Lots of Films (Foreigners Do It Better, Sometimes)
Friday night, my girlfriend and I traveled down to Boston to see Manchester Orchestra with two decent opening bands. This was kind of a last minute decision I had made last week, because I'd been into Manchester Orchestra since the early 00's but had never seen them. I did happen to catch pieces of them open for Silversun Pickups as a reincarnation known as Bad Books (equally as good, but definitely not the same), with Kevin Devine (who actually opened the show with his Goddamn Band). Also, Balance and Composure, whom I'd never heard of but were pleasantly surprised by. Manchester Orchestra was definitely the highlight and really did not disappoint. They put on a great show, as witnessed here:
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"Summer's Moon"
starring: Ashley Greene, Peter Mooney, Barbara Niven, Stephen McHattie, Peter Michael Dillon
The poster for this film, starring Ashley Greene (famous for her own part in the "Twilight" saga franchise, has the same type/font as the "Twilight" franchise, in a very disarming way. This film is in no way related to the films of her catalogue. A far cry from it indeed. Here, we have Ashley Greene starring as a lost girl (not in the vampire sense), a troubled girl named Summer who sets out on a journey to find her estranged father. Early into her adventure she runs into and gets saved by a handy boy named Tom who takes her home with him. Summer soon realizes he is not the nice guy he truly pretends to be. Quite the opposite, in fact. Tom's mother isn't much of a saint either. When Summer tries to leave, his mother smacks her and she wakes up tied to a flower bed, and held prisoner in their basement, with another unlucky girl, too. Apparently this has been Tom's MO for awhile.
Summer is not a well written character at all. She's a trouble-making teenage girl who's definitely bit off more than she can chew in this case. No faking it will get her through, because she's finally run into people that can see right through her act (maybe because- bombshell, they're related). So, the focus shifts significantly, and the other girl, Amber, in the basement becomes Summer's way out, because she's a nice girl whom people (namely, Amber's father) is out looking for her.
The film's story develops very slowly, too slow to gather any of your attention and focus. The film is a disaster from start to finish, no sympathy as a viewer for anything happening. Avoid this one.
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"The New Girlfriend" ("Envy")
starring: Linda Cropper, Anna Lise Phillips, Jeff Truman, Scott Major, Wade Osbourne, Bridie Carter
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"A Good Woman"
starring Helen Hunt, Scarlett Johansson, Milena Vukotic, Stephen Campbell Moore, Mark Umbers, Roger Hammond, John Standing, Tom Wilkinson
based on Oscar Wilde's play
A perfect description of Scarlett Johansson: lips, eyes, curves. Perfection. She has the perfect look for a period piece, unfortunately, this is the wrong film to place her in. It's a terrible "updated" version of an Oscar Wilde play titled "Lady Windermere's Fan" set in 1930s Italy. It's very clumsily written and sometimes blurry in its cinematography. Johansson plays Meg Windermere, a New York newlywed on vacation with her weird, idiot husband on the Italian Riviera. Robert, Meg's husband, starts sneaking around with a well-known around town, notorious femme fatale, Stella Erlynne, people start talking and Meg becomes very suspicious. Helen Hunt is miscast to the nth degree as Stella, completely unbelievable as this femme fatale.
There is absolutely nothing redeemable at all with this film. Oscar Wilde probably turned in his grave.
Avoid this at all costs, even if Scarlett Johansson pulls you in.
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"The Deep End"
starring: Tilda Swinton, Goran Visnjic, Jonathon Tucker, Josh Lucas, Raymond J. Berry
written and directed by: Scott McGehee
The writers and directors of this film noir and thriller of slightly epic repercussions certainly know how to send things into an interesting rabbit hole of a downward spiral, especially for their main character, played so well by Tilda Swinton (who rally shows her acting worthiness even in 2001, which just let her career get better and better). The film digs its heroine into a deeper and deeper hole. She's got problems and the hole leads to other holes and she finds herself further and further in, until you really think she won't be able to get herself out.
Tilda Swinton plays Margaret, a mother who for all intents and purposes is a single mother (her husband is in the navy), who will apparently go to great lengths to protect her son. Everything in her world is nice, except for the fact that her seventeen year old son, Beau (played by Tucker), is growing up faster and faster before her very eyes. He is running with a rougher crowd and has taken up with a gay bartender at a seedy, underground club. Beau's newfound homosexuality is kind of swept under the rug and doesn't seem to bother Margaret so much. No, instead, it's the fact that his "boyfriend" has died in a somewhat freak accident, involving her son. She does not want him to be implicated in his death, so she begins a journey of cover-up. Including the subject of homosexuality, Margaret's world is one of silence and loneliness and solitude. She's isolated. Margaret is great a keeping secrets, we can assume, thanks to the wonderful writing. Her reserve and strong will helps her character drive the noir plot. As Margaret sets off trying to cover up the death/murder, an interesting plot twist hits us. Another man comes knocking on her door. His name is Alek and he believes he has enough incriminating evidence against her son to get $50,000 out of her.
"The Deep End" works well with its homage to Hitchcock's films. McGehee and Siegel go for broke in the plot but keep the performances reined in. Tilda Swinton is the key. She is always believable as this harassed, desperate, loving mother. She projects a kind of absorption in her task; she juggles blackmail, murder, bank loans, picking up the kids after school--it's as if the ordinary tasks keep her sane enough to deal with the dangers that surround her. "The Deep End" is the kind of crime movie where the everyday surroundings make the violence seem all the more shocking and gruesome.
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"The Waiting Room"
starring: Anne-Marie Duffy, Frank Finlay, Rupert Graves, Adrian Bower, Daisy Donovan, Zoe Telford
written and directed by: Roger Goldby
"The Waiting Room" is set in London and is an exploration of the romantic lives of several attractive young adults. Anna (Anne-Marie Duff) is the single mother of a post-toddler. She is divorced from Toby (Adrian Bower) who shows up now and then to argue and share custody. Anna is having a fling with George (Rupert Graves), who is happily in lust with her and happens to be her "neighbor."
Unfortunately, George is unhappily married to Jem (Zoe Telford), who is also Anna's best friend. Jem looks younger and more attractive than Anna, but the sex is presumably better with the latter. To further complicate their marriage, Jem and George also have a post-toddler child.
Anna cuts off the affair with George when she meets the Perfect Man. He is tall, dark, handsome, young, kind, and humble. He's also awkward in conversation, but not to worry, he can probably be trained. This Perfect Man is Stephen (Ralf Little), who works at a nursing home where his sensitivity is directed at his favorite resident, Helen (Phyllida Law). Part of the whole Perfect Man puzzle.
Stephen is living with Fiona (Christine Bottomley), the youngest and most attractive of our three female leads. Nevertheless, Stephen loses all interest in her once he meets Anna, partly because this is a movie, but also because Fiona's biological clock is ticking loudly and Stephen is the typical guy who doesn't really see a point in setting things up for the future he doesn't know or want to know about.
Stephen's big romance with Anna has one problem. They've only met once, and don't know the other's name, or where he/she lives. So, they each hang out where they first met, at the train station, hoping to see each other again. Which they do, just as the movie ends.
This is the type of film that is made for women, just taking the Perfect Man as the whole equation, but even how things play out it's like a woman's fantasy. Everything works out, in the end, with just a few bystanders getting hurt in the process, but it doesn't really matter because the two main characters are the focus.
Why do George and Stephen pine after Anna when each has someone who not only loves him, but is younger and better looking? This has something to do with the casting, but it must be admitted that Anna is more fun than either Jem or Fiona. They are depressed over their failing relationship, but the depression only makes things worse. You can't keep your lover by trying to make him feel sorry for you.
Why does Anna pine after Stephen? It's not because she feels guilty over shagging George. That is only the excuse she uses to break off their affair. Why won't Anna take the bait of Brian (Lee Williams), an educated and (already) financially successful young looker? Why is she so set on coming across Stephen again, whom she has barely met and not even conversed with. And what are the odds that Stephen would feel exactly the same way?
There's no answer except that true love conquers in the movies. So, then, the entire plot, with its elaborate love triangles and charming dialogue, is just the set-up for the improbable ending. I feel sorry for the people that thinks this is how life works (out). For once, here is an foreign (British), indie film that misses the mark in being realistic.
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(Bad Books cover)
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"Summer's Moon"
starring: Ashley Greene, Peter Mooney, Barbara Niven, Stephen McHattie, Peter Michael Dillon
The poster for this film, starring Ashley Greene (famous for her own part in the "Twilight" saga franchise, has the same type/font as the "Twilight" franchise, in a very disarming way. This film is in no way related to the films of her catalogue. A far cry from it indeed. Here, we have Ashley Greene starring as a lost girl (not in the vampire sense), a troubled girl named Summer who sets out on a journey to find her estranged father. Early into her adventure she runs into and gets saved by a handy boy named Tom who takes her home with him. Summer soon realizes he is not the nice guy he truly pretends to be. Quite the opposite, in fact. Tom's mother isn't much of a saint either. When Summer tries to leave, his mother smacks her and she wakes up tied to a flower bed, and held prisoner in their basement, with another unlucky girl, too. Apparently this has been Tom's MO for awhile.
Summer is not a well written character at all. She's a trouble-making teenage girl who's definitely bit off more than she can chew in this case. No faking it will get her through, because she's finally run into people that can see right through her act (maybe because- bombshell, they're related). So, the focus shifts significantly, and the other girl, Amber, in the basement becomes Summer's way out, because she's a nice girl whom people (namely, Amber's father) is out looking for her.
The film's story develops very slowly, too slow to gather any of your attention and focus. The film is a disaster from start to finish, no sympathy as a viewer for anything happening. Avoid this one.
..............................................................................
"The New Girlfriend" ("Envy")
starring: Linda Cropper, Anna Lise Phillips, Jeff Truman, Scott Major, Wade Osbourne, Bridie Carter
"The New Girlfriend" grabs your attention immediately as the camera settles on young, blonde and nervous-looking Rachel (Anna Lise Phillips) at a suburban shopping mall. As if caught by a surveillance camera, before leaving the frame, making us wonder what this is foreshadowing. Later, you will discover the significance of this moment but for now it's all the information we're given as the destinies of Rachel and Kate (Linda Cropper) collide. And it works really well to set up the story. Next, we are transported to the community swimming pool, where more action will take place, important and crucial to the start and finish of the film.
On the surface "The New Girlfriend" is about a successful, secure middle class woman and a young thief fighting over possession of a black dress. Underneath it's about class and sexual politics - rich topics given a vivid workout after Kate's house is invaded by Rachel and two criminal accomplices who initiate a humiliating assault on Kate's teenage son Matt (Wade Osborne). The assault is a bit part of the puzzle, but obviously a controversial topic, since it involves rape, but it's also a vehicle to move the story along and make sure that the characters have more than one interaction. The territory becomes darker when Matt blames his mother for what has happened, identifying with Rachel and her 'family' while rejecting his own.
This is a really interesting film and maybe it's because it was produced and made in Australia and I've always enjoyed their films, mostly horror, so this was new and interesting territory. It could have definitely turned itself into an after-school special, but it smartly avoids that and becomes something much more than what's on the surface.
It certainly grabs and keeps your attention the entire way through. Things unravel and continue to unravel which makes it interesting.
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"A Good Woman"
starring Helen Hunt, Scarlett Johansson, Milena Vukotic, Stephen Campbell Moore, Mark Umbers, Roger Hammond, John Standing, Tom Wilkinson
based on Oscar Wilde's play
A perfect description of Scarlett Johansson: lips, eyes, curves. Perfection. She has the perfect look for a period piece, unfortunately, this is the wrong film to place her in. It's a terrible "updated" version of an Oscar Wilde play titled "Lady Windermere's Fan" set in 1930s Italy. It's very clumsily written and sometimes blurry in its cinematography. Johansson plays Meg Windermere, a New York newlywed on vacation with her weird, idiot husband on the Italian Riviera. Robert, Meg's husband, starts sneaking around with a well-known around town, notorious femme fatale, Stella Erlynne, people start talking and Meg becomes very suspicious. Helen Hunt is miscast to the nth degree as Stella, completely unbelievable as this femme fatale.
There is absolutely nothing redeemable at all with this film. Oscar Wilde probably turned in his grave.
Avoid this at all costs, even if Scarlett Johansson pulls you in.
...................................................................................
"The Deep End"
starring: Tilda Swinton, Goran Visnjic, Jonathon Tucker, Josh Lucas, Raymond J. Berry
written and directed by: Scott McGehee
The writers and directors of this film noir and thriller of slightly epic repercussions certainly know how to send things into an interesting rabbit hole of a downward spiral, especially for their main character, played so well by Tilda Swinton (who rally shows her acting worthiness even in 2001, which just let her career get better and better). The film digs its heroine into a deeper and deeper hole. She's got problems and the hole leads to other holes and she finds herself further and further in, until you really think she won't be able to get herself out.
Tilda Swinton plays Margaret, a mother who for all intents and purposes is a single mother (her husband is in the navy), who will apparently go to great lengths to protect her son. Everything in her world is nice, except for the fact that her seventeen year old son, Beau (played by Tucker), is growing up faster and faster before her very eyes. He is running with a rougher crowd and has taken up with a gay bartender at a seedy, underground club. Beau's newfound homosexuality is kind of swept under the rug and doesn't seem to bother Margaret so much. No, instead, it's the fact that his "boyfriend" has died in a somewhat freak accident, involving her son. She does not want him to be implicated in his death, so she begins a journey of cover-up. Including the subject of homosexuality, Margaret's world is one of silence and loneliness and solitude. She's isolated. Margaret is great a keeping secrets, we can assume, thanks to the wonderful writing. Her reserve and strong will helps her character drive the noir plot. As Margaret sets off trying to cover up the death/murder, an interesting plot twist hits us. Another man comes knocking on her door. His name is Alek and he believes he has enough incriminating evidence against her son to get $50,000 out of her.
"The Deep End" works well with its homage to Hitchcock's films. McGehee and Siegel go for broke in the plot but keep the performances reined in. Tilda Swinton is the key. She is always believable as this harassed, desperate, loving mother. She projects a kind of absorption in her task; she juggles blackmail, murder, bank loans, picking up the kids after school--it's as if the ordinary tasks keep her sane enough to deal with the dangers that surround her. "The Deep End" is the kind of crime movie where the everyday surroundings make the violence seem all the more shocking and gruesome.
Nobody much wants to really hurt anybody, and in a nice twist even one of the villains doesn't have much heart for the task, but once the machinery of death and deception has been set into motion, it carries everyone along with it. It's intense and involving, and it doesn't let us go.
..................................................................................
"The Waiting Room"
starring: Anne-Marie Duffy, Frank Finlay, Rupert Graves, Adrian Bower, Daisy Donovan, Zoe Telford
written and directed by: Roger Goldby
"The Waiting Room" is set in London and is an exploration of the romantic lives of several attractive young adults. Anna (Anne-Marie Duff) is the single mother of a post-toddler. She is divorced from Toby (Adrian Bower) who shows up now and then to argue and share custody. Anna is having a fling with George (Rupert Graves), who is happily in lust with her and happens to be her "neighbor."
Unfortunately, George is unhappily married to Jem (Zoe Telford), who is also Anna's best friend. Jem looks younger and more attractive than Anna, but the sex is presumably better with the latter. To further complicate their marriage, Jem and George also have a post-toddler child.
Anna cuts off the affair with George when she meets the Perfect Man. He is tall, dark, handsome, young, kind, and humble. He's also awkward in conversation, but not to worry, he can probably be trained. This Perfect Man is Stephen (Ralf Little), who works at a nursing home where his sensitivity is directed at his favorite resident, Helen (Phyllida Law). Part of the whole Perfect Man puzzle.
Stephen is living with Fiona (Christine Bottomley), the youngest and most attractive of our three female leads. Nevertheless, Stephen loses all interest in her once he meets Anna, partly because this is a movie, but also because Fiona's biological clock is ticking loudly and Stephen is the typical guy who doesn't really see a point in setting things up for the future he doesn't know or want to know about.
Stephen's big romance with Anna has one problem. They've only met once, and don't know the other's name, or where he/she lives. So, they each hang out where they first met, at the train station, hoping to see each other again. Which they do, just as the movie ends.
This is the type of film that is made for women, just taking the Perfect Man as the whole equation, but even how things play out it's like a woman's fantasy. Everything works out, in the end, with just a few bystanders getting hurt in the process, but it doesn't really matter because the two main characters are the focus.
Why do George and Stephen pine after Anna when each has someone who not only loves him, but is younger and better looking? This has something to do with the casting, but it must be admitted that Anna is more fun than either Jem or Fiona. They are depressed over their failing relationship, but the depression only makes things worse. You can't keep your lover by trying to make him feel sorry for you.
Why does Anna pine after Stephen? It's not because she feels guilty over shagging George. That is only the excuse she uses to break off their affair. Why won't Anna take the bait of Brian (Lee Williams), an educated and (already) financially successful young looker? Why is she so set on coming across Stephen again, whom she has barely met and not even conversed with. And what are the odds that Stephen would feel exactly the same way?
There's no answer except that true love conquers in the movies. So, then, the entire plot, with its elaborate love triangles and charming dialogue, is just the set-up for the improbable ending. I feel sorry for the people that thinks this is how life works (out). For once, here is an foreign (British), indie film that misses the mark in being realistic.
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