Precious (2009)

Precious is the story of Claireese Precious Jones, a 16-year old girl who lives in Harlem in New York. Living with her verbally and physically abusive mother, she is pregnant for the second time after being raped by her father. The film follows the next few months of Precious’s life as she strives to educate herself, despite her circumstances.

Initially I thought this film was a bit meh. Precious, played Gabourey Sidibe, is obviously in a horrible situation, and one which it is hard to see a way out of, but I found it hard to engage with her as a character, even with the addition of some first person voice-over. That’s not to say I didn’t care about what was going on, but for the 30 minutes or so I wasn’t that interested, and could have quite happily abandoned it.  That changes with the introduction of Ms Rain (Paula Patton) – Precious’s teacher at the new ‘alternative school’. Here was a bit of momentum to the plot and with it several new charismatic characters to liven it all up; and here was where I started enjoying it.

The problem is, it’s all just quite good, right to the end. I was never completely absorbed in the story – perhaps it’s simply because I can’t relate to it, but perhaps it’s because of Precious’s slightly sulky attitude which (while completely justified) does do much to make me like her. What lifts it all up is the simply superb acting by Mo’Nique, playing Precious’s mother. For such an attractive woman to turn herself into that miserable repulsive wreck is hugely impressive and I will recommend the film to everyone purely for the spectacle of that performance. Turning from an aggressive self-serving menace at the beginning to a vulnerable but cowardly woman at the end was a transformation that wonderful to watch and it’s a shame how few serious roles Mo’Nique has done. She completely deserves all of the Best Supporting Actress awards she received.

I successfully avoided getting annoyed by the cameos too. Mariah Carey is good enough as Ms Weiss, a social worker, and I didn’t even notice Lenny Kravits was the friendly maternity nurse John. Why everyone kept banging on about Carey in this is a mystery to me though. Well done her – she’s made herself look plain, unglamorous and 80s. In any other film I’d probably be impressed but next to Mo’Nique she just seems average.

I won’t bother seeing Precious again, but it is nice to have an opinion on it after hearing so much over the years.

Argo (2012)

I’m always very impressed with people that can keep secrets. I’m astonishingly bad at it myself, and the fact that Argo is based on a true story, one that remained a secret for 15 or so years is astonishing; even more so because it involves America giving credit to another country. Who’d have thought?

In 1979, Iranian revolutionaries invaded the American embassy in Tehran. The embassy staff were held hostage for over a year but six managed to escape and hid at the Canadian Ambassador’s house. Argo follows Tony Mendez, a CIA operative as he attempts to rescue these six, under the guise of scouting for locations for his new film: Argo.

Given that Argo is directed by, and starring Ben Affleck, and produced by Ben Affleck and George Clooney (among others), I wasn’t sure what to expect. Many actors like to give directing a go and it’s not always a good move. I’ve not seen The Town or Gone Baby Gone – Affleck’s previous full-length films, but the knowledge that this wasn’t his first foray into direction gave me some confidence. More than his acting sometimes does (Peal Harbour and Gilgli anyone?). To be fair the only reason I haven’t watched either of his previous films is because I just haven’t got around to it yet. And Blake Lively annoys me. And for all I love Casey Affleck after The Killer Inside Me (and, I’ll be honest, Ocean’s Eleven), it’s a bit twee to be employed by your big brother in his first film. Not that I’d say no if it was me.

Suffice to say I will now make watching both The Town and Gone Baby Gone a priority.

With a stellar, but surprising, cast including John Goodman, Tate Donovan, Alan Arkin and Victor Garber, you may spend a decent proportion of Argo going ‘where do I know them from!?’. Try not to worry about that. The plot’s not complicated but its scenes are subtle and the beauty is in the little things. That’s what made me like it. It has the feel of a much smaller film, made by less famous people, in the same way that Good Night and Good Luck did. Perhaps that’s Clooney’s influence. You don’t really find enough about each of the characters to really know them but there’s enough for you to care about them, and prefer that they didn’t get captured and tortured by crazy gun-wielding protesters. By the time they’re trying to escape the country I found myself genuinely nervous, hoping it would all go well and that they’d be ok.

Because it’s not just a film. This really happened. While I’m sure many details have been changed for dramatic effect, the basic narrative of trying to smuggle people out of revolutionary Iran is based on fact. It’s not just a film, and if it all goes tits-up and everyone dies, that’s real people. This really hits home in the credits when the actors’ photos are shown alongside the ID photos of each of the real embassy workers. Some look eerily similar, others not so much. If you weren’t hit by the seriousness of the event before, that’ll do the job for you.

Thumbs-up to the costume people by the way. There were some seriously good 70s/80s clothes, hairstyles and, most importantly, facial hair going on. Christopher Denham in particular looked casually fantastic with his hair and his massive glasses.

I’m not sure how many re-watches Argo could survive, particularly given its slight lull in the middle where I started to lose interest, but it picks up again and I would recommend this film to anyone who likes watching things about real-life events. It just adds that extra something to make Argo really very impressive. 

The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (2011)

My initial assessment: the animation scares the crap out of me. It’s too good – as much as you kind of get used to it, it’s very strange to see the voice actors’ facial expressions appear on an animated character; all very impressive but highly unsettling.

I feel like I should come to review The Secret of the Unicorn with a thorough knowledge of all of the Tintin stories. I certainly read them growing up and also watched the animated series. I really love Tintin yet here I sit and I’m not actually sure I can fully remember any of the mysteries all the way through. Possibly a sizeable portion of my Tintin-reading has been attempting to battle through the various French copies we had lying around the house; lots of beginnings, but many many failures to get further than just a few pages in.

It turns out then, that me and my family are just Tintin groupies – complete with t-shirts, artwork, and various other bits of ‘merch’. I shall rectify this by reading all of the Tintin books by the time the next film comes out (or at least start them).

There’s no point in talking about the plot. It is what it is – apparently a mish-mash of a few stories together. There’re so many that there’s no worry about wasting them so why not take the best bits of several? It’s a nice little mystery and sets everything up neatly – we meet Captain Haddock for the first time and learn that he’s a little bit of a drunk. We hear ‘thundering typhoons!’ and ‘blistering barnacles!’ a suitable number of times and we see just enough of Thompson and Thompson. I have no problem with any of that. What I do have a problem with is the 3D.

Now, I didn’t watch The Secret of the Unicorn in 3D. It’s a year since it was out in the cinema so I, naturally, watched it at home on my TV. So a lot of effort has gone into making this film look amazing in 3D with the swooping camera angles and zippy market scenes but all of that was lost on me, and will be on everyone for ever unless you’re very posh and own a 3D TV. What remained were very glaring attempts at wowing a cinema audience and that, along with the high quality animation, made the whole thing feel a lot like a video game - specifically like Unchartered 2. You could actually split the film up into different levels on the game as you’re watching it – flying the plane, driving the car down the very busy road, being Snowy in the bit with the cows. That reminds me, Snowy is horribly under-utilised.

So if the 3D let the film down a bit (ironic really), it was completely raised up again by the voices. Maybe it’s a nice contrast given that I’d saw Skyfall for the second time the night before but I think Daniel Craig makes a very good bad-guy. He should really do that more often! Simon Pegg and Nick Frost do Thompson and Thompson very well (although you can’t really tell it’s them) and the king of crazy-good animation Andy Serkis was always going to be fantastic as Captain Haddock. I thought Jamie Bell as Tintin was only OK though, which is a shame given that he hasn’t done much of note since Billy Elliot (I must remember to watch The Eagle).

With possibly the most shameless and blatant sequel set-up I’ve ever seen (and that includes the second Pirates film) there’s a confidence with The Secret of the Unicorn that only someone with Spielberg’s ego could manage. Being of such a different style to the original comics they couldn’t really rely on hardcore Tintin fans to love it, and if it had fallen on its face and no sequel happened they would have looked frankly ridiculous. As it is, Peter Jackson is directing Tintin 2 so they’re ok, and I think it has a fighting chance of being a good film in its own right. There’ll need to be a lot of reminders of the plot though or it’ll be one of those franchises where you really need to watch the first film before embarking on any of the others. I’m not sure whether that’s a good thing or not.

I hope the title will be less misleading in the second film. I was terribly disappointed by the dearth of unicorns in this one.

The Killer Inside Me (2010)

I won’t lie, the first time I watched The Killer Inside Me I was really disappointed. I’d first read about its existence in a magazine about nine months before it was released and got really excited. And I mean really excited! A film from the point of view of a sadistic, misogynistic murderer – totally my thing!

Eagerly anticipating something for an extended period of time is usually a guarantee that you’ll be disappointed because it’s never going to be what you imagine. This wasn’t helped by the fact that I found it really hard to understand what was going on. It might have been the shoddy sound system in the cinema I was in or Casey Affleck’s strong Southern accent but I kept missing details. Key ones too – which aren’t repeated.

So I missed a lot of the plot and that was a bit annoying, but I did manage to get something completely different and unexpected out of the film – Jessica Alba being beaten about with a leather belt. Turns out, that’s awesome! There are a lot of short sex scenes in this film and most of them involve some manner of violence. That’s really quite cool to watch and The Killer Inside Me has lead to a drastic change in my chosen film genres since. Multiple repeat viewings of this film have ironed out any confusion over plot and fully cemented this as my favourite English-language film ever! Which is really quite a big deal.

Words cannot express how much I now love this film. If I’m in a film conversation with someone new I will 100% mention it at some point. And then re-mention it several times at later dates. Everyone I know is undoubtedly bored of hearing me bang on about how much I love this film and I want everyone everywhere to at least have some sort of opinion on it. Even if they don’t like it. But how could you not like it? There’s wilful evil, sex, violence and Jessica Alba’s bottom. What more could you possibly want?

The book’s really good too.

Being in first person we not only get to see all the evil doings of Lou Ford – a respected sheriff in a small town in Texas – but we get to hear his reasoning. His logic and that he just knew he has to kill this person, or that one. Ford’s a clever guy who listens to classical music and does maths for fun – he’s not some random idiot with a gun. That makes everything a lot more beautiful to watch. He’s calm, meticulous. Obviously more a little fucked up in the head but there we go. The overall effect is that of quite a soothing film, albeit with some shocking moments at odd intervals. Everything just happens without any kind of horrible stressy build-up and I really really enjoyed it. Watching it again recently has just reminded me of how awesome it is.

Director Michael Winterbottom’s other TV and film offerings include 24 Hour Party People, A Cock and Bull Story, The Trip, and (most importantly as far as I’m concerned) Trishna – a fantastic film based on Tess of the D’Urbervilles and set in India. You should see that too. Apart from The Trip (can’t stand Steve Coogan or Rob Brydon) I’m going to put a decent amount of effort into watching as many of his films as possible and I’ll keep a sharp look out for The Look of Love which is due to be released next year. It contains so many famous British actors and comedians it’s unrealistic for me to try to name them all (I’ll begin with Stephen Fry, Anna Freil, Dara O’Briain, Matt Lucas…) and tells the story of ‘porn baron’ Paul Reymond – sounds a little bit cool.

Watch this film! All of you! I want to be able to talk about it with you at some point.

The Last Exorcism (2010)

Far from being the catastrophically bad, vomit-filled, cheap-tricks exorcism film that I was expecting from something with only two stars on Love Film, The Last Exorcism actually managed to entertain me throughout its entire length and I’d possibly even go so far as to say I actually enjoyed it. This is not my preferred genre of film so maybe it benefitted from me not being able to compare it with other, better, examples of the exorcism theme. It was a novelty, a temporary venture into demon-based horror, and novelties are always fun.

The Last Exorcism takes the form of a mock-documentary about the life of the Reverend Cotton Marcus – an evangelical priest who has been performing exorcisms for years. He doesn’t actually believe in demons though, so comes equipped with various gadgets and tricks to provide the right atmosphere and generally scare the shit out of everyone. What a nice man. This documentary is for him to show everyone that exorcisms are scams, to educate the extreme Christian mentalists and stop things getting out of control.

After picking a begging letter at random, he travels with the film crew to a house in the middle of nowhere in Louisiana. Here he meets Louis Sweetzer, who is convinced his daughter Nell is possessed. One fake exorcism later and the problem doesn’t seem to be solved, in fact it probably gets worse. And it all goes wrong from there really – Nell’s behaviour gets progressively more erratic and disturbing and the scary eyes come out. Cue forty-five minutes of odd noises, sinister prophesies, strange behaviour from everybody involved and an emerging back-story that many or may not explain everything without the need to involve the Devil.

There’s always a danger with hand-held cameras of it all going a bit Blair Witch. This unfortunately does happen towards the end what with the running and the trees and the heavy breathing but it’s mostly fine – this is a ‘professional’ film-crew after all and the documentary feel does hold through most of the film.

This being a horror and everything and an 18 certificate, I assume you’re supposed to find it scary. Perhaps if it was night-time and I was paying proper attention it would have been, but as it was it just wasn’t good enough. During the scary bits I was usually laughing at something rubbish a couple of minutes before and that does detract from the atmosphere and suspense somewhat. The girl is scary-looking enough though and that’s all you need to be called a horror. She has good scary-eyes and sufficiently lank hair, but she’s no match for the girl from the Ring. That was one kid you do not want to find in the corner of your (unnecessarily dark) room.

There’s also a strange brother that I think was under-used. He managed a very impressive balance of red-neck, religious zeal and social-ineptitude that was really rather unnerving. He added a lot to the feel of the film and I would have liked to see more of him.

We were looking for a shit film when we decided to watch this, and a shit film is what we found. Some parts are really quite laughable and we never did find out what was actually going on behind all the drama. Overall though it was very acceptable and it served its purpose very nicely. 

Toast (2010)

As far as I'm concerned Freddie Highmore is still a little boy. He’s Charlie from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the boy in Finding Neverland. A few years have gone by and now, suddenly, his voice has broken, he’s shot up several feet and he’s playing sexually confused teenagers. That was a shock.

Toast is based on the memoir of Nigel Slater – chef and restaurant critic. More specifically it centres on Nigel’s relationship with his father and his step-mother and the use of food and cooking to gain attention and power within those relationships.

Also starring the amazing Helena Bonham Carter, as well as Victoria Hamilton and Ken Stott (see him soon in the Hobbit!), this film is genuinely pleasant to watch. It’s not trying to be something it’s not and seems happy being a nice little British film with a happy ending. Lovely.

The Skin I Live In (2011)

I love this film so much. I first saw it about nine months ago and it amazed me. It was the first real film I’d seen Antonio Banderas in (I don’t think Shrek 2 really counts), and I love him. His acting in this as a creepy twisted scientist/surgeon is superb and it both scares and fascinates you.

I didn’t know all that much about the plot when I first saw this – the trailer is spectacularly useless in terms of giving you a feel for the story and pace – and online synopses don’t give you much to go on either. 

After the death of his wife in a fire several years previously, the creepy twisted surgeon has devoted his time to creating a magic skin – resistant to burns and insect bites and has been testing it on a human subject – Vera – whom he keeps locked in a room in his house. In between experiments and treatments, Vera (played by the ridiculously beautiful Elena Anaya) spends her time doing yoga and creating pieces of art from scraps of material. As you do. Her frustration with being locked up soon becomes apparent though and you begin to wonder how long she’s been there, and how she got to be there in the first place.

All becomes clear as the film progresses – we’re given the full story little bit by little bit. There’s a limit to what can be said without spoiling it all but suffice to say this film has the best “Oh my God!” moment I’ve ever seen. That point in the story when all these little scraps of knowledge all come together and leaves you with your mouth hanging open in shock, horror, and complete awe. That’s what it did to me anyway.

The only negative thing I can say about this (apart from a slight raised eyebrow at some of the weirder moments) is a scene in the middle of the film. They introduce some flashbacks to give us some of the history of the characters and they’ve chosen to do so through dreams. It seemed a bit lazy and I’m sure there’s a better way of doing it.

The skin I live in is shocking, it’s disturbing, and it’s completely engrossing. It’s reasonably slowly paced which shows excellent restraint by the writer/director Pedro Almodóvar who has directed some other quality films (Volver for example) and I’m definitely going to try to see many more of them. Having said that he also wrote and directed Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! – again starring Banderas. That was just weird. His next film, I’m So Excited, stars Penelope Cruz and Banderas yet again and I look forward to seeing it. I’ve got no idea what it’s about but its Spanish title – Los Amantes Pasajeros – translates as The Passing Lovers. I suppose that’s some clue.

God Bless America (2011)

I have a new hero. Joel Murray is not someone I’ve ever paid much attention to before, although looking back, he’s cropped up in a couple of things I’ve seen (Mad Men, Desperate Housewives) and he’s also in The Artist, which I have yet to bother to see. When Love Film finally gets around to sending it to me, I’ll look out for him – because he’s an impressive man. I’m reasonably sure his performance in this film borders on flawless and I was very pleasantly surprised to see such quality acting in a film that’s remained reasonably under the radar, for all its popularity.

In God Bless America Murray plays Frank – a tired, middle aged, divorced, recently fired, possibly terminally ill man with a growing hatred for the pile of celebrity gossip, prejudice, scare-mongering, and general crap that he believes America has become. Alone (again) one evening he retrieves his gun from a box on top of the bookshelf (why are they always in a box on top of a bookshelf?) and contemplates killing himself. Then he sees Chloe. Chloe is a rich, bratty, American teenager with her own reality TV show. With Frank, we see a quick flash of the programme – Chloe declaring boastfully that she rules her high school and screaming at her obnoxious parents for buying her the wrong car. After this, Frank rethinks his suicide plans. Why should he kill himself when there are so many better people to kill? Like Chloe for example.

Murray’s co-star in God Bless America, Tara Lynne Barr, is a new face for me. She’s been in a fair few things but usually single episodes of American TV series that I’ve never heard of. After a couple of shaky over-acted moments near the beginning, I really warmed to her in that comforting way of her reminding me of someone – but I can’t think who. She’s another person to keep an eye on in the future. Barr plays Roxy, a sixteen-year-old girl who meets Frank when he arrives at her school to kill the awful Chloe. Sympathising with his aims, she becomes his accomplis and they travel around America together imparting justice on those who ‘don’t deserve to live’.

There’s an extensive list of people in this category. I was doing well until they added ‘the givers and receivers of physical high-fives’. Well that’s me dead then.

For all their lack of care in their killings, they manage to get away with it for a ridiculously long time. You have to suspend your disbelief here for a while – I would like to think the police are a little more efficient than that at catching serial killers. It’s a detail I was quite happy to let go though for the sake of a better story.

While it doesn’t give you all that much to really think about or leave much of a lasting impression other than ‘well that was cool’, God Bless America might well end up on my list of classics – one of those that I’ll actually buy a physical copy of.