The year in movies
Once again, despite having only seen a fraction of this year's movie releases, and despite the godlike Dr Kermode covering the subject pretty much perfectly every week on the wireless, I find myself wanting to put forward my own inconsequential opinions on films from 2008, if only because this blog only started halfway through and missed out a lot of stuff.
This stuff included the big Oscar movies, all of which were released literally within a couple of weeks of each other at the start of the year. No Country For Old Men won the most critical acclaim, but for me it was the straw that broke the camel's back in terms of the Coen brothers. In much the same way as I finally decided that, after having the same reaction of "well I thought some bits were funny and it looked fantastic, although there was no real plot" after every new Tim Burton film, I didn't really enjoy Tim Burton films, No Country cemented my feelings about the Coens. Yes some of the locations and cinematograpahy were stunning. Yes the acting was top notch. But ultimately it came across as a nice-looking chase thriller with a few pseudo-profound Tommy Lee Jones scenes tacked on. This month's Empire magazine has that scene with Javier Bardem in the shop as it's Classic Scene of the Month, or something. "Call it, Friendo," etc. Well yes, but what's so deep and meaningful about that? Lots of style, but substance is sadly lacking for me as far as the Coens go.
Juno and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly were much more deserving of the hype. Diabolo Cody's script was so sharp at times you worried she might cut herself, but the film was careful not to over-egg the quirkiness and confident enough to throw in just the right amount of sweet sentimentality (although the incredibly fey soundtrack was pushing it somewhat). Diving Bell meanwhile was simply stunning, an absolutely beautiful evocation of one paralysed man's plight and a near-flawless adaptation of what most people considered to be an unfilmable novel.
Annoyingly I fell asleep during the first hour of There Will Be Blood, which only added to my feelings of shock and disorientation as I left the cinema. It certainly wasn't one of those films which elicited an unequivocally positive reaction (cf the two films above), but at least three scenes were stuck right at the front of my memory for several days, Daniel Day Lewis's bravura performance in particular. Dr Kermode insists this film has "rewritten the language of cinema", but he has seen it multiple times. I'm not a big repeat viewer of films and I prefer to something new rather than revisiting one I've done already - I really ought to make an exception in this case.
Son of Rambow was very sweet, a film about kids for adults that taps into the mischievous inner rapscallion in all of us. Similarly, Somers Town was another success for Shane Meadows and his young star Thomas Turgoose, a slight, charming piece that perhaps served as something of a palate cleanser after Meadows's previous couple of more oppressive offerings. As a big Aaron Sorkin fan I also enjoyed Charlie Wilson's War, which went down far better than the ill-fated Studio 60 did. Real politics, rather than the TV studio variety, is clearly more his thing - a shame that the ending was somewhat abrupt and reportedly toned-down from the shot of the burning Pentagon that was originally envisaged.
I've blogged about Mama Mia already. I was amused to see someone write in to Empire this month, outraged at the fact that it has become the highest grossing film ever in Britain and especially that more people have gone to see it than The Dark Knight. Hmm well let's see - on the one hand a day-glo, ridiculously feelgood movie that targets the widest possible demograpic, and on the other a dark, violent slab of celluloid that never compromises its pessimistic vision. The surprise is not that Mama Mia has proved more popular than DK, but that DK has been such an overwhelming success in the first place. Clearly Christopher Nolan deserves vast amounts of credit for transforming the franchise, although there is still much debate about what has come to be known as "the boat thing" and whether it adds to the movie or detracts from it. And marks off too for the silly Batman voice.
As for the other blockbusters, Iron Man was an enjoyable romp despite the alarmingly large plot holes. I like the fact that Marvel are willing to use somewhat unconventional people for their blockbusters both in front of and behind the camera, not by least signing up Kenneth Branagh to direct the forthcoming Thor flick. Wall-E was an incredibly accomplished piece of animation that confirmed just how far ahead of the pack Pixar are. And yet I did come away with a slight feeling of disappointment, maybe because in the unique vision of the opening earthbound sections inevitably becomes compromised once we get on board the spaceship. I guess realistically even Pixar would not have the nerve to make a completely dialogue-free 90 minute kids film, however fantastic such a thing might be.
After Casino Royale set the bar so high, Quantum of Solace can't be regarded as anything less than a massive disappointment. If you look back over the Craig and Brosnan eras though, you'll see that just as only the even-numbered Star Trek movies were ever any good, the last few Bond flicks have alternated between the great (Goldeneye, The World Is Not Enough, Casino Royale) and the somewhat rubbish (Tomorrow Never Dies, Die Another Day, QofS), so assuming Daniel Craig stays put then the next one should be a corker. Oh and I found Tropic Thunder much more amusing than I thought it would be, but maybe only because my expectations were so low after such underwhelming reviews. Another great turn from Robert Downey Jr, though.
Films of an artier persuasion that I greatly enjoyed this year included Persepolis, I've Loved You So Long and Unrelated, the latter being a perfect distillation of British middle-class angst. Let's Talk About The Rain was a big let-down though, director Agnes Jaoui and her (writing) partner Jean-Pierre Bacri this time being unable to create fascinating enough characters or amusing enough situations to live up to the standards set by the brilliant Comme Une Image and Le Gout Des Autres.
A final word should be said for W, which was released to coincide with the election of the world's new Great Black Hope to replace the titular soon-to-be ex-President and scourge of the Eye-raquis. As someone who didn't know a lot of Bush's backstory, I found this to be an enlightening biopic, although as with all biopics the life in question is sketched out in rather broad brush-strokes. I liked the fact that Stone filmed this as pretty much straight biopic, with only some of the musical choices and Thandie Newton's faintly ridiculous Condi impression really tilting things towards satire. Ultimately though, some things are so much stranger than fiction they make almost all fiction redundant. Luckily, they've not stopped making movies for next year, or so I'm told. Looking forward to it.
This stuff included the big Oscar movies, all of which were released literally within a couple of weeks of each other at the start of the year. No Country For Old Men won the most critical acclaim, but for me it was the straw that broke the camel's back in terms of the Coen brothers. In much the same way as I finally decided that, after having the same reaction of "well I thought some bits were funny and it looked fantastic, although there was no real plot" after every new Tim Burton film, I didn't really enjoy Tim Burton films, No Country cemented my feelings about the Coens. Yes some of the locations and cinematograpahy were stunning. Yes the acting was top notch. But ultimately it came across as a nice-looking chase thriller with a few pseudo-profound Tommy Lee Jones scenes tacked on. This month's Empire magazine has that scene with Javier Bardem in the shop as it's Classic Scene of the Month, or something. "Call it, Friendo," etc. Well yes, but what's so deep and meaningful about that? Lots of style, but substance is sadly lacking for me as far as the Coens go.
Juno and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly were much more deserving of the hype. Diabolo Cody's script was so sharp at times you worried she might cut herself, but the film was careful not to over-egg the quirkiness and confident enough to throw in just the right amount of sweet sentimentality (although the incredibly fey soundtrack was pushing it somewhat). Diving Bell meanwhile was simply stunning, an absolutely beautiful evocation of one paralysed man's plight and a near-flawless adaptation of what most people considered to be an unfilmable novel.
Annoyingly I fell asleep during the first hour of There Will Be Blood, which only added to my feelings of shock and disorientation as I left the cinema. It certainly wasn't one of those films which elicited an unequivocally positive reaction (cf the two films above), but at least three scenes were stuck right at the front of my memory for several days, Daniel Day Lewis's bravura performance in particular. Dr Kermode insists this film has "rewritten the language of cinema", but he has seen it multiple times. I'm not a big repeat viewer of films and I prefer to something new rather than revisiting one I've done already - I really ought to make an exception in this case.
Son of Rambow was very sweet, a film about kids for adults that taps into the mischievous inner rapscallion in all of us. Similarly, Somers Town was another success for Shane Meadows and his young star Thomas Turgoose, a slight, charming piece that perhaps served as something of a palate cleanser after Meadows's previous couple of more oppressive offerings. As a big Aaron Sorkin fan I also enjoyed Charlie Wilson's War, which went down far better than the ill-fated Studio 60 did. Real politics, rather than the TV studio variety, is clearly more his thing - a shame that the ending was somewhat abrupt and reportedly toned-down from the shot of the burning Pentagon that was originally envisaged.
I've blogged about Mama Mia already. I was amused to see someone write in to Empire this month, outraged at the fact that it has become the highest grossing film ever in Britain and especially that more people have gone to see it than The Dark Knight. Hmm well let's see - on the one hand a day-glo, ridiculously feelgood movie that targets the widest possible demograpic, and on the other a dark, violent slab of celluloid that never compromises its pessimistic vision. The surprise is not that Mama Mia has proved more popular than DK, but that DK has been such an overwhelming success in the first place. Clearly Christopher Nolan deserves vast amounts of credit for transforming the franchise, although there is still much debate about what has come to be known as "the boat thing" and whether it adds to the movie or detracts from it. And marks off too for the silly Batman voice.
As for the other blockbusters, Iron Man was an enjoyable romp despite the alarmingly large plot holes. I like the fact that Marvel are willing to use somewhat unconventional people for their blockbusters both in front of and behind the camera, not by least signing up Kenneth Branagh to direct the forthcoming Thor flick. Wall-E was an incredibly accomplished piece of animation that confirmed just how far ahead of the pack Pixar are. And yet I did come away with a slight feeling of disappointment, maybe because in the unique vision of the opening earthbound sections inevitably becomes compromised once we get on board the spaceship. I guess realistically even Pixar would not have the nerve to make a completely dialogue-free 90 minute kids film, however fantastic such a thing might be.
After Casino Royale set the bar so high, Quantum of Solace can't be regarded as anything less than a massive disappointment. If you look back over the Craig and Brosnan eras though, you'll see that just as only the even-numbered Star Trek movies were ever any good, the last few Bond flicks have alternated between the great (Goldeneye, The World Is Not Enough, Casino Royale) and the somewhat rubbish (Tomorrow Never Dies, Die Another Day, QofS), so assuming Daniel Craig stays put then the next one should be a corker. Oh and I found Tropic Thunder much more amusing than I thought it would be, but maybe only because my expectations were so low after such underwhelming reviews. Another great turn from Robert Downey Jr, though.
Films of an artier persuasion that I greatly enjoyed this year included Persepolis, I've Loved You So Long and Unrelated, the latter being a perfect distillation of British middle-class angst. Let's Talk About The Rain was a big let-down though, director Agnes Jaoui and her (writing) partner Jean-Pierre Bacri this time being unable to create fascinating enough characters or amusing enough situations to live up to the standards set by the brilliant Comme Une Image and Le Gout Des Autres.
A final word should be said for W, which was released to coincide with the election of the world's new Great Black Hope to replace the titular soon-to-be ex-President and scourge of the Eye-raquis. As someone who didn't know a lot of Bush's backstory, I found this to be an enlightening biopic, although as with all biopics the life in question is sketched out in rather broad brush-strokes. I liked the fact that Stone filmed this as pretty much straight biopic, with only some of the musical choices and Thandie Newton's faintly ridiculous Condi impression really tilting things towards satire. Ultimately though, some things are so much stranger than fiction they make almost all fiction redundant. Luckily, they've not stopped making movies for next year, or so I'm told. Looking forward to it.
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