Reviewing Jane: I Shall Be Miserable If I Have Not An Excellent Library

 

Year: 1995
Director: Simon Langton
Cast: Jennifer Ehle, Colin Firth, Crispin Bonham-Carter
Run Time: 5 hours 27 minutes

Now now, you didn't think that watching every single available motion picture based on Jane Austen would end the marathon, did you? I've steered clear of series, web series, and miniseries adaptations because I do value my time somewhat, as hard as that may be to believe. But I couldn't leave this marathon dormant without exploring the reason almost everything we've covered even exists: the 1995 BBC miniseries Pride and Prejudice. 

The miniseries, which ran for six episodes between September and October 1995, became an instant worldwide phenomenon, selling out the entire run of 12,000 video sets within two hours, going on to sell an additional 58,000 by the end of the week despite the fact that, in the words of a BBC spokeswoman, "viewers [were] able to tape the episodes at home for free." Jane Austen has always existed in the popular consciousness (certainly if this wasn't the case, we wouldn't have had a lush production of Sense and Sensibility, a modern teen adaptation of Emma, and a considerably less lush mounting of Persuasion hit that very same year), but if all the material before and during 1995 was the foundation, Pride and Prejudice was the fucking massive skyscraper bursting out of it.

Speaking of massive skyscrapers, we couldn't have panned down, Mr. Langton?

Yeah yeah, the plot of Pride and Prejudice. Let's not waste too much time on this. Lizzy Bennet (Jennifer Ehle) has a gaggle of unmarried sisters, Jane the eldest (Susannah Harker) falls in love with new rich neighbor Mr. Bingley (Crispin Bonham-Carter), whose best friend Mr. Darcy (Colin Firth, who would go on to play another Mr. Darcy in Bridget Jones' Diary, one of the aforementioned many films that owe their very existence to this miniseries) is kinda mean to her. They fall in love eventually because fixing a man is the ultimate romantic fantasy!

Also yes, Crispin Bonham-Carter is related to Helena Bonham-Carter (they're third cousins), because there are only like five families in England.

We have a lot more ground to cover than usual, so let's get cracking. I'll be reviewing the series as a whole rather than as individual episodes, because they were all directed by the same man and also because the way the story is sliced into sixths seems pretty arbitrary. The benefit of this structure is getting to spend a lot more time with the cast of characters, most of whom are splendidly performed. 

One person you'll wish you has spent less time with is Mrs. Bennet (Alison Steadman), whose cartoonish pantomime buffoonery does get a little grating by the finale despite being a pretty accurate depiction of the character as written. But the other cartoon character of the piece, the sniveling reverend Mr. Collins (David Bamber) is by far the best iteration of that particular role I've seen. And trust me, I've seen many. Timothy Spall owes his entire career to this greasy, conniving, skin-crawling performance. 

And obviously I should go no further without talking about Colin Firth. I'll admit I'm not a devotee to any particular iteration of Darcy (in fact the only Austen hero I give a particular rat's ass about is Colonel Brandon in Sense and Sensibility because I ship him and Elinor real hard), because the men in these stories are uninteresting pretty objects to be presented to the heroine once she has completed a romantic journey (Jane Austen, my feminist queen!). But Firth really nails the "standing in corners brooding" angle something fierce.

Unfortunately, I think the biggest liability in the cast is Lizzy Bennet herself. Nothing against Jennifer Ehle's skills. In fact, I think she imbues her Lizzy with the most real, tangible wit I've seen in any iteration. You can see the cogs turning in her mind when she's about to crack wise. But she has a certain movie star stiffness that drags you out of the story, which recalls Greer Garson's portrayal in the 1940 Pride and Prejudice. She has the advantage on Garson that she's not a clear decade and a half older than her character, but you wouldn't know that by the way she carries herself. Ehle is giving a Movie Star performance, all glittering eyes and catlike poise and best sides turned to the camera just so. You can see the artifice in her acting, and while that works in certain circumstances, those circumstances do not include a period piece that demands a kind of realism from its leads (if not its side characters) to properly ground them in the Regency era.

See that face she's giving? I hope you like it, because you're about to see a LOT of it.

Another benefit of the miniseries format is that the screenwriter is not obliged to cut all the comedy bits in favor of heaving romance. Finally we have someone who looked at the novel and said, "why not both?" And this Pride and Prejudice is quite genuinely funny, despite everything implied by stiff, starched BBC sets and costumes. 

The romance, on the other hand, does unfortunately suffer a smidge from some truly dreadful 90's TV moments. Episode 4 in particular is very ill-used by goofy-ass cross-dissolves to flashbacks of scenes we just saw and alarmingly clunky superimposed shots of Darcy's face. And while I appreciate its attempts at jazzing up the many scenes of characters reading letters, the way that characters react in perfect timing with the voiceover reading the letter is more disconcerting than compelling.

But what Pride and Prejudice needs to get right, it does: have two beautiful people eye-fucking over a pianoforte. So really, who could complain?

TL;DR: Pride and Prejudice is delightful with fleet pacing despite having the longest run time of any Austen project we've covered, even the Bollywood ones.
Rating: 7/10
Word Count: 980
Other Films Based on Pride and Prejudice
Pride and Prejudice (Leonard, 1940)
Pride and Prejudice (miniseries - Langton, 1995)
Bridget Jones's Diary (Maguire, 2001)
Pride & Prejudice: A Latter-Day Comedy (Black, 2003)
Bride & Prejudice (Chadha, 2004)
Pride and Prejudice (Wright, 2005)
Unleashing Mr. Darcy (Winning, 2016)
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Steers, 2016)
Before the Fall (Geisler, 2016)
Marrying Mr. Darcy (Monroe, 2018)
Christmas at Pemberley (Theys, 2018)
Pride, Prejudice, and Mistletoe (McBrearty, 2018)
Pride & Prejudice: Atlanta (Baraka, 2019)

Reviewing Jane: I Am Half Agony, Half Hope

In which we review every film adapted from or inspired by the works of Jane Austen.

Year: 2004
Director: Beeban Kidron
Cast: Renée Zellweger, Colin Firth, Hugh Grant
Run Time: 1 hour 48 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

As you may remember, the original Bridget Jones's Diary was ostensibly based on Pride and Prejudice, a connection I found dubious considering that naming a character Darcy doesn't mean you've read Jane Austen. But three years later came Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, which was even more ostensibly based on Austen's final novel Persuasion. Time to repeat the refrain. Having a couple get back together after a period of time doesn't. mean. you've. read. Jane! Freaking! Austen!

But people aren't exactly out here adapting Persuasion left and right, so we take what we get with this one.

So the film opens on Bridget Jones (Renée Zellweger) happily in love with Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), but because she is an insecure mess who's incapable of holding a cogent thought in her head for more than two seconds without going ballistic or falling into a mud puddle, of course this goes terribly wrong. It would appear that Mark is having an affair with his secretary Rebecca (Jacinda Barrett), and her anger is fueled by the fact that she expected a proposal that never happened (six weeks into this relationship, mind you) so she dumps him and throws herself into work, a travel show that brings her into close context with her misogynistic ex-boss/ex-lover Daniel (Hugh Grant).

A love triangle almost ensues.

Roll credits!

Is it clear I didn't like this movie? If not, allow me to highlight my point further. A lot of the problems inherent to the original Bridget Jones are alive and well here, to the point that the rigorously anti-funny opening scene is repeated beat by exhausting beat. Come to think of it, the clumsy third act climactic fight between Grant and Firth is also repeated in full.

And do we get another scoop of terrible gay jokes dumped on top of the script? You betcha! And this time we're taking down history's iconic artist Michelangelo by calling him a "poof," because it's fun when you slur titanic cultural figures and reduce them to their sexuality, something which would have been highly dangerous to openly exhibit at the time yaaaaaaay! Oh, and how could we not be racist to huge swaths of the Asian population and use an entire foreign country and its people as a prop to further along a white woman's romantic journey?

Oh and you know we're not going to be able to escape the gags about the beautiful Zellweger being a fat pig who deserves to be mocked by everyone in her life and the public at large! For a movie squarely intended to land in the "chick flick" category, Bridget Jones sure just hates women. It's exhausting!

Good thing Colin Firth has almost exclusively played gay from this point on, because this just isn't working for him.

The sad thing is, this is actually a major improvement over the first film all things considered. Director Beeban Kidron (who also made the terrific To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar) actually knows how to shoot a movie, and the rich fantasy life that Bridget leads actually is incorporated into the visual schema in ways the original movie only sporadically attempted to. Her thoughts take the form of text and images inlaid onto the screen or transposed onto signs and buildings in real life, and it creates a lush bedrock of imagery upon which this crap sandwich is plated.

Also a plus, Hugh Grant is barely in this movie. I have nothing against the man himself, but his character is such a toxic despicable presence that his reduced screentime also slashes the proportion of this movie's most severely hateful and outdated humor.

This absolutely isn't a movie I'd recommend. To anyone. But if somehow you have a stomach of steel and enjoyed the original film, this one will give you more of the same, but with a little more focus and intentionality, and I guess that might be a good thing.

TL;DR: Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason is a massive improvement on the original, but that one was terrible so that makes this one only OK.
Rating: 4/10
Word Count: 722
Reviews In This Series
Bridget Jones's Diary (Maguire, 2001)
Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (Kidron, 2004)

Other Films Based on Persuasion

Persuasion (Michell, 1995)

Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (Kidron, 2004)

Persuasion (Shergold, 2007)

Reviewing Jane: What A Shame, For I Dearly Love To Laugh

In which we review every film adapted from or inspired by the works of Jane Austen, as I read through her extended bibliography for the first time.

Year: 2001

Director: Sharon Maguire

Cast: Renée Zellweger, Colin Firth, Hugh Grant

Run Time: 1 hour 37 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

When I announced that I would be doing a marathon of films inspired by the works of Jane Austen, I had quite a few friends eagerly ask if Bridget Jones's Diary would be included. And of course it would be! The famous British rom-com, based on the bestseller by Helen Fielding, is notoriously a riff on Pride and Prejudice, because people who love Jane Austen still haven't read more than the one book apparently. I was excited to finally catch up with this film, which is one I had never seen until this point. But as we shall learn, apparently I was in the right to postpone it as long as possible.

Pictured: Me, rightfully, hiding from this franchise.

In Bridget Jones's Diary, a thirtysomething "singleton" named Bridget Jones (Renée Zellweger, adopting a superbly flawed British accent) begins a diary for New Year's, documenting her efforts to lose weight, drink less, and find herself a man. While the diary is obvious an important framing conceit for the novel, it's more or less completely forgotten after a couple scenes, after two men almost instantly throw themselves at her. The first being her boss Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant, who also appeared in Sense and Sensibility), a charming rake who between this and Love, Actually is the king of British rom-coms about inappropriate office relationships.

The second man is a divorced lawyer, Mark Darcy (Colin Firth, and did you know he played another prominent Darcy? I don't remember in what, but it definitely rings a bell...) with whom she has a terrible first impression. And that's about it. The two men orbit her as she gets drunk repeatedly and makes a fool of herself, and eventually she ends up with one of them. 

Because the love triangle between Wickham, Lizzy, and Darcy is TOTALLY the thing one thinks of first when one remembers Pride and Prejudice.

OK, first things first. Naming a character "Darcy" does not a Jane Austen movie make. There is no attempt at lining this story up with the original text beyond the idea that it's possible to fall in love with someone even if they don't seem particularly nice at first. It's an even lazier adaptation than Unleashing Mr. Darcy, and that was a Hallmark movie about dog shows, for shit's sake. No, much more than Jane Austen, this film reminds me of a text from a different titanic literary figure: Roger Ebert and his tome I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie.

Sifting through the elements of Bridget Jones's Diary that make it a colossal irritant is a Herculean task, but let's throw a dart and pick an element at random. Like, say, the soundtrack, which at every turn makes the most immediately obvious choice like a Suicide Squad for the on-the-couch-with-Ben-and-Jerry's set. We begin with the requisite needle drop of "All by Myself," the anthem of single people in rom-coms, but "It's Raining Men," Aretha Franklin's "Respect," and two separate instances of "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" likewise flog subtlety to death. And then a scene with Bridget's mom is scored by "Me and Mrs. Jones" and you snap the DVD in half and throw it out the window.

This movie is marred at all levels by a complete lack of creativity. Plot beats so predictable you can convince your friends you're Nostradamus? Check. A character we're supposed to believe is "fat" and undesirable even though she weighs less than anybody you've seen all day? Check. A sexless and encouraging gay best friend (James Callis of Austenland, the only Austen connection this movie wasn't trying to milk for all it was worth, if only because the film hadn't been made yet)? Check.

What was Colin Firth's motivation for being in this movie? Check.

Bridget Jones is dramatically inert, with the men in her life not so much causing conflict as jockeying into position at the random whims of the screenwriter, one after the other. It doesn't help that Grant and Firth are both coasting entirely on their established screen personas and not locking into anything actually compelling or interesting about their characters on paper. The single biggest moment of tension in the movie involves Darcy running out on Bridget after reading her diary, a moment of drama more forced and drummed-up than a Bachelor promo on ABC which deflates within seconds in service of a "romantic" explanation featuring behavior that no human being on Earth would consider appropriate.

But the real problem is that the film is also comedically inert. The two biggest joke setpieces involve the most ludicrous contrivances just as a launchpad for aimless jokes with flabby, cliché punchlines (the most egregious being a party where the women are meant to dress like tarts, only the theme changed at the last minute so Bridget is dressed very sexy at what is now a genteel garden party - somehow this is shocking to a group of people who were perfectly willing to dress like tarts to begin with, if only the theme hadn't changed). The "humor" otherwise leans on its R-rating to do the heavy-lifting, scattering pointless F-bombs in every direction.

And this is a comedy movie from 2001, so of course there are the obligatory casual racist jokes and weird sexual assault overtones. Hooray!

Maybe this could all have been salvaged if the protagonist was in any way worth rooting for. While Renée Zellweger does her best despite drowning in that accent (in fact, I think she must be the only reason anybody liked this movie in the first place), Bridget Jones isn't a relatable mess. She's an abhorrent prick who drinks like a fish, misreads every possible social cue and rule of decorum, spits out homophobic insults, and makes sure she's the victim in every situation, even if she's the one who orchestrated her own downfall.

This movie was a real trial to get through, is what I'm saying. The only redeeming quality I can think of is that there's one point where her diary entries are displayed on the neon signs in Piccadilly Circus, a clever visual cue that reminds one of just how flat and boring the rest of the movie looks. So no. Not a good time, my friends.

TL;DR: Bridget Jones's Diary is a tedious, irritating lurch through the most odious rom-com tropes.

Rating: 2/10

Word Count: 1102
Reviews In This Series
Bridget Jones's Diary (Maguire, 2001)
Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (Kidron, 2004)

Other Films Based on Pride and Prejudice
Pride and Prejudice (Leonard, 1940)

Pride and Prejudice (miniseries - Langton, 1995)
Bridget Jones' Diary (Maguire, 2001)
Pride & Prejudice: A Latter-Day Comedy (Black, 2001)
Bride & Prejudice (Chadha, 2004)
Pride and Prejudice (Wright, 2005)
Unleashing Mr. Darcy (Winning, 2016)
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Steers, 2016)
Before the Fall (Geisler, 2016)
Marrying Mr. Darcy (Monroe, 2018)
Christmas at Pemberley Manor (Theys, 2018)
Pride, Prejudice, and Mistletoe (McBrearty, 2018)

Pride & Prejudice: Atlanta (Baraka, 2019)

How Could I Resist Ya?

Year: 2018

Director: Ol Parker

Cast: Lily James, Amanda Seyfried, Cher

Run Time: 1 hour 54 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

I don't wanna talk about things we've gone through, but as a reviewer it's kind of my obligation. The 2008 Mamma Mia! is a frankly disastrous film adaptation of a shallow but fun stage musical based on the songs of Swedish disco supergroup ABBA. Nevertheless I love it, for reasons almost entirely separate from the movie itself. And I couldn't help but be excited for its ten-years-later sequel, for the twin reasons that it's a movie that should never have existed (the type of thing I'm unduly fascinated by) and that I love the ABBA discography, and going deeper into it is far more rewarding than just skimming off the top of ABBA Gold like the last film did (for more of my thoughts on that, check out my first contribution to one of my favorite film sites: Alternate Ending). Also Cher. But I could have never predicted what I actually got, and I'm all the more dazzled by that. Let's jump in.

Because if there's one thing that's incredibly safe and comfortable to do in those outfits, it's jumping.

That history book on the shelf is always repeating itself, which is how we got this belated sequel in the first place, but the notes of Here We Go Again's plot are still somewhat unfamiliar for this particular glittery universe. We meet up again with Sophie Sheridan (Amanda Seyfried) on the eve of the grand re-opening of her mother's hotel on the Greek island of Kalokairi. It has been a year since Donna Sheridan (Meryl Streep) has passed, of causes unknown (though the random screengrab of her white-knuckling a glass of wine that's hanging on the wall might offer some clues), and she and one of her three dads Sam (Pierce Brosnan) are still heartbroken over it.

Those happy days, they seemed so hard to find, but never fear! Our old pals are back to play, including Sophie's beau Sky (Dominic Cooper), her other two dads Harry (Colin Firth) and Bill (Stellan Skarsgård), and her mother's glee team Rosie (Julie Walters) and Tanya (Christine Baranski). Joining them are Andy Garcia as the hotel manager Fernando (gee, I wonder when that'll turn out to be important) and Cher as Sophie's absentee grandmother Ruby. As Sophie tries to navigate into the newest stage of her life, she finds that her story is mirroring that of her mother's way back when in 1979, as played out by Lily James alongside younger versions of Rosie (Alexa Davies) and Tanya (Jessica Keenan Wynn) as she flirts with and beds future dads Bill (Josh Dylan), Sam (Jeremy Irvine), and Harry (Hugh Skinner).

Although it's possible she didn't know they were three separate people, because they all look more or less exactly the same.

It was like shooting a sitting duck to make a Mamma Mia! movie that I'd actually enjoy, whether it was incredible, terrible, or anything in between. But the absolutely terrific thing about Here We Go Again is that it edges up against incredible, at least on the admittedly very adjusted scale that comes from being in continuity with Mamma Mia!. 

Having the time of your life is obviously the movie's biggest priority, and there are certain aspects in which the movie fails as a whole in its efforts to achieve this. For one thing, the narrative is completely inert. Sure it has more thrust and structure than the previous entry, but that's like saying you have more character drama than a Transformers movie. It's not exactly an achievement. Most of the movie, at least in the present day scenes, is just about people sitting around waiting for a party (which I could relate to, having gotten to the theater an hour early). And the flashback sequences are slavish retreads of the exact material implied by dialogue and lyrics from the original (the "walk along the Seine" line from "Our Last Summer" even gets a totally superfluous nod). And yet, the way the film connects Sophie's experience with her mother's miraculously achieves a sort of tenderness and genuine emotion of which I would have previously thought this franchise completely incapable.

But I won't feel blue like I always do, because this movie has so much more to offer than a mere story. For one thing, it has a director who actually seems to know how movies are made. The first time the camera moved in a scene, I almost jolted out of my seat, because that never happens in the original. Mamma Mia! just plunks down on a tripod and lets its cast of high wattage stars do their karaoke. In Here We Go Again, Ol Parker's camera roves around the set, snatching glamorous and sometimes even glorious images from the tumult of turquoise and glitter. It's entirely refreshing and allows the manic energy of the material to be captured in a way that actually highlights and accentuates its key components rather than sitting back from the material and letting its gaudiness shine through.

The picture clear, everything seems so easy to Parker, who crafts a musical theatre spectacle like his life depends on it. It helps that he doesn't have to rely on the A-listers who wander in and out of the present day portion like they're in one of the Netflix seasons of Arrested Development. He has the freedom to keep them around as their schedules allow, toss them a few bones here and there (thankfully, not too many are caught by Pierce Brosnan, who has not taken singing lessons in the intervening decade), and focus his best on the young, relatively unknown cast in the 1979 sequences. Because their characters are attached to the famous people, he knows audiences will still care, and his casting could focus on actual talent and not star wattage. And they sure are (mostly) talented! Some of the boys sing a little too emphatically, like they're worried they'll be fired if you miss a single syllable, but the production numbers (especially "Waterloo" and "Why Did It Have to be Me?") are lovely little trifles with grand choreography that utilize every little element of the setting and create imaginative dreamscapes that remind one of the best of classic movie musicals.

Although, as much as I love the song "When I Kissed the Teacher," what compelled them to include such a track in 2018 is still a mystery to me.

Would you laugh at me if I said I cared for Lily James' outfits more than most human beings? Costume designer Michele Clapton knows how to make the human body look cinematic, and Lily James is the perfect canvas for some of the best movie costumes of the decade, perfectly flowy and retro yet effortlessly modern and stylish at the same time. But I digress. This is a musical, let's talk about some more music! Here We Go Again resists temptation to repeat too much of the original soundtrack (of the canonical songs that appear in the actual film and not the credits, we just get "Mamma Mia," "Dancing Queen," an expanded "I Have a Dream," and a blissfully brief reprise of "S.O.S." with the rest of the songs being relegated to the instrumental score during dialogue scenes), and pulls some truly special, unexpected tracks like "Andante, Andante" and "Angel Eyes," two songs I love so much I could't help but thrill with delight.

All my sense had gone away, but I can still admit that there are certain... flaws in more than just the plot. There's still a bit of abrupt song introductions and flat singing (Brosnan and Cooper being the worst perpetrators), Seyfried is sleepwalking so hard you can practically see the drool, and Cher is a lot of things but she's not particularly convincing, as much as I love the fact that she's here at all. And it's a little hard to ignore the fact that they seem to have forgotten that Colin Firth's character is gay (the biggest mention of his character's sexuality is secreted away in an end credits stinger), and that the glitz and glamor of this musical about rich tourists ignores the economic plight of the Greek people they use as props (the film has one scene about fishermen being out of work, and it's used as an excuse to get a character a boat). I'm not saying they're bad for not mentioning it, I'm saying they shouldn't have introduced the concept in the first place if they were going for full musical theater fantasia, because it introduces a bit of a rankling cognitive dissonance.

But the destination makes it worth the while, because - especially in the second half - Here We Go Again is actually genuinely funny as well as entertaining spectacle. The script is much stronger this time around, building gags and character dynamics out of the thin air that was the original characters. Plus, Baranski and Walters (and their younger counterparts) are given some material that's actually quite dirty instead of innuendo so subtle that Christian Grey would even be scratching his head. So, let's add this all together. Terrific, non-obvious ABBA songs, actually talented cast members, solid humor, a director with a head on his shoulders, colors that pop, and a heartfelt emotional throughline? Are you sure this is a Mamma Mia! movie?

Knowing me, knowing you, it's the best they can do.

TL;DR: Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again is surprisingly tender and terrific.

Rating: 8/10

Word Count: 1591
Reviews In This Series
Mamma Mia! (Lloyd, 2008)
Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (Parker, 2018)

Q2 Review Purge: Volume 3

You saw this coming, didn’t you? Underestimate my backlog once, shame on me. Underestimate my backlog twice, shame on YOU. Here’s the third and final (?) set of mini-mini reviews as I reboot my system and get back on track.

All About My Mother

Year: 1999
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Cecilia Roth, Marisa Paredes, Candela Peña
Run Time: 1 hour 41 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

After her son dies, Manuela travels to Barcelona to tell his father, helping an aging actress, a transgender hooker, and a pregnant nun along the way.

You might not be able to tell from that synopsis, but All About My Mother is pure Oscarbait through and through. There was a period in Almodóvar’s career where he was on his hands and knees begging for the Academy to take him seriously, and this film is smack dab in the middle of it. Naturally, it won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

Always the staunch Oscar contrarian, I must contest that All About My Mother is far from the director’s best work (winners are rarely as good as their competitors, as evidenced by the fact that his masterpiece Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown lost to Pelle the Conqueror). Although there is some delightful comic relief from the talented transgender actress Antonia San Juan, the movie takes itself way too seriously.

While Almodóvar admittedly crafts some stunning imagers and weaves in a tapestry of parallels between the film’s wide variety of mothers, trying to find the line between reality and fiction, All About My Mother is one of Almodóvar’s few films that feels typical. It might push the envelope with its depiction of gender and sexuality, but it’s just an Oscar tearjerker, yanking its characters through sad sad situations so they can spout elegant monologues at the drop of a hat. Obviously it’s far from a bad movie (I don’t think Almodóvar has made one of those), but it just doesn’t make an impression, which is usually what he’s best at.

Rating: 6/10


Talk to Her

Year: 2002
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Rosario Flores, Javier Cámara, Darío Grandinetti
Run Time: 1 hour 52 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

Two men become friends at a hospital while caring for their loved ones, who are both in comas.

If you thought All About My Mother was Oscarbaity, wait till you get a load of Talk to Her! A movie so wildly overbearing that even the Oscars were a little put off, shuffling it into the Best Original Screenplay category, it’s by far the least funny Almodóvar movie I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen a lot at this point. What I admire most about the director is his ability to draw comedy from even the most dire of situations, but here he sets all that aside and doubles down on the sincerity, to muted effect.

It lacks the serene beauty of All About My Mother, though if anything its intricate web of metaphor is even more complex. The film is about transition and metamorphosis, two disparate halves coming together to form a whole. It maybe goes without saying that this theme results in the most f**ked-up Almodóvar relationship yet: the friendship between the lover of a female bullfighter and the lonely stalker of a beautiful young dancer. The queer overtones prevalent in his filmography are almost entirely absent, stripping away all veneer to showcase a story about two people bonding.

Unfortunately, Talk to Her trips over itself in the third act, pointlessly extending the plot for some melodramatic waffling. This isn’t an uncommon occurrence in Almodóvar’s work, but when it lacks so much of his signature style, it also lacks the charm that allows you to cling to the bull’s back. Talk to Her bucks and you go flying, which is an extremely disappointing outcome.

Rating: 6/10


The Lives of Others

Year: 2006
Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Cast: Ulrich Mühe, Martina Gedeck, Sebastian Koch
Run Time: 2 hour 17 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

An East Berlin secret police agent tasked to bug the apartment of a suspected dissident finds himself wrapped up in the man’s life as he listens from the attic.

Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and those who make historical movies are almost always talking about the present. It’s no mistake that The Lives of Others came out during the time of the Patriot Act and America’s surveillance controversy. And it’s certainly no mistake that the film is set in 1984.

The Lives of Others is a thriller about sitting down, about the sociopolitical intrigue that can change lives and enact deaths without stepping out from behind a desk. It’s a terrifying snapshot of a bleak reality that has existed, does exist, and will exist. In essence, it’s a very German film.

However, despite its dour setting and even more dour production design, dripping with greys and mottled greens, The Lives of Others is a story of hope. About the flowers that can grow in the cracks of the concrete. This is thanks in large part to Ulrich Mühe, whose stony visage captures every last chink in his armor as he learns that the people he has been victimizing are actual human beings. The Lives of Others is a terrifying film about bureaucracy and a reassuring one about humankind. It’s not often that something like that comes from a film set in historic Germany (unless Spielberg is involved), and The Lives of Others is a powerful break from the mold.

Rating: 8/10


Star Trek

Year: 2009
Director: J. J. Abrams
Cast: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Simon Pegg
Run Time: 2 hours 7 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13

The Star Fleet rebel James T. Kirk finds himself on a stranded student vessel facing the alien threat that killed his father.

I know it’s a popular joke to make fun of J. J. Abrams’ use of lens flares, but I’d never until now experienced them for myself. The legends were true. Star Trek 2009 is an ocular freak show. People have counted, there’s literally a lens flare every 12 seconds on average. It’s like standing on the red carpet at the Oscars for two hours. Every single heroic shot is marred by these hideous distractions. They even go off in quiet, indoor scenes with no discernible light source. The lens flares will make your eyes water far more than any of the drama.

But there’s a movie beneath all that digital tampering, so let’s talk about it. As an origin story for a franchise I have not one shred of nostalgia for, it does a decent job of telling its own story. This could be a movie about James T. Bumblefart overcoming great odds as a cadet, and it would still be a coherent, engaging yarn. And there would be even less reason for Zoe Saldana to be there, because Uhura’s extremely discomfiting romance with Commander Spock happens entirely backstage.

As an exercise in J. J. Abrams crashing his CGI action figures into each other, Star Trek is a fun popcorn adventure, if a little beholden to the Star Wars standby of having important battles take place over yawning chasms. There’s only one scene that reaches the dizzy heights of summer fun I was hoping for (Bones follows Kirk, injecting him with a variety of wacky vaccinations to stabilize him as he attempts to deliver an important message) as the film tends toward the over-serious, but it’s never dull.

And Chris Pine is honestly a terrific choice, giving young Kirk a frat boy braggadocio that puts his flaws on his sleeve while retaining his natural charm. Star Trek’s a swing and a hit, even if it’s not a home run. Those lens flares can rot in Hell.

Rating: 6/10


Mamma Mia!

Year: 2008
Director: Phyllida Lloyd
Cast: Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Amanda Seyfried
Run Time: 1 hour 48 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13

A young woman wants to invite her dad to her wedding on a Greek Isle. Only she doesn’t know which of three men it is, so she invites them all. Then they sing a bunch of ABBA songs.

The Mamma Mia! title card appears as a young girl runs screaming through a cloud of sparkles. That should pretty much tell you all you need to know about it. Mamma Mia! is loud, stupid, deranged, and I love it from the bottom of my heart.

While Mamma Mia! attempts to harness the glittery camp of attending a Broadway musical or a disco show, it frequently swings over the top into wholly unintentional bad-good delight, then back around the horn again into genuine fun. It spins around and around again between these two registers like a gymnast on the horizontal bars, afraid to let go and stick the landing. And stick the landing Mamma Mia! doesn’t, backloading about 90 ballads that suck the energy out of the third act, leaving it so ravaged that not even “Take a Chance On Me” (the most perfect pop song of the 70’s) can resuscitate it.

But despite its sputtering denouement, I love both angles from which Mamma Mia! approaches its content. For all the too-bright lighting that makes every location look like a sitcom set and the herky jerky variance in quality between the celebrity singers (Meryl Streep is at the top with a shockingly good belt, and Pierce Brosnan flounders at the bottom, sounding like Fozzie Bear in the middle of getting his tonsils removed) there’s a genuinely good vin running through it all, like the Greek chorus that resurrects an ancient form of theater to great effect, the bubblegum disco magic of “Super Trouper,” or the beach party sizzle that underscores “Lay All Your Love On Me.”

At the end of the day, Mamma Mia! is a movie that makes me sublimely happy. It is great and it is terrible, frequently at the same time, but it never stops being tremendous fun to watch.

Rating: Please don't make me do this. 7/10? 9/10? 5/10? 9/10. Don't hold me to that.

Last Night

Year: 2010

Director: Massy Tadjedin

Cast: Keira Knightley, Sam Worthington, Eva Mendes

Run Time: 1 hour 33 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

A wife and husband both find themselves faced with the opportunity to cheat while he’s away on a business trip.

Last Night is one of those ponderous indie dramas that’s so excessively low key it would easily have been a TV movie. Or a commercial. With minimal sets, a tiny cast, and an abundance of agonizing close-ups, there’s nothing that screams “feature film.” To be frank there’s nothing to look at whatsoever.

Much like Looking: The Movie, Last Night is mostly composed of a string of conversations rather than any real incident. This is fine, especially when the conversation is as thought-provoking as it is. But the inhuman frankness and eloquence of these conversations make it screamingly apparent that the dialogue is Written. Luckily the actors that perform this series of treatises are well suited to the job.

Keira Knightley and Guillame Canet are a better match than Sam Worthington and Eva Mendes (though Mendes shades a surprising amount of depth onto a thankless sex symbol role), but for the most part Last Night is well-delivered, if coldly intellectual drama.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1882
Reviews In This Series
Star Trek (Abrams, 2009)
Star Trek Beyond (Lin, 2016)

Mamma Mia! (Lloyd, 2008)
Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (Parker, 2018)

The Chavs And The Chav-Nots

Year: 2015

Director: Matthew Vaughn

Cast: Taron Egerton, Colin Firth, Samuel L. Jackson

Run Time: 2 hours 9 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Comic book movies are getting stale. Don't get me wrong, I dug Avengers 2 and Guardians of the Galaxy. But let's be honest. Do we need a third Spider-Man reboot? Do we need another sarcastic superhero fighting someone who has developed powers exactly the same but slightly stronger than his? 

Luckily we have Matthew Vaughn. Love him or hate him, he has a talent for making some of the more interesting comic adaptations scattered around the movie landscape. His style is rigorously anti-mainstream, full of blood and guts and a kind of ruthless energy that has been lost amid a litany of Iron Man sequels. But enough about superheroes. Kingsman: The Secret Service is a goddamn spy comic book movie and it is awesome.

And contrary to popular belief, no, it is not a sequel to The King's Speech.

Kingsman tells the story of young Eggsy (Taron Egerton), a thuggish British teen growing up in poverty. His father was a member of a secret spy agency known as the Kingsmen, the modern knights of the round table. When he is referred to this organization via Galahad (Colin Firth), he begins his training with a group of posh candidates who look down on him for his social status.

But when it becomes clear that the American tech mogul Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson) is going to use his ubiquitous technology to cull the Earth's population (ie. all the people not rich or noble enough to "deserve" life) with a frequency that turns people into insatiable, violent rage beasts, Eggsy might just be the only one noble, clever, and strong enough to defeat him.

Only the pure of heart and pure of ab are worthy to wield the sword of the Kingsmen.

The story is very been-there-done-that and Kingsman knows it. Its more meta moments are a bit weak and pandering, but as a pastiche of the greatest spies from James Bond to Jack Bauer, it's aces. It's zanily kinetic, no-holds-barred fun. 

Whether it's a girl with metal legs that can cut through a man like a knife through water, driving backwards through heavy British traffic, or a cavalcade of super cool gadgets (the likes of which have hardly been seen since the early Bond days), Kingsman ups the ante on the typical spy movie clichés, turning up the gas at every turn.

In typical Vaughn fashion, the action is a little more blood-soaked than the typical spy movies, especially those before the glorious rise of the 1980's. But never fear! Though the available grue is more than enough to satisfy the cravings of grotesquely depraved gorehounds like myself, it's also toned down enough to be palatable to all but the weakest stomachs. Basically, if you can handle putting a Hello Kitty Band-Aid on your cut, you can handle this movie. 

...More or less. There is one sequence where even I found the violence to be excessive, actually crossing the line between "over the top" and "maybe we should consider lowering the top." But save for that one slip-up, the violence is nothing less than a comic-fueled bonanza of excruciatingly cool spy combat.

Baby, let your colors burst.

In addition to its exuberant action, the Kingsman has a surprisingly refined funny bone. Samuel L. Jackson is perhaps given the best material (concerning his character's distaste for violence), but Egerton absolutely owns a thuggish role that inhabits a world of unintentional comedy. However, the biggest surprise in the film is Colin Firth, who displays a side of himself that's never been seen before, shifting effortlessly between being perilously genteel and a hard-edged lightning bolt.

Underneath it all, Kingsman  even has something to say! I mean, how lucky are we? Like a disconcerting amount of 2015 films, its main villain makes a convincing argument on the back of the devastation of global warming, and the bulk of the story addresses the indecent class disparity that affects everyone in our society, whether we like it or not. 

The Kingsmen is an organization with noble blood, purportedly seeking to preserve the safety of the people. But the fact remains that these supposed knights balk when it is suggested that a commoner join their team. In its way, Kingsman shows that an endless search for money and status makes us fallible, no matter how noble our goals. I shan't go into too much detail on this, for fear of spoiling the third act, but rest assured that Kingsman is highly politicized, and whether you agree with it or not, it's reassuring to see genre filmmaking returning to a place of intelligence and promoting conversation.

Just look at the class disparity! Colin Firth can't even afford a dope-ass hat.

That said, Kingsman is not perfect. For one, its approach to women tries hard not to be demeaning, but only occasionally succeeds. Two strong female characters become warped and twisted beyond hope: one is shuttled off to the side to flail meaningfully but uselessly on the sidelines, and the other is turned into a twisted gorgon, a hyperbolically sexual stereotype that is just plain embarrassing no matter what side of the glass ceiling you're on.

And I prefer to be on this side, thank you very much.

But all in all, Kingsman: The Secret Service is just plain fun. With the perfect cast, a manically charming director, and a great deal of high-octane action stuffed in to taste, it's a thrilling romp through the spy genre from a modern perspective. Go seek it out if you haven't yet. Not all February releases are crap, as it turns out.

TL;DR: Kingsman: The Secret Service is a thrilling and clever modern spin on the classic spy adventure genre.
Rating: 8/10
Word Count: 972

L Is For Loss

Hello everybody! Today's Blogging From A to Z Challenge will be brief because I just put together a massive project that took me hours to complete so I'm not feeling incredibly alive at the moment. But, then again, neither is Colin Firth's lover in A Single Man and the whole movie is pretty much about him.

Year: 2009

Director: Tom Ford

Cast: Colin Firth, Julianne Moore, Matthew Goode

Run Time: 1 hour 39 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

The latest in Sergio's attempts to make me a deeply enriched person was A Single Man, the Colin Firth movie that I never got around to seeing a couple years ago. And you know what? I rather wish that I had, especially considering that any review at this point is coming pretty late in the game.

But I watched it, so review it I shall. 

Nothing could stop me n- ooh look at his hair.

A Single Man is somewhat of a passion project for first-time director and most-of-the-time fashion designer Tom Ford. Starring Colin Firth as George Falconer, an English professor in 1960's Los Angeles who, even one year later, is still reeling from the death of his partner of 16 years (Matthew Goode). Although his body mechanically continues along its daily routine, his mind has shut everything out.

He keeps this up for some time, mostly ignoring his best friend Charley (Julianne Moore), a delightfully effervescent personality who can tell that something is wrong but is powerless to help. But a series of small events over the course of several days begin to turn things around for George, starting with an interaction of mutual admiration with a student (Nicholas Hoult).

George has several small encounters with people who share their perspectives on life with him. Some of them directly, some of them accidentally. But each person he meets drags him irrevocably back into the world of the living, where passion and color reign even under the looming fear of the Cuban Missile Crisis (somebody call the X-Men).

Sepia man to the rescue!

Tom Ford is a green director and it shows, especially in the pacing of many early sequences (take out the slow motion photography and the entire first act would be about six minutes long), but sometimes it takes a person who is totally unfamiliar with the art form to shake it up and make a statement. And Ford's use of color and light do exactly that, showcasing his true strengths as a visual artist.

Whenever George comes across another life that shines brightly through the grey fog of his waking nightmare, the lighting literally reflects this. It might sound a little too on the nose, but trust me. Seeing Colin Firth's face literally light up when he pets a dog is a marvelous achievement in cinematography.

Not since Hitchcock has a film been so integrated with a designer's mentality. Every color and every splash of light in every frame is there for a reason, and as the story progresses, the visuals only deepen and become more wonderful. And Colin Firth's performance is a knockout, but Julianne Moore steals the show as his opposite counterpart - a vibrant and alive woman who takes every knock she gets in life in stride. Julianne Moore is an unsung treasure of cinema. Somebody should correct that.

The biggest achievement of A Single Man, at least on a personal level, is that it is a gay film without the Gay. Many films depicting homosexual men feel the need to be "about" something, whether it be coming out, the AIDS crisis, or intolerance in society. And that's great. We need those films. Those subjects are all very important and continue to be massively relevant.

But at a certain point, one wishes for a movie that just tells a story instead of being a PSA. Brokeback Mountain did that pretty well. Weekend was a great one. But those kinds of films are few and far between. The triumph of A Single Man is that it tells a tale that is marvelously human, rather than just being "gay". 

The story itself is perhaps not entirely to my tastes (far too few machetes were involved), but that is through no fault of its own. But any man who can consistently make Nicholas Hoult look like the beautiful angel he was meant to be deserves some credit, and Tom Ford has proven himself as nothing more than a master of lighting and design with this simple yet richly realized film.

Warm Bodies can go suck a toad.

TL;DR: A Single Man is an interesting and fresh film produced by someone who speaks the language of art, color, and design, but not of cinema.
Rating: 8/10
Word Count: 787