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Breaking and Entering (Anthony Minghella, 2006): Anthony Minghella returns to his low-key roots after Hollywood success with
The English Patient, The Talented Mr. Ripley and
Cold Mountain, but disappointingly that doesn't mean that he's recovered his talent. Minghella's vision of London is an odd one, where, sure, thieves and prostitutes exist, but they're never really bad or damaged people, just misunderstood. Minghella simply cannot grasp the darker side of the story he's trying to tell, swerving away from brief dalliances with it- Juliette Binoche's brief, angry run-in with her brother-in-law, who's corrupting her son- and seems so enamoured with the perfect little communual nature he's developed by the end that he goes totally overboard with a trite and unbelievable courtroom scene, followed by an even worse scene where someone changes their mind so quickly you'd think her neck had been snapped. I suppose you might want to see this for the attractive, respected cast, and while Juliette Binoche is superb and Robin Wright Penn does her best, Jude Law- given a monstrous part, make no mistake- is a repugnant and horrible lead whom is clearly supposed to be sympathetic in his deliberations between his Swedish girlfriend of ten years who has an autistic daughter, and the Bosnian immigrant mother of the teenager who broke into his office. It's not that Binoche's immigrant is a bad person, drawing Law's architect away, but that we are asked to be sympathetic towards this man, who selfishly becomes exasperated with his girlfriend when she has done nothing wrong except care for her daughter.
Breaking and Entering is an unexpectedly bitter film, a bit like Todd Field's
Little Children in that way, although thankfully Minghella does allow us a few glimpses at human connection- the relationship between Binoche and her son (the promising Rafi Gavron) is briefly seen but the warmest one in a film full of frostiness and distrust. If Minghella didn't thrust such a trite and 'upbeat' ending on us I might be more persuaded to take
Breaking and Entering as a warning parable- the title, which ostensibly refers to Gavron's thieving habits, also seems to refer to twofold to Law's character: his pursuit into Binoche's withdrawn, private world, but also the wider difficulty of his invasion into King's Cross, an idea criticized throughout. But
Breaking and Entering, for all its protestations otherwise, doesn't take place in King's Cross- it takes place in Minghella's fantasy world, one where lawyers are easily tricked and affairs are forgiven at the drop of a hat. It is not somewhere I want to be.
Grade: C-]
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Casino Royale (Martin Campbell, 2006): Casino Royale is too long, yes, but I honestly can't think of what part of it I'd cut out, so I suppose that maybe it's actually not. I'm sure you've heard, repeatedly, that this is a reinvention of the Bond series, a Bourne-ification, if you want, since Jason Bourne has surely become today's gold standard for spy films.
Casino Royale doesn't quite reach the dizzy heights of either of the Bourne films, which are unmatched in their dark cocktail of amnesia, corruption and solitary existance, but I can't say that it doesn't come close. Bond has been stripped back to the essentials: gone are Q, Moneypenny, invisible cars and all those campy one-liners. Bond is serious, Bond is blond: Bond is Daniel Craig, who gives the infamous creation a harder-edge than perhaps ever before, but also a softer one- Bond's heart is hardened by his requisite two killings, then softened by Eva Green's gorgeous Vesper Lynd, sent to accompany him on a mission to combat the world's premier poker player, Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen). You might think, and indeed some do, that the middle section of the film is the boring part, because it majorly consists of a poker game- and yet Martin Campbell and his actors, and his camera, do their very best to keep the cards are gripping as the chases scenes, and it works.
Casino Royale is a moral maze, one where the villain isn't really the villain and where the Bond girl isn't really a Bond girl. Campbell balances
Royale's complications on a knife edge, keeping his audience riveted for two and a half hours- a running time which pained when Bryan Singer employed it for the lacklustre
Superman Returns this summer, but
Casino Royale is a paced, exhilirating thrill-ride, constantly flipping itself over- both literally and figuratively- and shifting expectations. The film ends suddenly, obviously setting itself up for a sequel, but simultaneously, so much and so little has happened in
Casino Royale, and you're left with the strange feeling of being both satisfied and hungry for more.
Grade: B+]
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Final Destination 3 (James Wong, 2006): Final Destination 3 was actually released in theatres, though the DVD is so lovingly crafted you'd never believe it. The film, see, comes on DVD with a "Choose Their Fate" option- you, as you watch the film, will be prompted to make 'key' decisions on things, leading to different events in the following film. This sounds like an interesting idea, especially within such a repetative series like the
Final Destination films, which have finally given up trying to be intelligent and simply focus on the thrills. I must say, I enjoyed the first two films, intrigued by their phylosophical intrigues, slim as they were, and felt the two films entwinement with each other was quite complex. But
Final Destination 3, save a couple of brief and explanatory words, is its own seperate entity, and therefore cannot pretend to be complex, and so they have clearly decided instead to advertise their delight in death and let you, the viewer, have a hand in choosing it. The problem with this is not the moral message behind it (though I suppose that's questionable) but the shoddy way that the makers of the DVD do it. One day, perhaps, we will actually be able to change films to suit what we want, but we're clearly not there yet. And as a straightforward film- which is how I watched it first time-
Final Destination 3 is exactly what you'd expect- empty, badly-acted, slow and silly, although still creditably inventive in all the different ways it thinks off to off people. But, really, I need
something slightly intelligent behind my death movies, and there's not an iota of that to be seen here.
Grade: C-]
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Miss Potter (Chris Noonan, 2006): Miss Potter has the kind of twinkly, romantic tone that can only come from a Hollywood-financed, British-made period film, and
Babe director's biopic of beloved Peter Rabbit author Beatrix Potter provides just about everything you'd expect. Renee Zellweger contorts her permanently blushing face wildly as the titular character, giving the film a strange off-balanced feeling that co-stars Ewan McGregor and Emily Watson, as Beatrix's publisher and his sister, just about manage to off-set. For a person who grew up with the tales of Miss Potter around them there will be an undeniable feeling of warmth that spreads from the film's brief animation of her drawings, but this also raises the rather creepy idea that Beatrix is a little bit mad, something which is simply ignored throughout.
Miss Potter, is, of course, constrained by the fact that it's based on a real person, but Beatrix's life doesn't exactly present a normal romantic plot- her true love dies and she moves to the countryside- and so it keeps the interest more than the standard film of this type.
Miss Potter's biggest problem is the woman herself- Zellweger, who's become increasingly more lambasted with good reason, for her talent seems to have been squashed by an overbearing conviction in her own sweetness: she doesn't know Beatrix Potter at all, but she sure thinks she does. It's sad that McGregor and Watson have to play second-string to her but they do their best with underwritten roles, which are both cut distressingly short. Ultimately,
Miss Potter provides an undeniable pleasantness, but there's really little within it- it's the kind of film that demands nothing, that you could take your grandmother to, and that you'll forget hours after seeing it.
Grade: C+]
I didn't like Anthony Minghella's rather silly Breaking and Entering, but the one thing I found to truly like about it was the relationship that young actor Rafi Gavron and the experienced Juliette Binoche forged between their mother and son characters. Binoche affects a convincing Eastern European accent that somehow doesn't hinder her performance at all; she's a warm, tender mother, tough and steely to those contributing to her son's downward curve; and in the scenes with Jude Law's selfish architect, she's almost heartbreakingly vulnerable.
It's so rare that comic performances are appreciated, but Miss Blunt has seemed to be an exception to the rule: everyone except the Oscars, it seems, has jumped on this bandwagon, and I'll not be one to argue. As Miranda Priestly's devoted assitant, Emily Blunt mines this ultimately sidelined part for all its worth, snapping hilariously at Anne Hathaway's naive new recruit and delivering her lines- "I'm on this new diet. Well, I don't eat anything and when I feel like I'm about to faint I eat a cube of cheese. I'm just one stomach flu away from my goal weight"- with a superb combination of desperation and sarcastic disbelief. She's certainly one to be watched.
Pell James' arc from virgin to slut is not as crass as it might be, if The King weren't so cleverly written, and if Miss James weren't so note perfect at fleshing out the intracies of her character. As she lies beneath Elvis' rutting body for the first time, face pressing a hard, stony rock, James gives her eyes a disturbing glaciality; this is a girl being smashed to pieces, so she can be reassembled. As The King progresses, James nails her character's progression into a strange sort of nervous control- she knows what she wants, but she also knows where the line is, and she still doesn't really understand the man she's with. Director James Marsh is said to have been glad not to have known James' true age while filming; her years certainly don't show.
Mia Kirschner's face haunts the entireity of the rather disastrous Black Dahlia, which, although I would have been happier with a better film, is rather befitting the story; Elizabeth Short haunts the men investigating her death, who descend into a total mess of drink, violence and obsession. In black-and-white film clips, Mia Kirschner makes you understand far better than any of the rest of the film why these men become so obsessed; her eyes are big pools of ghostliness, her voice cracks and wavers, her body shivers and freezes. Elizabeth Short was a good actress; Mia Kirschner, perhaps, is a great one.
It's strange how many of my choices in this category have been from films I haven't really cared for; in the case of Venus, Jodie Whittaker pierces the heart of its crass and jokey heart, a brash teenager who swoops into the lives of an aging man and turns his world upside down. The man holds her up as a goddess, as Venus; but, as Whittaker so cannily portrays, she is just a girl, full of weaknesses and imperfections, wishing to overcome them and get her head round the strange relationship she develops with this older man. Whittaker does not try hard to gain your sympathy- she plays her character with unlikeable harshness at times, but the moments when her mask slips are so unconsciously beautiful, it almost seems like she's forgotten to act and is simply being herself.