Parental Guidance

A light fluffy comedy with its serious side – that of how to bring up children.  All hell breaks loose when grandparents Billy Crystal and Bette Midler arrive to look after daughter Alice’s kids for a week.  The diets are ruined, the careful use of language goes out the window, etc.  But the oldies also recognise that the grandkids are strange and difficult and so begins a week of trying to relate to the kids and as a consequence help them with some of thier issues.  Everything is neatly covered: the kid who places too many demands on herself, the nerd who ahs no social skills and the little devil who gets away with murder because no one sets limits.

The film chugs along nicely and is both entertaining and thought provoking wihtout reaching any heights of quality or creativity.  Predictable in a way but nicely done.  Marisa Tomei shines as the daughter.

★★

Amour

Cannes Festival Golden Palm winner and multiple award winner, Michael Haneke’s latest is a direct and slow moving film.  About old age and impending death.  It is a very good piece of film making about a moment which anyone who has accompanied people in debilitating health will know, one full of sad and unpleasant elements but one when love is displayed in tremendous selfless actions by people, willing to face the ugly and often hurting side of our trajectory on Earth.  I was interested by the rejection of many filmgoers and even the reluctance in some sectors to award it. (Emanuelle Riva’s performance is way more deeply human and subtle than Jennifer Lawrence for example).  I guess some people can’t face their own mortality and their own frailty.

That said, it is a slow film but one of great truth and beauty as Haneke explores the stages of a debilitating illness and the emotions of the sufferers and helpers.  Jean-Louis Trintignant gives a majestic performance as the stoic, loving husband and Isabelle Huppert as the cold daughter completely frustrated by her mother’s condition is also excellent.  You have to be in the right mood to see this film but it has a lot of subtle detail in it which rewards both a first and dare I say subsequent viewing.

★★★★★

Les Hommes Libres

A competent but hardly riveting thriller set in wartime occupied France.  The principle merit of this film is that it portrays the North African resistance in action in Vichy governed France.  Situated around a Parisian mosque, the local religious leader there is balancing cordial relations with the French with issuing fake Muslim documentation to Jews.  Michael Lonsdale is again central to a film in this role as he provides a sort of guidance to Younes, a young Algerian who starts out as a police informer and then becomes part of the resistance. Tahar Rahim does a good enough job as Younes and we don’t see enough of Lubna Azahal in her role as a fellow activist.  The careful setting of the film gives it almost a documentary feel along with some good Arabic music composed by Armand Amar.  But as a story it is so-so, rarely raising our excitement levels.  Good to see as a historical reconstruction but that is about it.

★★★

Hitchcock

This biopic of Hitchcock’s life at the time of making Psycho left me cold.  Apart from being a fairly pedestrian and undramatic retelling of the trials of making the film it also portrays the sexless marriage between him and Alma Reville. This gives it some historical interest but is not enough on which to build a feature film. Anthony Hopkins is perfectly acceptable as Hitchcock but perhaps lacks something extra, Helen Mirren creates the most interesting character as Alma and Scarlett Johansson screams effectively as Janet Leigh.  I think the director Sacha Gervasi was just not up to doing more than a conventional film and Hitchcock as a subject deserves more.

★★

Flight

An unexpectedly powerful movie about a plane crash and the part played in by the pilot, who despite being drunk and high on cocaine, manages to show an amazing sang-froid to land the plane after flying upside down and save the lives of all but 6 on board.  As crash officials investigate, pilot union people scramble to cover up the pilot’s alcoholism and Whip Whittaker, the pilot himslef finds himself facing his demons.  The film is somewhat uneven but has a superb characterisation by Denzel Washington in one of his best roles – a guy you both love and hate at the same time.  He gets good support from the rest of the cast but John Goodman’s cameo as a coke dealer stands out.  And the first thirty minutes of hell on board the plane are brilliantly directed by Robert Zemeckis.  Interesting sobering up after that with religious references and a brief affair with another addict until we come to a dramatic hearing at the end of the movie.  It has its ups and downs (pun intended) but is both entertaining and thought provoking.

★★★★

Le Skylab

 

Julie Delpy’s latest work as director and writer, which must be autobiographical takes a weekend she spent as a child at her grandmother’s house near Saint Malo.  Here with her parents, aunts, uncles and cousins, her character Albertine learns about life in different forms, the usual games both innocent and not so with her cousins and the rituals and family arguments.  The film has a nice comical touch throughout with enough serious subtexts.  There is a good recreation of the period with all its ghastly fashions and political incorrectness.  The portrayal of a family engaged in all the different activities also rings true and makes you want a sequel to see how they all grew up!  Julie has a central part as Albertine’s mother and is ably supported by Eric Elmosnino as the father.  Lou Alvarez does a good job as Albertine, Delpy’s father Albert is excellent as great uncle Hubert and I also liked Noemie Lvovsky as Aunt Monique and Vincent Lacoste as the already hip 17 year-old cousin Christian.

A competent film which entertains and gives us the odd moment of reflection regarding our own family backgrounds.

★★★

Life of Pi

I don’t know if this will be one of the films of the year but at this stage it is a real front runner.  It passes my first test; that of wanting to see it again and I find it odd that many critics got lost in the superb 3D effects and found that it was not much of a story.  I haven’t read the Booker Prize winning novel that spawned this but it is pretty obvious that the film works on numerous levels.  It is a superb spectacle cinematographically (credit to Claudio Miranda) with computer generated images of rare quality and beauty.  It is an amazing adventure story of survival involving a boy and a wild tiger on a liferaft,  And it is a reflection on storytelling, what we want to tell and what we want to listen to.  Finally, there is a whole dimension related to faith, religion and each species desire to survive.  We are in the middle of a story and Ang Lee directs and tells it to us like a fairytale or a fable.  We are supposed to suspend belief in parts because it is precisely the unexpected that gives us lessons.  Suraj Sharma as the teenage Pi and Irrfan Khan as his adult self do great work in the lead roles. 

I felt quite exhausted by the end of the movie but felt that I had seen a very well made film that was different and food for thought.

★★★★

Cover Boy

Indy style Italian film about a Romanian boy who years after his father is shot dead in the 1989 revolution in Bucharest ends up being an illegal immigrant in Rome.  Sleeping on the streets he is befriended by a local cleaner, a slightly older man who represents the lower classes – not very educated, nor employable but by no means  unintelligent or incapable.  This guy Michele, gives Ioan a home and both muddle on through periods of employment or not.  Ioan’s friend Bogdan comes and ends up as a male prosititute and then Ioan is “found” on the street by a photographer who is looking for faces for a work on the Romanian revolution and revolution in general.  She takes him to Milan, beds him, pays him well but uses him – the exhibition is more shocking to sell a la Benetton, than anything else.  By which stage Ioan realises what a good friend Michele is and goes back to Rome to try to find him. A sad ending ensues.

Overlong and not very well paced or subtle, the film does have some good points to make aboiut the underclass, about poverty and about selling ourselves and good acting from the two leads Eduard Gabia and Luca Leonello.  Fair

★★