The Lost City of Z

Can’t say this film grabbed me to start with as it seemed just a pale remake of old style epics featuring explorers and the jungle.  But slowly James Gray’s latest movie grows on you.  Based on the real story of Percy Fawcett, soldier and explorer for the Royal Geographic Society, he made several trips to the Amazon in the first quarter of last century to try to find a lost city he named Z and which only in recent years seems to have been tracked down.  No one knows what happened to Percy and his son Jack on their last trip and the director offers a rather mystical possibility in keeping with these explorations becoming a quest for understanding life. Charlie Hunnam is largely plausible as Fawcett and different to the parts we have known him in. Robert Pattinson also does a fairly convincing and different job of his mate Costin and Sienna Miller gets a couple of excellent scenes towards the end to show her skills. There is no doubting the technical talent here with Darius Khondji behind the camera and nice music from Christopher Spelman too. As I said, the beginning tends to plod but the later scenes reveal aspects of the times and the characters that make it a more moving picture.

 

♦♦♦♦

Una mujer fantastica

Striking Chilean film starring a transgender actress (Daniela Vega) who plays a singer and waitress.  Her older boyfriend suddenly has a stroke and dies and Marina, the character has to face not only the rejection of the family, his ex-wife and his piggish son, from the police who want to investigate if bumps and cuts to Orlando were caused by a fight and from society in general, suspicious of her relationship.  This quite beautiful film subtly alludes to the discrimination experienced by the like of Marina and her determined struggle to carry on with her life as she wishes to live it despite these humiliations and indignities.  Similar to the director, Sebastian Lelio’s previous film Gloria in this aspect, it is a movie that speaks up for individual rights and for an end to ignorance and disrespect towards others.  An important film and a great piece of work from Vega who is in nearly every scene.

★★★★+

Tulip Fever

The idea behind the film is a good one, based on a Deborah Moggach novel.  Set in the Tulip Fever bubble when tulip bulbs were the height of speculation in Holland in the 1600’s. it tells the story of two girls plucked from an orphanage.  One is bought by a successful local trader (Christoph Waltz) who has lost his first wife and daughters to death and now wants a son and heir from his new young bride, Sophia (Alicia Vikander). But no such luck.  After three years of wait a young artist who paints the couple’s portraits is brought in (Dane de Haan) and Sophie promptly falls in love with him.  When her maid Maria (Holliday Grainger) falls pregnant to fishmonger Willem, she and Sophia hatch a plan to make it look like the latter is in fact pregnant and this will satisfy Cornelis and get him off her back.  Various subplots involving the tulip bulb market which both the artist and the fishmonger speculate in, as does the abbess (Judi Dench) who runs the orphanage spin around the main story and then there are various other characters like the false gynaecologist doing a turn.  Result of all this: somewhat chaotic and unbelievable.  The characters are not very well drawn – Vikander’s character has little to do and she is supposed to be the lead! There is some confusion in continuity and the whole denouement is somewhat pat and unconvincing.  What does work in the movie is the detailed background scenes of an Amsterdam awash with tulip fever.  Otherwise not much to write home about by Justin Chadwick as the director and only Grainger and Dench really shine in their roles!

★★

The Disaster Artist

There is a lot of self-indulgence in this movie by James Franco based on a real-life story of Tommy Wiseau, a strange Hollywood figure renowned for making the worst film ever “The Room”, a cult favourite on the midnight movie circuit. He and his young friend Greg Sestero decide to make their own movie after being rejected in so many casting calls and much to the amusement of the actors, photographers and other crew, they actually set out to make one!  The filming is harrowing but the film unintentionally turns out to be a classic in its awfulness.  Franco captures most of this pretty well, especially when the film is premiered. This is a strange vehicle.  James Franco creates a dominant character in Tommy, with his strange way of speaking and his almost bullying approach to others.  It is a rich characterisation of a not very likeable person and Franco sustains it very well throughout. He has a wide range of supporting actors to colour the film from Seth Rogento Zac Efron, Sharon Stone and Jacki Weaver.  All do well.  As does Dave Franco his real life brother in the role of Sestero.  At the end of the day, it is a wry look at Hollywood and especially those less talented who are determined to make their mark.  Is it a good film?  Yes and no, partly because to be faithful to the original you sort of have to be quite bad. Franco has made a different and entertaining movie, with himself in a plum role that he does well.  But you have to like the material to sit through it.

★★★

The Snowman

Completely panned by the critics, this Scandinavian drama was not quite as bad as I expected. But compared to some of the previous cinema and TV work we have seen in this genre, it falls way behind. As a mystery it is badly told and not very fluid.  We get the point as plot strands come together towards the end but the clichés and the wayward tangents have pulled the whole thing off track way before.  The scenery is gorgeous as is Dion Beebe’s camerawork of it but most of the rest can be forgotten.  Michael Fassbender holds the centre together but is such a dull character, drunk or sighing.  Rebecca Ferguson is more interesting as Katrine, his sidekick but again could have been fleshed out more.  A Natopudding cast accompanies: Charlotte Gainsbourg as an ex (OK), Toby Jones (detective with nothing to do), Val Kilmer (looking about as shot as this screenplay), Chloe Sevigny (beware actors cast to play twins – only Jeremy Irons can get away with that), J K Simmons (one of the most compelling in a rather secondary part) and Jamie Clayton (from Sense8) who could have breathed a lot more life into this.  Jonas Karlsson is the other main lead and has little character development. A messy and confusing film if strangely watchable due to the scenery.  A dud for director Tomas Alfredson.

★★

Loving Vincent

This film will stay in the memory for a long time largely due to its stunning imagery, every scene is hand-painted in the style of Van Gogh to tell a story of a young man who traces the final days of the artist to find out what really happened.

As Armand (voiced by Douglas Booth) travels around the village interrogating the last people to see Van Gogh alive, we get to learn something of his personality and his contradictions, the relationship with his adoring brother Theo, the low-life of the town and the two doctors who are at odds about whether he committed suicide or was shot.  It is a mildly interesting if not entirely satisfying story, hindered perhaps by some rather inconsistent accent choices, which also affects the vocabulary used, but enlightened by the acting or rather the voicing of some of the supporting cast like Eleanor Tomlinson, Saoirse Ronan and Aidan Turner.

But what stands out is the mood created by Dorota Koblier and Hugh Welchman in this masterpiece of animation. It is a film so lush in images and yet so soothing at the same time.  Their imitation of the Van Gogh style has managed to produce the same sort of effect that his painting has on people, a mesmerising healing one.  For that reason I could happily see the film again focusing on the frames rather than the story.  A special movie that adds up to more than the sum of its parts.

★★★★+