looks like it has a very good hope of getting a Bafta. I meant to watch it when it came out here and failed miserably, so picked it up as my first film of the flight. I was a bit worried about how it was going to work, as the period around Diana's death is such a highly-strung one, and generally might have all gone Horribly Wrong.
I'm delighted to announce that it didn't, and generally this was a wonderful film. Helen Mirren's Queen is wonderful, and Michael Sheen's Tony Blair is actually pretty darn accurate. The site of him drinking tea in Sedgefield with the family and phoning the queen was - well. It really did highlight the differences in family life that the Royal Family and 'normal' lives had. That was really the strength of the film - showing precisely how the social format of the Royal family led to the events surrounding the death, especially the lack of public appearance. It was eye-opening, although how truthful it was, I don't know. Certainly a very sympathetic portrayal, and one that made the Queen very approachable and understandable.
The only slight weakness, I think, was the film's focus on purely Diana-related events. It makes perfect sense considering the scope of any film, which is a good encapsulated 'lump' of event to cope with. However, it is a very British film, in that only people who were around at the time can wince at Alastair Campbell, nod sagely at the actual television footage they themselves may have seen, relish the thought of the sibling rivalry between the Queen and Princess Anne, and enjoy the anti-Monarchist Cherie Blair. It's not universal, but in a way it was never meant to be. However, part of me longs to see more of the life of this most reclusively family, and the relationship between the Queen and her Prime Minister politically during the period of constitutional change, rather than just during this very emotive, very intense event at the start of Blair's premiership. Four and a half stars.
Little Miss Sunshine
Ah. Um. Really not particularly taken with this. It's been billed as the Sundance champion, the under-dog film that's unexpectedly hitting Americans well enough to score awards at the Golden Globes and plenty of other awards and nominations. But. But but but. Somehow it just flops. It all scrabbles towards being a brilliant film along the lines of The Royal Tenebaums, but doesn't reach it. It's quite hard to explain why, and it's probably just me, but it really doesn't deliver on the very promising cast.
It's not like the elements aren't there. Olive, the little girl, has been selected by surprise to compete in the final of the Little Miss Sunshine competition in California. Her disfunctional family set out to get her there, in their BMW minivan. Grandpa, addicted to cocaine and kicked out of his nursing home for lots of sex with elderly female pensioners, has been training Olive's talent routine, but carks it on the way. The family somehow get there in the end, but it turns out that a) Olive is not one of these child beauty queens, thank goodness, and b) Grandpa has taught her a completely inappropriate routine to the tune of Can't Touch This. I couldn't actually watch, and zoomed to the family sitting in the police station.
The silent teenager, Dwayne, is pretty darn good, as is Uncle Frank, collected from hospital after trying to kill himself, after a trail of events beginning when a handsome grad student decided to have an affair with the number two expert on Marcel Proust in America (Frank being the number one expert). But, as I say, this film continually feels like it's trying to be The Royal Tenebaums and failing. Three stars.
John Tucker Must Die
This was the 'um, four hours of flight left, um...' film. Actually better than it looks like it should be, but still fundamentally rather formulaic and not actually covering terribly new social ground than The Breakfast Club. Still, it's a nice enough riff on the genre, and Jesse Metcalfe is pretty cute as John Tucker, particularly in a lady's thong. The plot is that Tucker is a serial dater, claiming to all girls he can't have a proper relationship with them yet continuing to have relationships with as many girls as he can balance without (supposedly) one finding out about the other... ooh, seventeen, eighteen? Typical Head Of School idiot form. Three girls (head cheerleader, 'ethical slut' vegan type, academic and social overachiever) find out, try to destroy Tucker, have no luck, and decide instead to set him up with a New Girl (Kate Spencer), who will thus break his heart.
The methods they use to try to destroy Tucker are pretty innovative, the ways that they experiment with making Tucker fall in love aren't bad. The subplot about Tucker's younger-but-still-very-sexy brother is irritatingly thin. The acknowledgement that socially, this serial dating lark is actually accepted As Is and no-one actually cares is a nice, bitter touch at the end, strongly in contrast to the Outrage the trio first feel upon discovering his cheating. But in the end, it's another teen movie, even if quite a good one for the type. Three stars.
Oooh, and I watched a couple of the David Tennant Doctor Who episodes, namely the one at the 2012 Olympics and the one with Madame de Pompadour. I could have done with a sofa to hide behind at some points, but they were pleasingly scary and very good otherwise. Edit: Wahey! Netflix now has the new Doctor Who, seasons 1 and 2! It's going to be a while until I get there, but it's still quite exciting :)
