The Amazing Spider-Man 2

Was I amazed by this? I’m not sure, but he’s still hyphenated. There are some amazing things that happen here, some things are maybe not so amazing. The story seems to concern itself with Peter Parker’s relationship with Gwen, of course the daughter of a dead police officer. He told Peter to leave her alone as he was convinced that due to his shenanigans; harm would come to her. There is as well Harry, Peter’s friend who is the son of an industrialist who set up Oscorp, a massive company with a number of issues. Big corporate business is course evil and immoral, does nobody investigate and regulate these companies. Their health and safety at work practices leave a lot to be desired.

The there’s Max; he’s a put upon employee of Oscorp who becomes Electro, after he falls into a vat of electric eels. He seems to be an electric version of Dr Manhattan, surely not. He jumps to big conclusions to start hating Spider-man after previously being a friend of his. As well as Oscorp he has issues of his own as well.

I have a few issues though that I can’t get over. The suit now looks like one of those all over Lycra suits that men wear to stag nights, to clubs, to football matches and fancy dress days at cricket, the ones where they cover the face as well. How hilarious was it when they had Andrew Garfield making jokes about England in the oh so accurateUniversity of Oxford office in New York. I know it’s a comic book but, if you’ve not seen the film look away now, Peter’s father’s lab as a subway train that he presses a button to activate and it still works after twenty years, and it’s still clean! And now after five twenty first century films I still actually prefer the 1970s cartoon, there I said it.

American Hustle

A film about identity, but then what film isn’t? This one though is about duplicity and betrayal, no still not unique. It’s about con artists conning con artists and the FBI using dubious tactics to take down elected officials who in turn may not have told the truth in their efforts to get elected. It’s also about hair and in 1978 that was a whole different ball game compared to todays. It’s easy to get transfixed by Christian Bale’s, Bradley Cooper’s and Jeremy Renner’s hair.

Perfume is another key to this as Jennifer Lawrence goes at length to explain about wonderful smelling perfume having something rotten mixed in their to make a more complex scent. This maybe the key to a good scam, a bit of argument to make it real, Harrison Ford adlibbing in Star Wars, Aberdeen footballers shoving each other around before taking a free kick.

The thing is though; we may be being scammed as well. We’re told at the beginning that some of this actually happened. What did happen, what did we just see? The ensemble are so beautifully balanced that Russell’s got you believing that their real people. He also uses that Scorsese confessional voice over as well; those are real people aren’t they? It helps as well when you can see what the characters could lose and what they could gain, and how when you reach the crest of that wave there’s always a chance that you’ll come crashing down into the surf.

Music is very important in this film. This is evident from the first bars of Duke Ellington at the beginning as Sydney and Irving connect at the pool party. Throughout we’re treated to Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and The Jean Genie among others. The highlight though is Jennifer Lawrence’s cleaning session while she lip synchs to Live and Let Die. Christian Bale is also given the opportunity to exercise his Welshness when he sings along to Tom Jones’s Delilah, although Jeremy Renner may have been more enthusiastic. As it’s set in 1978 there is the trip to Studio 54 as well, Don’t Leave Me This Way, indeed. The only song that seems to be missing is Do The Hustle.

There aren’t many films that are as cleverly plotted as this, whilst remaining credible and funny at the same time. Jennifer Lawrence’s character has such a beautiful skewed logic as well that alleviates many a tricky situation. I love the way that she can turn the destruction of a microwave oven into a diatribe about how she didn’t want it in the first place. It’s delicately and finely balanced, wonderfully written, paced and plotted and gorgeously acted.

Gravity

The title could refer to the force that keeps us from floating out into space, although it could be a reference to the seriousness of a situation, things here are indeed heavy.

This film then is another in line of films, some based on reality some not, where things have not gone to plan on NASA missions; Apollo 13, Apollo 18, Capricorn One, The Planet of the Apes. Here though we have Sandra Bullock and George Clooney on the Space Shuttle Explorer attempting to break spacewalk records and to repair the Hubble telescope. Unfortunately a Russian satellite goes awry causing all sorts of havoc. Anyway in space it seems that no-one can hear you talking to yourself. Sandra Bullock takes a tour of space stations floating around the earth in an attempt to rectify her situation.

At the beginning we are told about the absence of sound in a vacuum which takes a little while to get used to. We are treated to a lot of Sandra Bullock's heavy breathing in her space suit. The silence though becomes kind of reassuring. Like those marvellous holidays taken far away from civilization, except you're spared the potentially incredibly noisy countryside. The way that sound is dealt with is part though of the whole restrained tone of the film. We see Bullock ache with restraint, also with great pain, as she deals with her misfortunes. The restraint and the subject matter lead to images of great beauty of the Earth for one example, but also of a serene, solitary tear floating in the space station at one point.

There is throughout the themes of vulnerability and ultimately chance. When I think of human space exploration and the deaths that have occurred in that, I’m not surprised that people have died, I’m surprised that more haven’t. At one point Bullock almost emulates Jane Fonda in Barbarella when she enters the International Space Station. The way she does this though reinforces the vulnerability of the situation. She is after all a woman being protected from the vast vacuum of space by the ultra-light heavily engineered materials to make her space suit and the space station.

What makes this different from most of those other films about space exploration, is that when it comes down to basics, when all else has failed, when the umbilical cord has broken; you're on your own.

Les Misérables

This is often called the Glums by those that appear in this on the stage, it’s known by a whole load of other names by those who see it. It was a film that I came to with some trepidation I must admit. I have never been a fan of modern musicals, by which I mean ones written since the 1970s. So I was braced for not a great evening and well it may be damning with faint praise but it was better than I expected. It wasn’t a massive calamitous disaster, just not that great.

I did not expect the film to be 90% singing, had I been living in a cave? Anyway I found a lot of the singing, the music and the lyrics to be awful. I found myself waiting for the songs to end and for the story to progress, too much introspection. There were high points; I Dreamed A Dream and the songs about the barricades were stirring. Hugh Jackman did well carrying the film and Anne Hathaway did okay as well.

The production design was fantastic, all the sets inside and out of Paris and Montreuil had been lovingly built, as well as the ship being pulled in by the convicts at the beginning. I found that the story was quite saggy throughout and wasn’t helped by the continual differing version of the same song over and over again. Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter annoyed me intensely; I never understood why he sang in a French accent when every one else sang in an English one, even Russell Crowe (ish).

I was expecting truly dreadful, it wasn’t as quite as bad as that.

Up

I had been warned that the first ten minutes of this film would be harrowing and heart wrenching. They were not wrong on Twitter, we are presented with the story of Carl and Ellie as they fall in love and plan for their adventure to Paradise Falls in South America. This is inspired by the derring dos of the pilot of an airship that they see in a newsreel. We see them grow older and we see time take its toll, Carl makes a promise to Ellie that they will make it there.

The story then is about the fulfilment of this promise. At the age of 78 Carl attaches thousands of helium balloons making the house float. He steers to house south on the way to Paradise Falls. He is aided somewhat in this by Russell, a scout who needs his helping the elderly badge so that he can become a senior scout.

The film and the story are pretty well executed as most Pixar films are. I did find that some of the lessons learnt by the characters may have been similar to those in Toy Story. They learnt how to adapt to change and how these changes necessitate a change in perspective. There are also the themes of ageing and finding purpose in life on evidence here as well.

The film drops in a few references to Star Wars, the Wizard of Oz and King Kong here and there. It features a pack of talking dogs and the vocal talents of Ed Asner and Christopher Plummer.

It all ends up being about how friends are perennially more important than things and possessions, so true.

Grigris

A compelling and, at times, exhilarating film about the eponymous Grigris and his life in Chad. Despite a major physical disability he dances in a night club to the delight of everyone there. They see him dance in a graceful, fluid and energetic fashion that takes the breath away. He especially gains the attention of Mimi; a woman of negotiable affection.

He earns money from his dancing, as he does from a number of other jobs and activities he takes part in. He helps his mother to distribute washed clothes around the town and he helps his step-father in his tailor’s shop where Grigris takes photos in the studio in the back. It’s here that he first speaks to Mimi, as it turns out that she’s an aspiring model. Their relationship blossoms from there, whilst suffering a few ups and downs. His step-father is taken ill however, and this leads Grigris on a path to make large amounts as health needs to be paid for.

Within all this the theme of loyalty is explored plentifully in the film. This leads Grigris to work out how all of these priorities maybe contradict each other. At times in doing the right thing by someone he ends up doing the wrong thing by someone else. This is exacerbated by Grigris becoming involved in petrol smuggling which has of course potentially more serious effects, and if you piss these people off they generally stay pissed off.

Mimi’s character is very interesting as well. In working as a prostitute she does need to have good customer service skills and be welcoming to people. The film however ably explores the vulnerability of her situation and the potential dangers that she has to expose herself to. In effect her safety is only really guaranteed by the attitude and the behaviour of her clients. It’s telling that she looks like a different person when she’s working and when she’s not, as if there are two different persons.

The film does slip into some twee moments sometimes, but that maybe the relative experience of the actors used in different scenes. There are a number of scenes in a Chadian village and I got the impression that the characters there were portrayed by amateur actors. It seems to be a common theme in films these days but there is the difference between city life and rural life that seems to be becoming more pronounced these days.

A Long and Happy Life Долгая счастливая жизнь

This is the story of Sasha who, despite his own initial intentions, fights the local landowners when they try and liquidate the farm he runs in Russia. They offer him compensation and this make his girlfriend, Anna, very happy as she knows now that they can get an apartment together in the city. His co-workers though decided otherwise and when Sasha puts the offer to them they tell him in no uncertain terms that they will fight to stay and farm the land. Even with compensation they won’t have the means to make a living. Sasha then risks his future plans and relationship in confirming his solidarity with them.

We are presented with a few dichotomies here in the film. It’s about how the world of modern offices, dyed blonde hair and Hyundai cars these days come up against the world of old, wooden agricultural buildings, manual land management (i.e. non mechanised) and basically a hand to mouth existence. In a way it’s concerned with a theme of how the world has modernised in places and how it hasn’t in others. There is the recognition as well that some people do not want to take part in Westernisation and are happy with their life as it is without relative progress.

I like the way in the film that the actions are really allowed to speak for themselves and that we are shown and told as well. It is made as well in a manner not dissimilar to cinéma verité, or I suppose Kino-Pravda as it’s a Russian film. I’m sure that on many occasions the actors have improvised and have been given an idea of where they need to get to with their dialogue. There are some delicious scenes when at one point the farmers are telling Sasha that they will refuse to leave and are showing a complete sense of assertiveness in not being afraid at all of contradicting him. It doesn’t seem long after that though that they’re calling him the master, and insisting that he goes to the head of the queue in the shop. It’s a film that’s rough round the edges in the production and the acting, but it’s none the worse for that.