March 2011 – Page 3 – Empty Screens

Review: You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger

March 23, 2011April 8, 2011 Jamie NeishLeave a comment

You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, writer/director Woody Allen’s fortieth feature film, is tale of chicanery, infatuation and disappointment, and reunites one of the world’s best directors with the beautiful city of London.

The film follows a pair of married couples, Alfie (Anthony Hopkins) and Helena (Gemma Jones), and their daughter Sally (Naomi Watts) and husband Roy (Josh Brolin), as their passions, ambitions, and anxieties lead them into trouble and out of their minds.

After Alfie leaves Helena to pursue his lost youth and a free-spirited call girl named Charmaine (Lucy Punch), Helena abandons rationality and surrenders her life to the loopy advice of a charlatan fortune teller.

Unhappy in her marriage, Sally develops a crush on her handsome art gallery owner boss, Greg (Antonio Banderas), while Roy, a novelist nervously awaiting the response to his latest manuscript, becomes moonstruck over Dia (Freida Pinto), a mystery woman who catches his gaze through a nearby window.

Though not Allen’s strongest material, You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger still has a solid story, blending the ups and downs of each relationship, and highlighting the hypocrisies of marriage. Allen clearly still has a way of letting his stories unfold in an eloquent and timely manner.

Through the unstable characters’ troubled relationships, Allen not only examines how people deal with mortality but also how we cope with life, love and existence in general.

The film, however many life-altering questions it brings up, ends just when complications set in, which not only makes you wonder how invested Allen really is with the characters’ lives, but also makes it harder to empathise with their troubled being.

The characters, from Jones’ Helena neurotic to Brolin’s anguished Roy, feel more like puppets rather than human beings with natural instincts, human emotions and comprehensible senses. They all come over as extremely egocentric and have little to offer in the way of benevolence to their counterparts.

Jones leads the cast perfectly with her portrayal of Helena. Watts, Brolin and Hopkins fail to break free of their limited dialogue and uncoloured characters, and, the shamefully wasted trio of Punch, Friel and Banderas who, despite having the most interesting on-screen personaes, are not given enough time to thrive amongst their equally underused counterparts.

While the acting isn’t up to the heights of Vicky Christina Barcelona, Annie Hall or even Match Point, it’s impressively low key enough to be a joy to watch.

You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger is by no means Allen’s best film, but it’s also not his worst. It’s well-plotted, beautifully directed, contains some mildy humorous moments and isn’t short of talented actors.

It’s irritating, then, that it’s let down so wrongly by glorified scenery, under-developed characters and a script that seems to foolishly avoid dramatic impact.

Poster: Super

March 23, 2011April 8, 2011 Jamie NeishLeave a comment

Director – James Gunn

Starring – Rainn Wilson, Ellen Page, Liv Tyler and Kevin Bacon

Cinema Releases: March 23, 2011

March 23, 2011April 8, 2011 Jamie NeishLeave a comment

Limitless

Director: Neil Burger

Starring: Bradley Cooper, Robert De Niro, Abbie Cornish

The Eagle

Director: Kevin Macdonald

Starring: Channing Tatum, Jamie Bell and Donald Sutherland

Trailer: 11-11-11

March 22, 2011 Jamie NeishLeave a comment

Director – Darren Lynn Bousman

Starring – Michael Landes, Wendy Glenn, Timothy Gibbs and Benjamin Cook

Review: Chalet Girl (2011)

March 22, 2011October 3, 2011 Jamie Neish1 Comment

Chalet Girl, a new Brit rom-com from director Phil Traill, centers on Kim (Felicty Jones), a former champion skateboarder stuck in a dead end job trying to support her Dad.

When the opportunity of a catering job in the one of the most exclusive chalets in the Alp comes knocking Kim takes the chance to discover snowboarding, and uses the big end-of-season competition to win some much-needed prize money. But before she can become a champion again, Kim has to dig deep to overcome her fears, and deal with the complicating factor of Jonny (Ed Westwick), her handsome – though spoken for – boss.

Phil Traill creates a reasonably believable world, and even makes up for the atrocious All About Steve. But his choice of bland cinematography and overbearing lighting do nothing for the beautiful scenery, or giddy action of the snowboarding scenes. The snow-blanketed Alps make for a very impressive backdrop, but Traill simply doesn’t have the experience to know how to use this to the films advantage, which in turn makes the endless montages and obvious stunt doubles more obvious and unbearable.

The script, written by Tom Williams, tries incredibly hard to please, stuffing every scene with every sort of gag possible, broadly caricatured characters and tongue-in-cheek dialogue, but it never hits the giddy highs of other teenage comedies, often succumbing to overuses of montage and falling over gags.

The core of the film, though, is Felicity Jones, in her first leading role. She’s a buoyantly likable lead, who mixes sarcasm and dead pan irony to superb avail, to the point where you even forgive her for choosing such a pointless film. It’s a light-hearted and fun performance, and a pleasant surprise to see such a talented British actress cast as a strong and forceful female.

The supporting cast, on the other hand, are hit and miss. Bill Nighy and Tamsin Egerton are forces of nature as Richard and Georgie respectively, each maintaining something of a comic composure while delivering quirky, comical and stand-out performances. Westwick, however, simply doesn’t have the credentials and screen presence needed to turn Jonny into a likeable, honest and interesting character. He’s pure and simple eye candy for Kim.

Chalet Girl is – aside from providing a few laughs – frustratingly dull and nothing more than a showcase for two talented British actresses: Felicity Jones and Tamsin Egerton.