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The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2018)

25 Sunday Nov 2018

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D: Mike Newell / 124m

Cast: Lily James, Michiel Huisman, Glen Powell, Matthew Goode, Jessica Brown Findlay, Katherine Parkinson, Penelope Wilton, Tom Courtenay, Kit Connor, Bronagh Gallagher, Bernice Stegers, Clive Merrison

In 1946, author Juliet Ashton (James) is in the middle of promoting her latest book, when two things happen simultaneously: The Times Literary Supplement asks her to write a series of articles on the benefits of literature, and she receives a letter from a Guernsey man named Dawcey Adams (Huisman) who is part of a literary society on the island. Intrigued by the idea of a literary society formed during the war, Juliet opts to visit Guernsey and meet Adams and the other members. Just before she sails from London, her American beau, Mark (Powell), proposes to her and she accepts. On Guernsey, Juliet meets all but one of the members of the literary society, and is told that the absent member, Elizabeth McKenna (Findlay), is away on the continent. When she mentions writing an article about the group, one of them, Amelia Maugery (Wilton), refuses to agree to the idea. Sensing there are things that she’s not being told, Juliet remains on the island and soon finds herself beginning to piece together the mystery surrounding Elizabeth’s absence…

Based on the novel of the same name (and how could it be anything different?) by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is a lightweight slice of rose-tinted nostalgia filtered through the lens of modern movie-making techniques, and with even less substance than the culinary creation in its title (which sounds like a stodge-fest of epic proportions). It’s by-the-numbers movie making with no surprises, an ending you can guess all the way from the rings of Saturn, and as many softly poignant moments designed to raise a tear that can be squeezed into a two-hour run time. It’s cosy, and reassuring in its approach, and it requires almost no effort at all in watching it. In short, it’s a perfectly enjoyable confection that’s written and directed and performed with a keen understanding that it has to be made in a certain way, and that way is to provide audiences with the cinematic equivalent of comfort food. So lightweight is it that the mystery of Elizabeth’s absence isn’t even the most dramatic aspect of the movie – and that’s bcause there’s nothing dramatic about any of it, no matter how hard the script tries, and no matter how hard its director tries also.

Thankfully, all this doesn’t mean that the movie is a bad one, just predictable and bland and almost a perfect tick box exercise in terms of it being a romantic drama with a wartime background. It does feature a clutch of good performances, with James suitably bullish and radiant at the same time, Courtenay delivering yet another example of his recent run of lovable old codgers, Goode effortlessly suave and supportive as Juliet’s publisher, and Powell as the boyfriend who you know is going to be dumped near the end to ensure that true love prevails as it should. Only Huisman looks out of place (and there’s a distinct awkwardness and lack of chemistry between him and James), while Parkinson and Wilton deliver pitch-perfect portrayals of a gin-making (and swigging) spinster, and a still grieving mother respectively. It’s handsomely mounted (though sadly, none of it was actually shot on Guernsey), with impressive production design and period detail, and equally impressive effects shots detailing some of the destruction suffered by London during the Blitz. But still, there’s that traditional romantic storyline that anchors the movie and keeps it from straying too far into original territory. And if there’s one thing that the movie knows above all else, it’s that familiarity – when done correctly – is all you need.

Rating: 7/10 – a movie that can be criticised easily for what it doesn’t do, The Guersey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is a modest movie with modest ambitions, and likely to have a modest effect on its audience; a good-natured bit of celluloid fluff, it’s perfect viewing for a wet and windy Sunday afternoon, or when all you need is something that doesn’t require too much effort in order to enjoy it fully.

Monthly Roundup – July 2018

31 Tuesday Jul 2018

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Hereditary (2018) / D: Ari Aster / 127m

Cast: Toni Collette, Gabriel Byrne, Alex Wolff, Milly Shapiro, Ann Dowd

Rating: 7/10 – following the death of her mother, miniaturist artist Annie (Collette) and her family begin to experience strange phenomena that hint at supernatural forces at work around them, and which appear to be malevolent in their intentions; this year’s critics’ favourite in the horror genre, Hereditary does boast a superb performance from Collette, and creates a fervid atmosphere in its first half that is genuinely unnerving, but this is a movie where the sum of its parts isn’t equal to a satisfying whole, and what should have been a tense, psychological thriller becomes a grandstanding Rosemary’s Baby for the new millennium, an outcome that robs it of much of its impact.

Mrs. Pym of Scotland Yard (1940) / D: Fred Ellis / 64m

Cast: Mary Clare, Edward Lexy, Nigel Patrick, Janet Johnson, Anthony Ireland, Irene Handl, Vernon Kelso

Rating: 7/10 – the predicted deaths of two members of a Psychic Society leads Scotland Yard to assign their lone female detective, Mrs. Pym (Clare), to the case in an effort to track down the victims’ killer; a boisterous little crime caper with a delightful performance by Clare (in her only starring role), Mrs. Pym of Scotland Yard retains a freshness nearly eighty years on that some movies can’t manage after eighty days, a feat that can be attributed to Ellis’s sprightly direction, a handful of engaging secondary performances, and a script – based on stories by Nigel Morland and adapted by Ellis and Peggy Barwell – that knows when to be amusing and when to be dramatic, and when to be delightfully daft (which, thankfully, is often).

Backlash (1956) / D: John Sturges / 84m

Cast: Richard Widmark, Donna Reed, William Campbell, John McIntire, Barton MacLane, Harry Morgan, Robert J. Wilke

Rating: 7/10 – while searching for his father’s killer, Jim Slater (Widmark) crosses paths with a woman (Reed) who may be connected to his father’s death, and who may be able to provide him with information that will lead him to the man responsible, an outcome that, when it happens, isn’t as straightforward as he’s been led to believe; a tough, muscular Western with psychological and film noir elements, Backlash is also a taut, uncompromising revenge tale that doesn’t pull its punches and which takes a sudden narrative turn halfway through that puts a whole different spin on Slater’s journey, something that Widmark handles with his usual aplomb, and Sturges – who would go on to helm Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957) and The Magnificent Seven (1960) – handles the twists and turns with confidence and no small amount of directorial flair.

Skyscraper (2018) / D: Rawson Marshall Thurber / 102m

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Neve Campbell, Chin Han, Roland Møller, Noah Taylor, Byron Mann, Pablo Schreiber, McKenna Roberts, Noah Cottrell, Hannah Quinlivan

Rating: 4/10 – the world’s tallest building, The Pearl, is ready to open but needs a final sign-off from security analyst Will Sawyer (Johnson), but when terrorists set the building on fire, Sawyer has a greater problem: that of rescuing his family who are trapped above the fire line; there was a time when a movie like Skyscraper would have been a must-see at the cinema, but this Die Hard meets The Towering Inferno mash-up (scripted by Thurber) is a soulless, empty spectacle that can’t even put Sawyer’s family in any appreciable peril, wastes its talented cast by having them play one-dimensional stereotypes, and which uses Sawyer’s disability as a narrative parlour trick whenever the plot needs it.

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018) / D: Ol Parker / 114m

Cast: Lily James, Amanda Seyfried, Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgård, Colin Firth, Christine Baranski, Julie Walters, Dominic Cooper, Andy Garcia, Jeremy Irvine, Josh Dylan, Hugh Skinner, Jessica Keenan Wynn, Alexa Davies, Celia Imrie, Cher, Meryl Streep

Rating: 7/10 – with the reopening of her late mother’s hotel just days away, Sophie Sheridan (Seyfried) is worried that everything won’t go according to plan, while the story of how a young Donna Sheridan (James) came to own the hotel in the first place, plays out simultaneously; if you liked the first movie then you’ll definitely like Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, another love letter to the music of ABBA, and a movie that has no simpler ambition than to charm its audience at every turn and provide fans with as good a time as before, something it achieves thanks to generous dollops of good-natured humour, a talented cast giving their all, and an if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it approach that works wonders on what is very familiar material indeed.

Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018) / D: Christopher McQuarrie / 147m

Cast: Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Rebecca Ferguson, Sean Harris, Vanessa Kirby, Angela Bassett, Alec Baldwin, Michelle Monaghan, Wes Bentley

Rating: 9/10 – a mission in Berlin to retrieve three plutonium cores leads Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and his IMF team into a high stakes race-against-time chase across the continents as they try to avert a terrorist attack orchestrated by the followers of arch-nemesis Solomon Lane (Harris); number six in the franchise, and Mission: Impossible – Fallout is the best entry yet, with hugely impressive action scenes, the strongest plot so far, and a surprisingly emotional core drawn from the interactions of the characters that puts this head and shoulders above every other action movie you’ll see this year – and who would have bet on that?

I Feel Pretty (2018) / D: Abby Kohn, Marc Silverstein / 111m

Cast: Amy Schumer, Michelle Williams, Tom Hopper, Rory Scovel, Adrian Martinez, Emily Ratajkowski, Aidy Bryant, Busy Philipps, Lauren Hutton, Naomi Campbell

Rating: 5/10 – when an insecure woman, Renee Bennett (Schumer), who works at an international cosmetics company suffers a blow to the head, she wakes seeing herself as beautiful and capable of achieving anything – but in reality she looks exactly the same; what should be an immensely likeable shout out to the power of self-belief, I Feel Pretty is hampered by the bludgeoning approach of the script (by directors Kohn and Silverstein), and the incredible ease with which Renee powers her way up the corporate ladder, aspects that are at least more palatable than the way in which the men are treated as accessories, something that, if the roles were reversed, would likely cause an outcry.

Baby Driver (2017)

29 Thursday Jun 2017

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D: Edgar Wright / 113m

Cast: Ansel Elgort, Kevin Spacey, Lily James, Jon Hamm, Jamie Foxx, Eiza González, Jon Bernthal, CJ Jones, Flea, Lanny Joon, Sky Ferreira, Paul Williams

There are very few times when directors manage to achieve fully the vision they have for their movies. Some have pet projects that they wait years to bring to the big screen, but when they do, they’re not always successful. Some movies have audiences wondering what on earth the director was thinking of, some can be filed under glorious failures, while others achieve the distinction of gaining a cult following. None of these apply to Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver, a movie that zooms onto our screens like a gust of fresh air designed to blow away all the horrendously bloated blockbuster movies that have been foisted on us so far this year.

Wright’s ode to fast cars, old-fashioned meet-cute romance and killer tunes is quite simply, a blast. If this is your kind of movie then you are going to have an amazing time. And if this isn’t your kind of movie… well, that’s a shame, as you’re missing an absolute treat. Wright has made a movie that is energetic, soulful, visually arresting, and chock full of great performances, from Spacey’s criminal mastermind to Foxx’s psycho with extra attitude. The story is a simple one: Baby (Elgort) owes Doc (Spacey) for trying to steal his car when Baby was younger. By being the driver on bank robberies that Doc has set up, Baby’s debt diminishes with each job. With one last job to go before the debt is fully paid, Baby meets waitress Debora (James), and suddenly he has a reason to move on with his life.

Baby takes a job as a pizza delivery driver (no one’s going to get a free pizza after thirty minutes if he’s delivering), and he begins to make plans for himself and Debora to leave Atlanta and hit the road, travelling to wherever it takes them. But Doc appears with another job, one that could see Baby earning a lot more money than before; he’s also aware of Baby’s relationship with Debora and makes it clear that he’s not giving Baby a choice in taking part or not. Doc has assembled Bats (Foxx), Buddy (Hamm) and his wife Darling (González) to carry out the robbery, with Baby as the driver. But in prepping the job, Baby begins to have second thoughts about going through with it. He tries to get away and hit the road with Debora, but he’s outwitted by Buddy and Bats, leaving him with only one choice: take part in the robbery or see Debora come to harm. And then the robbery goes horribly wrong…

From the start, Wright displays a flair and a confidence that elevates the material to greater heights than anyone could have expected. Expanding on an idea he had back in 1994 – and which he first explored in the 2003 video for Mint Royale’s Blue Song – Wright has written, constructed, and brought to life a movie that celebrates love, and a passion for music that is a form of love in itself. Baby suffers from tinnitus, a “hum in the drum”, and he uses music to drown it out. This gives Wright the chance to flood the soundtrack with an array of carefully and aptly chosen songs that punctuate and inform the mood at any given time. Some choices might seem counter-intuitive (Focus’s Hocus Pocus for a foot chase? The Damned’s Neat Neat Neat for a robbery getaway?) but they all work, adding to the clever visual and aural stylings that Wright employs throughout.

But while the soundtrack is the key to much of what is going on emotionally in the movie, it’s the look of it that clinches our involvement. Wright is supremely confident when it comes to placing and moving the camera, and some of the angles and shots that he conjures up are nothing short of breathtaking. An early scene where Baby waits outside a bank and is listening to Bellbottoms by Jon Spencer Blues Explosion offers the viewer a bravura expression of Baby’s love for music and the way it can motivate and uplift him. This is only Elgort’s eighth movie, but his performance is a far cry from his usual pouty roles in a variety of YA movies. The pout is still here but it’s reined in for the most part, and seeing `Baby “rock out” to various songs in the apartment he shares with his deaf foster father (Jones) shows an ease and a loosening of attitude that is a good sign for any future roles.

But Baby Driver isn’t just a visually arresting movie with a terrific soundtrack, it’s also a tender romance and a cracking thriller. The relationship between Baby and Debora could have been a little too saccharine in comparison to the more muscular action elements (of which there are plenty), but Wright is wise to this and keeps it all light and dreamy, a forever fairy tale approach that works well against the macho posturings of the crews Doc assembles. James and Elgort have an easy-going chemistry, and their scenes together are funny and sweet and engaging. On the other side of the fence, Foxx is brusque and confrontational as psycho-without-an-off-switch Bats, Bernthal is another crew member who picks on Baby to no avail, while Hamm goes from amiable robber to avenging killer once the final robbery goes wrong. These are all good performances but they’re topped by Spacey’s sinister yet urbane Doc, a character you actually want to see more of, but who Wright wisely uses sparingly.

The action scenes are all very well choreographed, with the first car chase at the beginning of the movie (and which features that manoeuvre from the trailer) proving to be one of the best action sequences you’re likely to see all year. Wright shows a tremendous sense of space and distance in these sequences, and the camerawork by DoP Bill Pope is magnificent, propelling the viewer along with Baby et al, and providing enough breathtaking moments for two movies. And even when Wright slows things down in order to advance the plot, there’s still a sense of energy waiting to be released, of power straining at the gate to be let loose. And with the next squeal of tyres there it is, and off we go again.

This isn’t a movie though where the characters are secondary to the action, or play second fiddle to a script that doesn’t make sense. It’s a fairly simple, straightforward movie that looks amazing but still manages to retain a heart and a soul thanks to its romantic elements, and to the way in which the characters interact with each other. There are moments of humour, too – how could there not be in a movie by Edgar Wright – and they fit right in with all the other elements, unforced, and keeping the tone from becoming too serious. Wright balances all these elements to perfection, and there aren’t any scenes that either feel extraneous or tonally at odds with the rest of the movie. All in all, a tremendous achievement, and one that at long last proves that mainstream moviemaking doesn’t have to be loud, brash, overly reliant on CGI, and devoid of a coherent story and plot. Hollywood – take notice.

Rating: 9/10 – the first bona fide all-round success of 2017, Baby Driver is a triumph of style, visuals, acting, directing, writing – hell, everything, and a movie to be savoured just as much for the things it doesn’t do as the things it does; and of course it has possibly the coolest soundtrack of the year as well, a feast for the ears that contains so many gems that you won’t be able to decide which one to hum as you leave the cinema.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016)

13 Sunday Mar 2016

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PAPAZ

D: Burr Steers / 102m

Cast: Lily James, Sam Riley, Matt Smith, Jack Huston, Bella Heathcote, Douglas Booth, Lena Headey, Sally Phillips, Charles Dance, Ellie Bamber, Millie Brady, Suki Waterhouse

From the 1814 Alternate Universe Almanac, 21 January:

Revealed to a waiting world with all the fanfare that the firm of Butan, McKittrick, Oliver, Portman, Savitch, Shearmur & Thompson can muster, these kindly souls have enjoined us to a world that has no equal or predecessor in the annals of the flickering image. Miss Jane Austen’s latest novel, published to great acclaim last year, has been fashioned into a drab, humourless affair that strains the credulity of every right-thinking person in  the land, and which purports to imagine an England overrun by an army of the dead.

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Preposterous you may say, and this author would heartily agree with you. Concocted with a clear disdain for the exquisite talent of Miss Austen, Mr. Burr Steers and Mr. Seth Grahame-Smith – both Americans, no doubt – have taken her sterling work and made a mockery of its literary merits by inserting strange creatures that resemble vampires, but with the exception that they seek flesh to eat rather than blood to drink. It is not uncommon to find examples of this kind of unabashed traducery made as low entertainment for the masses, but it is for the more discerning viewer of these “tragedies” to be of one voice with his equally appalled brethren and shout loudly, “No more! No more repellent travesties created to provide succour for the poor in spirit and the easily tempted! No more!”

A crueller distraction could no more be found than Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. The subtlety of Miss Austen’s prose is retained for the most part, but be not gladdened by this admission, for it is used in such a paltry way that readers familiar with Miss Austen’s work will be distraught at the way in which emphasis is abandoned in favour of recitation, and her characters speak as if they had not the wit to understand their own utterances. It is a folly to assume that Mr. Steers and Mr. Grahame-Smith have generated this debacle with any concern for the respect Miss Austen’s work has accrued since her debut some two years ago. While it can be said that the settings they have chosen give some degree of pleasure to the eye, as do the ladies chosen to portray the Bennet sisters, it is nevertheless an endeavour that lacks finesse, and proves of little consequence once experienced from beginning to end.

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Be warned: the inclusion of “zombies” marks a low point in our nation’s proud literary and (short-lived) zoetropic history. What possible good can come of this exhibition’s existence it’s doubtful anyone will be able to determine, and this august periodical can see no reason for its existence beyond a scurrilous and repugnant attempt to separate the hoi polloi from what little earnings they make – earnings that would no doubt be put to better use in the purchase of potatoes for the nurturing of their families. For make no mistake, here is no nurturing of the mind or the finer senses to be gained from viewing Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. It is an ill-conceived distraction, filled with moments that are both violent and reprehensible, and which paint such a dismal alternative to the beauteous world we live in that one must question the motives of the men and women who have found this a suitable piece to put before the public.

There can be no doubt that the assembly called upon to inhabit the various roles Miss Austen went to great pains to construct – and with such great artistry – have little to offer in terms of imagination or grace. Special mention must go to the esteemed Mr. Dance, an actor of such renown that his presence here is difficult to fathom, surrounded as he is by artists who lack the graces God gave them to fully articulate the feelings and emotions that occupy our hearts and minds on each and every blessed day of our existence. That Miss Austen wrote of romantic involvement with such subtlety and perspicacity appears to have been put aside in favour of feeble declarations of ardour, declarations that carry the barest weight of conviction.

In conclusion, the efforts of Mr. Steers and Mr. Grahame-Smith have proved to be of such a disservice to those of us who champion the potential of the zoetropic arts that we would be forever indebted to them if they refrained from making any further assaults on our senses. Let us say again: “No more!”

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Rating: 3/10 – a dire movie that plods along in search of a reason to exist (like its titular creatures perhaps), Pride and Prejudice and Zombies sounds like a great twist on an old classic, but in truth is uncomfortable to watch as a period piece, and as a horror movie; when the zombies have more personality – and evoke more sympathy – than your main characters, then you have a movie that’s in trouble in more ways than one, and this movie courts trouble like an aging Lothario looking to impress one young woman too many.

Monthly Roundup – February 2016

29 Monday Feb 2016

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Batman: Bad Blood (2016) / D: Jay Oliva / 72m

Cast: Jason O’Mara, Yvonne Strahovski, Stuart Allan, Sean Maher, Morena Baccarin, Gaius Charles, James Garrett, Ernie Hudson, Robin Atkin Downes, Travis Willingham, Geoff Pierson

Batman Bad Blood

Rating: 7/10 – when Batman (O’Mara) is missing believed dead after an encounter with  The Heretic (Willingham), it falls to Nightwing (Maher), Robin (Allan) and newcomer Batwoman (Strahovski) to discover if he really is dead, or if his disappearance is part of a bigger plot; continuing Warner Bros. impressive streak of animated Batman movies, Batman: Bad Blood is as moody and psychologically sombre as its live action counterparts, even if some of its characters behave like children in their attempts to get along.

The Shanghai Cobra (1945) / Phil Karlson / 64m

Cast: Sidney Toler, Mantan Moreland, Benson Fong, James Cardwell, Joan Barclay, Addison Richards, Arthur Loft

The Shanghai Cobra

Rating: 5/10 – the Oriental detective is tasked with finding the murderer of several bank employees, but the mystery turns out to be connected to an old case Chan was involved in years before in Shanghai; another conveyor belt Monogram/Charlie Chan movie, The Shanghai Cobra is hardly distracting, or distinguishable from any of its Forties brethren, but it’s entertaining enough in its way, and Toler still seems to be enjoying himself in the role (which is no mean feat).

Fast Girls (2012) / D: Regan Hall / 91m

Cast: Lenora Crichlow, Lily James, Lorraine Burroughs, Noel Clarke, Lashana Lynch, Dominique Tipper, Rupert Graves, Philip Davis, Bradley James, Emma Fielding

Fast Girls

Rating: 3/10 – Olympics wannabe sprinter Shania Andrews (Crichlow) makes it onto the UK team but finds her progress hampered by a rivalry with fellow athlete Lisa Temple (James), as well as personal problems of her own; for Fast Girls, writer and star Noel Clarke has fashioned a cliché-strewn drama that lacks cohesion between scenes and is laden with unconvincing dialogue, not to mention the paper-thin plotting and some extremely wayward performances.

Hotel Transylvania 2 (2015) / D: Genndy Tartakovsky / 89m

Cast: Adam Sandler, Andy Samberg, Selena Gomez, Kevin James, Steve Buscemi, David Spade, Keegan-Michael Key, Asher Blinkoff, Fran Drescher, Molly Shannon, Megan Mullally, Nick Offerman, Dana Carvey, Rob Riggle, Mel Brooks

Hotel Transylvania 2

Rating: 6/10 – Count Dracula (Sandler) has a grandchild – but will the little sprog turn out to be fully human, or will he sprout fangs and make his grandfather eternally happy?; a serviceable sequel, Hotel Transylvania 2 lacks momentum in the first hour and then pulls it together to provide a fun conclusion, which makes it okay for children, but adults will probably be wishing they were watching the first movie instead.