The Prestige

Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige is a story of obsession and sacrifice and stars Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale as two up and coming magicians whose lives are transformed into an increasingly disastrous struggle of one-upmanship following a tragedy on stage. Each tries to out wit and out trick the other by disrupting each others acts, leading the other down blind alleyways and twisting reality through illusion and showmanship.

Mirroring the rest of Nolan’s filmography, The Prestige is a smart and beautiful film that is full of big ideas, well explored themes and unexpected twists and reveals. Nolan appears to take great delight in playing with his audience and treating them as intelligent equals, almost leading them along with him, through his twisted and mystifying subjects, knowing that by the time they reach the other side they will thank him for it. Nolan’s films are about ideas and he doesn’t shy away from presenting them to the audience without subtlety. Where he is perhaps more subtle is in his delivery which as usual is pitch perfect here.

The Bond

A half reel propaganda film, funded by and starring Charlie Chaplin, The Bond is a unique film in Chaplin’s cannon in that it is the only film he ever made to be filmed in front of a plain black set. There are just a few dimly lit props littered around the stage alongside the actors, Chaplin regulars Edna Purviance, Albert Austin and Sydney Chaplin. The film depicts several sketches along the theme of bonds, from friendship to marriage to the most important, Liberty Bonds.

Though not in the least bit funny the film is still an interesting watch and Chaplin’s simple to understand depiction of what Bonds actually did would have been seen by millions of people across the world. In a very simple sketch Chaplin offers up his savings to Uncle Sam who in turn gives it to Industry who finally furnishes soldiers with rifles. The idea is simple and easy to understand despite the lack of dialogue. In the final scene, Chaplin uses a large hammer with the words Liberty Bonds engraved on the side to smash the Kaiser into submission, thereby further expressing the idea of the difference the bonds can make.

Chariots of Fire

Winner of Best Picture at the 1981 Oscars, Chariots of Fire is set around the 1924 Paris Olympics and concerns two young British runners who are not only running for themselves and their country but for deeper, more personal reasons. Cambridge Undergraduate Harold Abrahams (Ben Cross) has faced anti-Semitism throughout his life and wants to run and win to put that out of his mind and show he is not deterred by the hateful language and attention he receives. Scottish Christian Eric Liddell (Ian Charleson) is devoutly religious and believes that his speed and determination is a sign from God that he should run. Both runners along with their friends Aubrey Montague (Nicholas Farrell) and Lord Andrew Lindsay (Nigel Havers) enter the Paris Olympics with dreams of winning gold.

Chariots of Fire, though now over thirty years old has recently returned to the spotlight thanks to the 2012 London Olympics. The film’s famous opening has been repeated over and over and was even used as the basis for a comedy skit by Rowan Atkinson during the Opening Ceremony. Vangelis’ famous score also featured during medal ceremonies. I’d never seen the film before today and although I think it was worth seeing, I certainly won’t be in a hurry to watch it again.

Hotel Transylvania

Fed up with being persecuted by humans, Count Dracula (Adam Sandler) decides to build a hotel for monsters that is protected from humanity by haunted forests and zombie filled graveyards. His ulterior motive though is to keep his daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez) safe and secure and away from anything that can hurt her. Dracula is planning a huge birthday party for Mavis with all of his monster friends in attendance when he is shocked to discover that a human (Andy Samberg) has found the hotel and is threatening to bring his and his daughter’s peaceful existence to an end.

Having been disappointed by ParaNorman and still waiting to see Frankenweenie I went into Hotel Transylvania with some trepidation. This feeling of weariness was heightened by the fact that I deeply dislike the majority of the voice cast. Even so I went in with an open mind and came out the other side thinking, “meh”. Overall I enjoyed the film more than ParaNorman but the initial conceit, which was a very good idea, couldn’t be sustained for ninety minutes. As a result there were large chunks of the film which were quite boring but were occasionally livened up by a decent joke or some attractively busy animation.

Chunking Express

Set deep inside the sprawling and sweaty mega city that is Hong Kong, Chunking Express tells the story of two love sick policemen who have lost love. The first story stars Takeshi Kaneshiro as Cop 223 who was dumped by his girlfriend on April 1^st and decides to wait for her to change her mind until his birthday a month later before moving on. At this time he meets a mysterious woman in a blonde wig (Brigitte Lin) who has connections to the underworld. The second story features Tony Leung Chiu-Wai as Cop 663, a man who has recently been dumped by his air hostess girlfriend. He frequents a small food stall called Midnight Express where the quirky and attractive Faye (Faye Wong) works.

At times I struggled to follow the storyline of the film which was a huge problem for me but there is enough to like besides that, that the film was really enjoyable and it features some great cinematography and quirky ideas. I loved the shots of central characters in slow motion with the rest of the world sped up. They looked fantastic and also worked as a metaphor to show the disconnection and loneliness that you can feel in a big city. The locations were also really interesting as I haven’t seen much Hong Kong cinema before; most of the places were new and exciting to watch.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show

I would like, if I may, to take you on a strange journey… The cult hit musical The Rocky Horror Picture Show currently holds the record for the longest running release in cinema history having never been pulled by 20^th Century Fox since its release in 1975. Chances are if you are in a large city that you’ll be able to find the film on at a midnight screening sometime in the near future. Though in no way a hit on its release, the film has since made one hundred times its original budget and has become one of the most popular musical films in history and my personal favourite.

Brad Majors (Barry Bostwick) and his new fiancée Janet Weiss (Susan Sarandon) are on their way to visit their old college professor when they break down in the middle of nowhere. Spotting a castle not far away they head off to see if they can use the phone but discover on their arrival that they have turned up on the night of an unusual party hosted by transvestite scientist Dr. Frank-N-Furter (Tim Curry) to celebrate the birth of a creature that Frank-N-Furter has created in his lab.

The Damned United

The Damned United is a sports-drama based partly on facts surrounding the meteoric rise and subsequent fall of the outspoken but gifted football manager Brian Clough. We follow Glough (Michael Sheen) back and forth from the late 1960s to 1974 beginning with his and Assistant Manager Peter Taylor’s (Timothy Spall) triumph in taking lowly Derby County from the bottom of the second division to national champions. This remarkable feat is spliced with events several years later when in 1974 Clough, without Taylor as his Assistant, took over the job of managing Leeds Utd, then the dominant force in English football. Clough’s time in charge of the club was to last just 44 days and this film portrays what happened during that turbulent month and a half as well as the years that preceded it.

The accuracy of the film’s ‘facts’ is open for debate with family members and players who knew Clough claiming that the portrayal of events are inaccurate but what can’t be denied is that Michael Sheen pulls off yet another pitch perfect performance in a film that is a fascinating watch for a football fan and a great story for someone who is not.

Led Zeppelin - Celebration Day

On December 10^th 2007 the seemingly impossible happened. Led Zeppelin, the world’s original super group and one of the few bands in history who could rival The Beatles for fame and popularity at their height, reformed for a one off concert at London’s O2 Arena for the Ahmet Ertegun Tribute Concert. The show set a world record for ticket demand with over twenty million people (including myself) registering online for a chance of one of the 20,000 tickets. Like close to twenty million others I didn’t get a ticket for a show that myself and other fans had been waiting for, for over twenty five years.

Fast forward nearly five years to October 17^th 2012 and the concert was screened for one day worldwide in cinemas ahead of a DVD and Blu Ray release on November 19^th. This time demand wasn’t so high and I managed to get two tickets for a screening at my local multiplex. While in no way the same as seeing the band, my favourite of all time, live, the two hours I sat in the cinema were amazing. The band showed that despite having barely played together in thirty years and missing original drummer John Bonham whose death in 1980 was the trigger for the band’s breakup, that they are still able to rock with the best and sounded close to as good as they have on any other live recording I’ve seen.

The Woman in the Fifth

A writer and University Professor (Ethan Hawke) arrives in Paris with hopes of relocating to the French capital and reconnecting with his estranged daughter. After tracking down his ex wife and child he is shunned by the former and warned to stay away. His ex tries to convince the daughter that her father has been in prison but he claims he was just ill. The writer soon finds himself robbed of all his possessions and manages to secure a small room in a hotel run by a gangster in exchange for acting as a night guard, an ask no questions role. One evening he meets a mysterious widow (Kristen Scott Thomas) and the two begin a strange affair, ruled by her odd request of meeting at 5pm sharp in her 5^th arrondissement apartment.

This is a film with a lot of build up and minimal payoff. I spent seventy five minutes waiting for the reveal in an ever increasingly bizarre film but it never came. It’s very difficult to discuss the film without spoilers so I’ll write what I thought and then present my opinions at the bottom of the page in case anyone doesn’t want any spoilers.

A Dog's Life

Charlie Chaplin’s first short for First National Pictures was released in April 1918, six months after his final film for Mutual. Chaplin in his Tramp character befriends a local mongrel dog called Scraps and together they go about causing mischief and mayhem. Later, Scraps comes to the aid of the Tramp when he gets into trouble with some thugs and helps his master set up a new life for himself and his new lady friend, a bar singer (Edna Purviance).

What was immediately obvious about this opening First National film was its quality. The sets, costume and story are all far superior to pretty much anything seen in a Chaplin film before. The sets especially look as though they may well have been real streets. There is a much more rounded story which incorporates comedy as one aspect rather than relying solely on kicks up the backside or doffing caps to curbs. The film is still funny but this isn’t one of Chaplin’s finest works. What it is though is one of his finest stories to date and overall one of his best short films.

Charlie Chaplin - The First National Films

Having ended his contract with the Mutual Film Corporation amicably, Charlie Chaplin signed the world’s first One Million Dollar movie contract in June 1918. This contract gave him total control over production for a return of eight films. Chaplin decided to build a new studio off Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. The famous Chaplin Studios were designed in the style of English country cottages and contained everything Chaplin would need to develop, film and cut his movies. Chaplin eventually sold the studios in 1953 and they are now owned by Jim Henson Company.

Chaplin began work on his first film for First National in early 1918 and A Dog’s Life was released in April. Over the next four years Chaplin shot eight films at his new studio for First National during one of the most turbulent times of his career. In September 1918 he married the seventeen year old actress Mildred Harris in what was and still is a highly controversial marriage. Harris lied to Chaplin about being pregnant and the marriage ended in a messy divorce in 1920. During the same period the star became frustrated with First National’s impatience and lack of concern for quality and in 1919, while still under contract with First National created United Artists with fellow actors and directors Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D. W. Griffith. The venture which was self funded and offered the Hollywood stars the chance to work freely and independently although Chaplin himself didn’t make a film with the company until 1922 as he was still under contract with First National.

Ruby Sparks

Calvin Weir-Fields (Paul Dano) is still living off the success of his first novel which was published when he was still in his teens. Ten years on he is struggling to write despite having no friends to distract him. In an attempt to help him open up his shrink (Elliot Gould) tells him to write a few pages about whatever comes to mind. After waking from a recurring dream about an enchanting woman, Calvin finds that he can’t stop writing. His writing comes to a halt though one morning when he wakes up to find his literary creation Ruby Sparks (Zoe Kazan) is alive and in his kitchen making eggs. Has he gone insane or has his character really jumped off the page and into his life?

The trailer for Ruby Sparks was excellent and I was really looking forward to the film. It had the sort of buzz that accompanied Little Miss Sunshine and looked to be a quirky and funny indie comedy of the sort that I’m very fond of. Now I’ve seen the film I can attest that the trailer is even better that I thought as it trails a film which doesn’t quite live up to the advert and certainly isn’t as funny as advertised.

Hamlet

Based on one of William Shakespeare’s most famous plays, 1948’s Hamlet was Directed by and starred Laurence Olivier. The film became somewhat of a Marmite film, winning four Oscars including Best Picture but being criticized by some for leaving out vital aspects and characters from Shakespeare’s text. I had never seen a production of Hamlet until today but despite being forced to read Shakespeare at school in the most uninspiring ways possible, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the several plays I’ve seen as an adult. I am in no way an expert on the bard but what I’ve seen, I’ve loved. It’s with a heavy heart then that I have to report that I did not enjoy Olivier’s interpretation of Hamlet and found it to be one of the dullest movie watching experiences of my year so far.

I’d class Hamlet as a good film which I did not enjoy, much as The Expendables is a bad film which I did enjoy. One of the difficulties when one is watching a Shakespeare play or film is the language barrier. Written in four hundred year old English, the words and phrases are very different to my modern mother tongue and it can be difficult to extract the meaning from the text. I’ve never really struggled before with the likes of Richard III, Romeo and Juliet, Coriolanus and Much Ado About Nothing but here much of the language washed over me. I think this was because of two things. Firstly I wasn’t interested and secondly the actor’s voices reverberated around the sound stage causing echoes which bumped into the following words.

On the Waterfront

The winner of the Best Picture Oscar in 1954, On the Waterfront is a crime drama about urban violence and corruption amongst longshoremen in the New York docks. Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) is a former prize fighter turned longshoreman with links to mob connected union boss Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb). After the death of a dock worker in suspicious circumstances, his sister (Eva Marie Saint) begins sniffing around and becomes involved with Terry which causes him to be torn between two worlds and right and wrong.

The film was nominated for an impressive twelve Academy Awards, winning eight including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Brando) and Best Supporting Actress (Saint). With eight wins it joined Gone with the Wind and From here to Eternity as the most highly decorated films in history at that time. The film itself was a fairly low budget expose of the corrupt underworld of the New York docks and bought to light the now common themes of mob racketeering and deaf and dumb police cooperation.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

I saw this film a little by accident and although I wasn’t as impressed with it as some others, I’m glad I saw it. We went to the cinema to see Liberal Arts but after just five days on release, it had been pulled by my local multiplex so we chose Wallflower instead. Charlie (Logan Lerman) is nervous about starting his first day of High School and is already counting down the days until he can graduate. He is smart and shy and has had a tumultuous twelve months which only added to an already painful life. On his first day he manages to avoid trouble but makes just one friend, his English teacher (Paul Rudd) who spots something in Charlie and gives him extra work to do at home. A few weeks into the school year though Charlie starts to become friendly with step siblings Patrick (Ezra Miller) and Sam (Emma Watson) which leads to a year of ups and downs on his road to manhood.

I’d describe The Perks of Being a Wallflower as a grower, not a shower. I found the opening few minutes difficult to enjoy and had little to relate to the main characters but as it opened up it really grew on me and I found it charming. It’s as good a High School film as I’ve seen this year and contains some nice messages and great performances.

The Adventurer

Chaplin’s final film in his Mutual contract and marking the end of a brief but fruitful relationship is The Adventurer. A convict (Chaplin) is on the run from Prison Guards on the coast when he hears the sounds of people crying out for help. He comes across three people who are drowning having fallen off a nearby pier and saves each of them one by one. One of the people he saves is an attractive young woman (Edna Purviance) who invites the man back to her house to rest without knowing his past. As the two begin to get on very well, the convict’s past catches up with him thanks to the persistence of the young girl’s suitor (Eric Campbell).

Chaplin’s final outing for Mutual is a more than decent short which features some genuinely laugh out loud moments in addition to a well tailored story and plenty of trademark slapstick. What makes it stand out for me though is not only was it the last film Chaplin made for the Mutual Corporation but it was also his last to feature regular adversary Eric Campbell who tragically died just a couple of months after the film’s release in a drink driving accident. Chaplin and Campbell were very close friends, living next door to one another when the latter died and Chaplin never again cast a regular actor to play his antagonist.

Contraband

A remake of the Icelandic film Reykjavik-Rotterdam and Directed by the star of the original, Baltasar Kormakur, Contraband is a middle of the road action-thriller starring Mark Wahlberg as a former smuggler who is forced to take on one final job to save the life of his wife’s brother. Featuring a more than talented cast and a couple of nice reveals, Contraband occasionally rises above the milieu of generic thrillers but overall lands back in amongst its fellows with a script that contains little real action and few thrills.

Whenever I see the names Giovanni Ribisi or Ben Foster appear in opening credits I always sit up and take notice as for my money they are two of the best actors working in Hollywood today. To have them both in the same film is some coup. Wahlberg is an actor who occasionally impresses me but pretty much phones in his performance here and his wife, played by Kate Beckinsale is merely a plot device and has no meaningful role or lines. The same can be said for the talented Lukas Haas who is given little chance to shine.

My Fair Lady

The winner of eight Academy Awards including the coveted Best Picture, My Fair Lady is based on the stage musical of the same name and tells the story of a young working class flower seller called Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn) who is taken in by an arrogant phonetics Professor Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison) who bets that he can transform the young woman’s gutter mouth and slovenly demeanour into that of a lady who could pass for Aristocracy under close inspection in just six months. The film can rightly be called a classic and contains some of the most recognisable songs in all of musical cinema.

The film is lavishly designed and very well made, featuring some incredible sets which have such a realistic look that I wasn’t totally convinced they weren’t real, despite being more than familiar with some of the locations. The entire film was shot in California but creates a vision of London as real as I’ve seen in any American film. And not a single shot of Big Ben or a ‘London, England’ caption. Bliss. It is also a very well acted film on the whole with just one exception. Rex Harrison won a more than deserved Oscar for his performance and Stanley Holloway and Gladys Cooper were also recognised with deserved nominations but the actor who lets the film down is its lead, Audrey Hepburn.

No Country for Old Men

A film that is difficult to place into just one particular genre, 2007s No Country for Old Men saw the Coen brothers win their first and perhaps long overdue Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director. In a year for which its main rival was the equally nihilistic and violent There Will Be Blood the Coen’s film won a total of four Oscars and three BAFTAS. Set in the West Texas desert in the early 1980s the film is based on the novel of the same name by Cormac McCarthy and tells the story of a man (Josh Brolin) who chances upon the aftermath of a drug deal gone wrong and finds $2 million just waiting to be taken. He is chased by the vicious and merciless hit man Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) who is hired to get the money back. Both are in turn hunted down by local Sheriff Ed Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) who despite in being way over his head maintains a calm exterior in the face of the task in front of him. No Country for Old Men is the sort of film that I’d be happy to watch every five years or so but wouldn’t want to see it any more often than that. It is a supremely made movie which features some stunning performances and an interesting story but I found myself drifting more and more as it went on.

Platoon

Platoon takes us through a tour of the Vietnam War through the eyes of the fresh and idealistic young volunteer Chris Taylor (Charlie Sheen). We follow Taylor from his first day in Nam to his final battle accompanied by voice-over which expresses his thoughts, worries and ideas. The film appears to accurately portray the day-to-day life of a soldier in the jungle and promotes the views of the monotonous nature of infantry warfare which is punctuated by moments of extreme violence. Platoon creates an environment for its cast whereby the characters fear not only the Vietcong and jungle but also each other as tensions and rivalries run high and suspicion spreads like wildfire. Personally I think it is one of the finest war movies ever made and it went on to win four Oscars including Best Director and Best Picture at the 59th Academy Awards.  

A History of Violence

I first saw A History of Violence at the cinema in 2005. This wasn’t because it was the latest David Cronenberg film but was rather because the nineteen year old me thought it would be cool to see the new film “with that Lord of the Rings guy in it”. I’ve changed substantially in the last seven years and have since grown to love film but for me what was great about the film on my first naive viewing is still great but unfortunately what is poor, remains so.  The film was released to universal critical acclaim but for me at least it is nowhere close to Cronenberg’s best work.

Tom Stall (That guy off of The Lord of the Rings) is a mild mannered diner owner in a small town in Indiana. He has close ties to the community and a loving family which includes his wife (Maria Bello), son (Ashton Holmes) and young daughter (Heidi Hayes). One day two crooks come to town and try to rob Tom’s diner but after fending them off in an act of self defence Tom gains a little local celebrity. This attracts the attentions of East Coast gangster Carl Fogarty (Ed Harri) who seems convinced that quiet, shy Tom is a former gangster called Joey.

The Cure

An improvement on the comedy of Easy Street but a film with much more of a slapstick nature, The Cure finds Charlie Chaplin playing an inebriate who checks into a health spa in order to get sober. His huge suitcase though is full to bursting with bottles of liquor which find their way into the health spa’s well with disastrous consequences. Along the way Chaplin befriends Edna Purviance after saving her from the clutches of the wicked Eric Campbell.    

This is a short that is packed full of gags, some of which are a little repetitive but many hit the nail on the head. It also features a larger role for Chaplin regular John Rand who appears in most of Chaplin’s Mutual Films but usually just has a walk on role. In The Cure he has almost as much screen time as Campbell and Purviance but doesn’t make as much of an impact on the film as Chaplin’s two main collaborators. The story is tight but not wide reaching and is a lot more basic than many of the films from the same period, but what it lacks in story it makes up for with laughs. Chaplin’s dizziness following his turn in the revolving door also gave him the same symptoms as he showed nearly twenty years later in Modern Times when he ‘took’ cocaine. His walk and spinning was almost identical and equally amusing.

The Intouchables

Last year’s French award baiting, box office smash hit, The Intouchables known in the UK as Untouchable finally gets a release in the UK, a full year later than in its home country and my was it worth the wait. The film broke box office records in France, becoming the 2^nd highest grossing French film of all time after just nine weeks at the box office and has gone on to gross  €277 million worldwide from a budget of just €9.5 million. I’d heard very good things from the countries that had been lucky enough to get the film within a year of its release but I wasn’t expecting to enjoy the film quite as much as I did. It’s been a very good month for film with the likes of Anna Karenina, Looper and then Holy Motors all edging into my current 2012 Top 10 list but I think at the moment Untouchable is beating them all with it’s surprisingly frank and extremely funny portrayal of a young French-Senegalese man’s (Omar Sy) struggle in taking on the role of full time carer for a paralysed millionaire (François Cluzet).

Casablanca

Although relatively popular and well received when released in the summer of 1942 due in part to events in North Africa at the time, Casablanca has since risen to be one of the most critically acclaimed and well though of films in history. It currently ranks number 23 on the IMDb’s Top 250, number 3 on the AFI’s 100 Movies and is one of Hollywood’s most loved romantic melodramas. The film is also one of the most quoted films of all time too with quotes such as “We’ll always have Paris”, “Here’s looking at you, kid” and the often misquoted “Play it Sam. Play As Time Goes By” being well known to people who have never even seen the film. Until today I was one of those people and like hundreds of other classic films it was on my list of must sees for a long time. Now it’s off that list and I’m glad of it. Although I wouldn’t personally put it towards the top of my favourite films of all time it is certainly a wonderfully taught and romantic drama which successfully mixes the geo-political problems of the age with a fine romantic story which remains eternal to this day.

The plot is set in the Moroccan city of Casablanca on the route of a great refugee trail from Nazi occupied Europe towards America. Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) is a cynical and politically non aligned bar owner based in Casablanca whose neutrality is put to the test when an old flame unexpectedly appears back in his life.