Silver Linings Playbook Review

Silver Linings Playbook is a spectacular film. David O’Russell’s picture is beautifully, sensitively and light heartedly delivered. The film opens with Bradley Cooper’s Pat Solatino trying to find his feet after being released from a psychiatric facility. He meets Jennifer Lawrence’s equally troubled Tiffany and together they embark on a journey of friendship and commitment. Pat’s family life is as manic as his personal, his OCD father played impeccably by Robert De Niro is a gambler supported by his gentle wife Dolores (Jacki Weaver.)

The film’s power lays in it’s portrayal of the two main characters and the acting from Cooper and Lawrence. Both characters are believable yet they manage to remain in the realms of fiction, preventing the film from getting too gritty. The issue of mental health is dealt with head on but with a smile. An example being the character of Danny, a friend of Pat’s from hospital, who continuously escapes from the unit by telling everyone that they let him out. 

The film reminds me of American Beauty and it’s effect is the same in that your expectations of the film shift and change with each scene. It’s perhaps not as aesthetically driven as the previous but it is definitely a winter film not to be missed.

Prometheus

Prometheus looked pretty exciting in the trailer, it looked pretty exciting from the outset, it looked pretty exciting from the first ten minutes. However don’t be fooled because this is one of the worst films I have ever seen with some shocking acting from supposedly big stars. 

The film is supposed to be pre-Alien and sees researchers flying to a planet on the intelligence that the origins of the human race can be found there. Ridley Scott’s film lumbers through the scientist’s arrival and encounter on the planet, while we have to watch flat characters make no journey whatsoever from start to finish. An appalling Charlize Theron gives 1 2 3 acting a whole new makeover. It’s only Michael Fassenbender’s David that remotely comes across convincing and that’s saying something as he’s an unemotional cyborg. I don’t know what the heck Scott was on when he thought it was a good idea to have a decapitated David being carried around at the end of the film. It’s at this point that I considered walking out, even the penultimate scene eith CGI crashing space ships couldn’t save it.

This is what gives Sci-Fi a bad name, think Dr Who but without that self awareness element that makes it so lovable. 

I think what was essentially missing from this film was a sense of fun. You can’t show a decapitated cyborg head being carried around and not be self aware of it’s ridiculousness. If you did you would end up with a serious, dry, boring and easy to mock film...oh ....wait....that’s awkward. 

This is England

A conservative government, mass unemployment, social unrest, an emergence of racist blame game mentality, gang culture, misfits, youth violence a government at war without public backing,....Sound familiar?

The above could be a list of weekly headlines from the past decade and yet it is some of the themes of Shane Meadows’ 2007 film This is England. The fun part is that the film is set in 1983 and against the backdrop of real events and largely based on factual events. We’ve certainly not come along way in twenty years, in fact I’d say we’d been on a never ending loop of the local block. 

Bugger. 

So apart from the obvious depressing cultural/social/historical/political/economic relevance of the film, is it any good?

Yes, it’s bloody excellent. This film lures you in to the life of lovable misfit Shaun (the fabulous Thomas Turgoose) whose world changes when he meets Woody (Joseph Gilgun) and his gang. It’s all a bit wonderful to start with, a misfit being accepted into a misfit gang of skinhead stompers. They run around smashing stuff up, drink, smoke etc, all very messed up teenage stuff. This is until Stephen Graham’s psychotic Combo turns up and bursts the bubble.  

Combo steals Shaun away into a world of hate and violence that tries to justify itself with Right Wing Patriotism, in other words racist violent gangsters. 

It’s one of those films where nothing and everything happens at the same time. A masterpiece of story telling, film making and most of all acting from Graham, Gilgun and Turgoose. 

Things and Stuff

Hope there’s Someone

Who’ll set my heart free

Nice to hold when I’m tired

There’s a ghost on the horizon

When I go to bed

How can I fall asleep

How will I rest my head

Oh I’m scared of the middle place

Between light and nowhere

I don’t want to be the one

Left in there, left in there

(Hope There’s Someone by Anthony and the Johnsons)

Everything we do has to mean something, because it’s all so short. The world that we find ourselves placed in is so fleeting and yet furiously fast. We are all trying to keep up and live as well as we possibly can because it will stop. We know this as humans, we are so conscious and aware of it.

So what is the meaning of life?

Surely it can’t be the daily toil simply to be a cog in a machine that we didn’t choose or are responsible for?

No, we work so we can have things, or to provide things. As humans we are so uniquely obsessed with things or stuff.

Things and stuff are worrying to me, because they don’t make us truly happy. For a short while they entertain us, distract us and keep us going. They never make us happy though. The society we find ourselves in, will try to make us believe that stuff will make us happy but deep down we know that... 

Things and stuff are the saddest party we ever went to. 

I believe true happiness is found in meaning. To know that our lives mean something, something bigger than the world we find ourselves in. Meaning that is spiritual and unchangeable; something that will stand the test of time. 

For me this is true Art: The Art of Meaning.

It is found in Love

                     Understanding

                     Peace

                     Courage.

The world today will try and prevent us from reaching this Art. We are all human and we all mean something. 

The Help Review

Tate Taylor’s adaptation of Kathryn Stockett’s novel ‘The Help’ is a big puddle of emotion elegantly crafted into a very watchable film. I have to admit it wasn’t a film that necessarily appealed to me at first, however it’s a very accessible and no frills experience. 

The story comes from Stockett’s 2009 novel about a budding reporter, Skeeter who finds her first story in the lives of the hired ‘help’. The story is set in the early 1960’s where all the hired help were black woman who were oppressed and treated no more than slaves. Skeeter follows the lives of two woman she knows; Aibileen and Minny who struggle daily against segregation and the wrath of their white female masters. 

The film goes for the heartstrings and it makes no bones about it. Director Tate Taylor builds us up with loveable characters and takes his time to gently knock us down with their tragedy. 

Emma Stone plays a convincing Skeeter whose character makes an interesting journey from naive graduate to an employable writer. Her affection and hope for Aibileen and Minny is subtle and touching. There’s plenty of comedy provided from Octavia Spencer’s sassy Minny, who only just avoids falling into caricature and cliche. 

However it’s Jessica Chastain’s unstable Celia Foote that captured my heart. Foote is a troubled woman who finds herself alienated from her new found social class but finds friendship in her hired help Minny. Chastain’s portrayal is authentic and heart-warmingly funny. 

This film is a great story that gives a warm fuzzy feeling inside...

However for me it raises questions about the nature of emotion in film and why as an audience member we become so involved. Is it the story or the film that creates the emotion? I would argue that in this case it’s the story that creates the emotion and the film is a medium and support for it. Does this mean it’s a good film then? I would argue that it’s doing it’s job well as being a medium for storytelling but in terms of looking at film making as a craft and art form it comes across as being very middle of the road. 

The Rum Diary

Johnny Depp likes Hunter S. Thompson, he’s previously starred in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and he enjoys talking about the writer at any given opportunity. So it’s not really a surprise that he’s starred in another film version of Thompson’s work as well as taking on producing duties. For some reason the American actor creates buzz around what ever he does even when it’s not very good. Take 2010’s The Tourist where he starred alongside siren, Angelina Jolie; a sure hit? Probably one of the worst films I’ve encountered with some of the stiffest acting ever seen on screen.  

The Rum Diary is boringly predictable, achingly slow at times and smug in a way that makes any attempt at comedy cringingly awful. 

I wanted to see this as the collaboration between Depp, Bruce Robinson ( dir. Withnail and I 1986) and Thompson’s text enticed me. The film had such potential but it just seemed to fall flat right from the off. Depp plays Paul Kemp an alcoholic journalist  who gets posted in Puerto Rico. Cue Depp pulling Captain Jack faces as he enjoys the local liquor. I stifled a yawn as a love interest is introduced in the form of Chenault (Amber Heard) a stunning blonde wiggling around in a bikini.

But oh no wait....she’s married to Aaron Eckhart’s Sanderson a shady businessman etc etc. 

My main issue with this film is why should I care? As a viewer I just felt like an outsider, there was nothing inviting about the film it just trudges along. You get the feeling neither Depp nor Robinson was particularly bothered about whether anyone watched it or not.  A sort of Thompson appreciation society. 

The latest pictures to emerge of Depp see him dressed as Tonto in the forthcoming film The Lone Ranger. I can see Jerry Bruckheimer now, shouting from behind the camera ‘Can you do that one again Johnny, but make it more ‘Captain Jack’ . Say something about rum.’ 

Let’s hope a new Tim Burton film sees a return to form. 

OI! I said OI!

Plan B’s new single swaggers through the speakers with it’s cutting lyrics and smart production. Staccato strings open the song and they menace through the rest of it like an August mob. Plan B is in touch with his habitat ‘Let’s all go on an urban safari’. Prodigy esque beats ricochet around the angry young man’s newest public speaker. This is an artist that isn’t afraid to speak his mind and to draw attention to the fact that there are major problems in our society. Within the first thirty seconds of the song it’s suggested that Cameron is a ‘see you next Tuesday’ and the video shows an image of Cameron and Clegg atop a wedding cake. As Cameron plays bezzie mates with Obama, Plan B utters ‘..he’s got some front’.

In the wake of the recession and Tory rule it’s easy to get used to the state of things. The August riots were a wake up, the aftermath full of observation and review. However it seems nobody has been inspired by it to drastically want to say something. Until now...this is a grimey warning to take stock and not forget the events of August. This song echoes that we can’t just forget about the stabbings of and by young kids in London or anywhere else, we can’t forget that we’re in a plutocracy while many of us struggle to get through each week, we can’t forget that every day people who are supposed to be looking after our society are secretly trying to sabotage it for their own gain. 

The riots of August have clearly shocked Plan B aka Ben Drew into ditching the soulful sounds of The Defamation of Strickland Banks. He’s gone back to the sound he started with; gritty, sharp witted, urban poetry. Hopefully this is a taster of more things to come from him.

And to those who are running us into the ground, to the ones who want to privatise our NHS, Police Force and other important parts of our society...

OI WHAT YOU LOOKING AT YOU LITTLE RICH BOY...