ONE DAY: The Film Babble Blog Review

ONE DAY (Dir. Lone Scherfig, 2011)

This British rom drama, based on the David Nicholls bestseller, traces the entangled lives of Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgis from 1988 to 2006. All the significant events of their will they/won’t they relationship apparently only take place on July 15th, which is St. Swithin’s Day (I’d never heard of it before either) which is apt because this is a pretty swithy movie. I know “swithy” is not a word that means anything – don’t bother to look it up – but I’m going to assign it the definition of “too convoluted and corny.”

ONE DAY is not without a modicum of charm; Hathaway convincing accent wraps itself around some witty lines, there’s beautiful photography, and a nice new Elvis Costello and the Imposters track (“Sparkling Day”) plays during the end credits, but mostly it’s failed fluff.

Hathaway and Sturgis, best known as the McCartney-esque bloke from ACROSS THE UNIVERSE, meet on July 15th, 1988 at the University of Edinburgh and almost hook up, but they decide to be friends – half naked in bed, mind you. We check back in with them almost every year after that on the same day, and see them through relationships with other people (he marries model Romola Garai; she moves in with comedian-wannabe Rafe Spall), and various careers.

Along for the ride through time are Ken Stott and Patricia Clarkson as Sturgis’s parents, and Tom Mison as his overly slick school chum.

Problem is, they’re supposed to be soul mates but the 2 leads have precious little chemistry.

Sturgis is such a cad, a spoiled rich brat who goes up and down the ladder of success as a TV talk show host, then bottoms out in a blast of raving cocaine clichés (showing us that it’s the mid ‘90s) that he’s too obnoxious to care about and we never get what Hathaway sees in him.

Hathaway fares better, but as an aspiring children’s book author, her character is transparent and boring. Still, there’s a little fun to be had seeing her sport a series of period hair styles throughout the years.

Towards the end the film flashes back to the beginning of the story so we see that there was more to that first St. Swithin’s Day than they let on, but it doesn’t resonate in the sentimental manner it’s supposed to. Likewise, a manipulative shocker attempt in the last third.

I don’t want to just write off ONE DAY as a chick flick that guys won’t see unless they’re dragged to, although that’s what it is, because director Scherfig (AN EDUCATION) does add some attractive gloss to this tripe.

It’s just that ONE DAY is way too swithy for its own good. See? I bet I can get that word to catch on.


More later...

CAIRO TIME: The Film Babble Blog Review

CAIRO TIME (Dir. Ruba Nadda, 2010)

Patricia Clarkson is a very busy actress these days.

Last Friday 3 films opened in the Raleigh area featuring the 50 year old petite blonde – LEGENDARY, EASY A, and this starring vehicle CAIRO TIME.

It’s the quiet and subtle story of a woman on vacation alone in the city of Cairo, Egypt since her husband’s work as a UN official keeps him away.

She promises him from the phone in her hotel room that she will “save the Pyramids” – that is wait to visit the landmark until he arrives.

A colleague of Clarkson’s husband – a suave English speaking Egyptian (Alexander Siddig) offers to show her around the city and there is a definite attraction between the couple.

Their repartee is both witty and unsettling as Clarkson seems very fragile and an unspoken allusion to the true state of her marriage haunts the air around them.

There’s not a lot of polished photography here, but with such locations that is forgiven. Clarkson, though unable to swim and afraid of the water, takes a boat ride on the Nile with Siddig and the beauty of the setting mixed with the thoughtful tone is a good example of the overall feel of this film.

Clarkson delivers a wonderfully natural performance that resonates throughout the film. Siddig (best known for playing Julian Bashir on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) seems to be enjoying himself as this charismatic character.

The spare cast also includes Amina Annabi as a former lover of Siddig's many years estranged.

Spoiler Alert!

There is flirtation between Clarkson and Siddig, but this is not a film about infidelity. It’s about the intensity of shared time. When Clarkson visits the Pyramids with Siddig which she later doesn’t tell her husband, the moment is intended to be as arousing as if they had fallen into bed together.

It’s reminiscent of the ending of last year’s AN EDUCATION in which the young protagonist (Cary Mulligan) didn’t tell a new date that she had been to Paris before. Her previous time in the city of love was omitted for personal, possibly empowering, reasons.

Some might consider that still a form of cheating, but since we only see a silently suffering Clarkson and we learn nothing about Clarkson and her husband’s (who only briefly appears at the end played by Tom McCamus) background except their professions - I believe that it’s understandable that she needed some private empowerment of her own.

More later...

WHATEVER WORKS: The Film Babble Blog Review

WHATEVER WORKS (Dir. Woody Allen, 2009) Allen's follow-up to last year's return to form, the luscious VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA, is being dismissed by a number of critics as a flimsy throwaway but I found it to be a funny, touching and overall winning, uh, throwaway. The pairing of loud ornery curmudgeon Larry David with the quiet whimpering wit of Woody Allen works here as well as it does on paper; David's persona perfectly fits into Allen's familiar fastidious world. Sure, many well worn clichés abound - many used by Allen before like the old cranky genius mentoring a young beautiful woman (see Max Von Sydow and Barbara Hershey in HANNAH AND HER SISTERS) and the round table of wise cracking chums that the story is relayed to (see BROADWAY DANNY ROSE and MELINDA AND MELINDA) - but as David says at one point: "Sometimes a cliché is the best way to make your point." In Allen's first New York set film in 5 years, David plays a divorced suicidal almost Nobel Prize nominee named Boris Yellnikoff who spends his days teaching chess to children that he calls "inch worms". Despite confusion from his friends (Michael McKean, Adam Brooks, and Lyle Kanouse) and other passerbys he addresses the camera much like Allen did in ANNIE HALL to tell us things like "this is not the feel good movie of the year" and "I’m not a likable guy - charm is not a priority with me." In the alley near his apartment (an impossibly spacious loft space like most NYC dwellings in the movies) he meets a runaway Southern girl (Evan Rachel Wood) who before long becomes his room mate and then, it's no spolier to say, his wife. The May/December romance is, of course, another patented Allen narrative but, hey - you write what you know! The premise of back woods folks having their horizons broadened by the mixing pot culture of New York is furthered with the appearance of Wood's parents (Patricia Clarkson and Ed Begley Jr.) who come separately searching for their daughter. Clarkson, who does the Southern belle bit much better than Wood, is particularly repulsed by David so she schemes to break up the monumentally mis-matched couple. The folks from the sticks have their Christianity threatened by the spoils of the big city, giving Allen another comic atheist platform for lines like: "Why do all the religous psychotics wind up praying at my doorstep?" WHATEVER WORKS is likely to wind up on the sidelines of classic Woody Allen with the passable likes of MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY and SMALL TIME CROOKS; fine fluffy films that have just enough laughs and memorable moments to get by. It's telling that it began life as a screenplay in the 70's written for Zero Mostel. The film if produced then would've probably come in the pivotal period between his early funny movies and the more thoughtful relationship films that redefined his style. David, who has actually appeared in a Woody Allen film before (a bit part in Allen's short film "Oedipus Wrecks" in NEW YORK STORIES), is a wonderfully inspired choice here despite that he is clearly not an actor. His panic attacks are incredibly unconvincing and some of his line readings are stiff, yet he still works as this sneering character who declares ours to be a "failed species". There are no new lessons to be learned or insights to be gleaned from this film - its sensibility is simply that we are all doomed, life is short, and you've got to get and give happiness wherever you can. Over almost 40 films as director, Allen has relayed these messages many times and maybe here they just form a clothesline on which to hang a bunch of jokes, but for this long-time fan * WHATEVER works, as implausible and predictable as it is. But be warned, if you are not a fan, I highly suspect "Whatever" won't work. * I must stress that I haven't been very fond of much of Allen's work in this last decade. See "What's Up With Woody? Case In Point: CASSANDRA'S DREAM" (June 1st, 2008) for example. More later...

Woody Gets His Groove Back! VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA - The Film Babble Blog Review

VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA (Dir. Woody Allen, 2008)

Woody Allen’s 43rd film as director is lush, absorbing, and easily his best film in 10 years.


The 4th in his series of films that abandon his long-time cinematic comfort zone of Manhattan for the splendor of a European escapade, Allen is reunited with his most recent muse Scarlett Johansson but this time with terrific not abysmal results.


After the traditional Allen white on black credits (now with Spanish guitar and not big band jazz accompanying) we join Johansson and best friend Rebecca Hall as they get off a plane in Barcelona - they are the Cristina and Vicky of the title. A narrator (Christopher Evan Welch), a device that evokes memories of the docudrama style of HUSBANDS AND WIVES, tells us about our leading ladies' temperments - Johansson is romantically impulsive while Hall is stable, analytic, and most importantly engaged to be married to a buttoned-down reliable but bland Chris Messina.


While dining one night a smooth Spanish painter (Javier Bardem) approaches them and proposes that they join him for a romantic weekend in Oviedo: “We’ll eat well, we’ll drink wine, we’ll make love.” Hall is immediately cynical and put off by Bardem, having heard troubling gossip about his ex-wife, but Johanssen is giddily enchanted which wins over and we're off and running!

Bardem’s ex-wife, the sultry and simultaneously sulking Penélope Cruz, is trouble indeed; she shows up after getting out of the hospital asking for vodka with daggers in her eyes aimed at Johansson as she storms into their life. Possible Spoiler!: both Hall and Johansson have fallen for Bardem by this point which threatens Hall’s marriage and makes murkier the matters of the heart between all of them. What’s never murky is the photography with gorgeous shots of the temples, landscapes, and luxurious patios of Spain framed by cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe.


The dialogue is crisp and wittier than Woody Allen has given us in ages with even subtitled lines (Cruz and Bardem exchange many private asides in Spanish) stinging as the pace never drags with many expertly crafted uncut tracking shots flowing as the characters themselves flow through the beautiful scenery. Great naturalistic acting from all the principals abounds with supporting turns by the always charming Patricia Clarkson and the underused Kevin Dunn filling out the most colorful Woody Allen movie so far.



With Cruz, the Spanish locale, and Aquirresarobe (Director of Photography on TALK TO HER) it could look at first glance that Allen is aping Aldomovar but the pessimism, views on art and forbidden love, as well as the neurotic behaviour (can’t write a review of a Woody Allen film without some use of the word “neurotic”) is all classic Woody Allen.


If you only know Bardem from his role as the cold blooded killer Chighur in NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN his role here will be a revelation. Johansson does her best work since LOST IN TRANSLATION fully inhabiting her character with flare and much moxie. All the promotional material for this film (the poster, trailer, etc.) for a large part excludes Rebecca Hall (pictured at the top of this review) which is odd because it’s her tortured entanglement that really gives the film its narrative thrust - I suppose she wasn’t enough of a name for the publicity department.


The tedious repitition of worn-out plot points (Hello, MATCH POINT) and the lackluster lines of his last several films is replaced by a passionate and vital sense of purpose (and a great screenplay) which makes for a extremely satisfying meal of a movie.


The only possible reservation I have is for the inclusion of Welch’s voice-over narration; much of the time I thought the film could do without it but I have to admit it contained some insightful and amusing remarks so I’ll leave it be. VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA is a welcome return to form for the Woodman and with his next project, the already completed WHATEVER WORKS with Larry David and Evan Rachel Wood (also featuring Clarkson) here’s hoping he’s on a roll. 

More later...