From the Archives: The Accidental Husband

Another deep dive into the pre-Talking Movies archives uncovers a drab rom-com starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan before Watchmen and Negan!

The Accidental Husband is the sort of drab film that inspires long involved tangents in your own mind as you try to ignore the boring predictability of the on-screen action. Uma Thurman is Dr Emma Lloyd, a relationship expert with her own phone-in radio show and whose first book of dating advice is being launched by the publishing house of her fiancé Richard (Colin Firth). However when she advises one of her listeners to break up with her fiancé, the duly jilted fireman Patrick Sullivan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) sets about taking the ‘love doctor’ down a peg. One ingenious hack into the NYC municipal database later and Emma and Patrick are man and wife, as she finds to her horror when she arrives at city offices with Richard to sign their forms. Her futile efforts to get Patrick to annul their non-existent marriage inevitably see her start to question her relationship with her dull, dependable fiancé whose worst vice (and only funny characteristic) is his comfort eating when stressed.

The Accidental Husband is above all other objections just painfully predictable. Will Emma throw away a lifetime of habits and, ignoring the advice she dispenses every day, choose the risky option? What do you think?! The painful whirring of the plot mechanics aren’t drowned out by laughter as Uma Thurman simply cannot do comedy. She produced and starred in this to prove to herself that she can, but even her role as a DJ invokes memories of The Truth about Cats & Dogs – which worked because she was not the lead but was supporting Janeane Garofalo. This film is Exhibit A in the case for the prosecution that Uma murders romantic comedies with her stiff, awkward approach which has to resort to slapstick to engage our sympathies.

Lindsay Sloane as Emma’s PA (and sole friend) Marcy takes what good lines there are, as is customary in romantic comedies where second-string is always the better role, and Colin Firth is sadly underused. Jeffrey Dean Morgan meanwhile is rugged. Apparently that’s what the ladies like these days and at the age of 41, courtesy of his celebrated role in Grey’s Anatomy, he is now a bona fide heart-throb. Morgan also appeared as the charismatic father in TV horror series Supernatural so it’s little surprise that he’s rather good here as the roguish NYC fire-fighter whose heart is in the right place.

But this film has very little heart. Emma likes to remind her listeners endlessly that 43% of American marriages end in divorce. That spectre of futility hangs over the film as she spouts invective about the stupidity of expecting lasting happiness in the modern world. The Accidental Husband systematically deconstructs the concepts which support the romantic comedy genre even as it performs them making for a quite singularly depressing experience.

2/5

Kingsman: The Golden Circle

Director Matthew Vaughn helms a hasty sequel to his Mark Millar absurdist spy fantasy which sadly displays its hasty production.

Our hero Eggsy (Taron Egerton) is waiting for a Kingsman cab when he is attacked by old rival Charlie (Edward Holcroft); unexpectedly, because he was presumed dead, and didn’t have a bionic arm. Said ‘arm’ leads to Eggsy and Merlin (Mark Strong) being the last Kingsmen standing, and having to seek help from their American cousins, the Statesmen. They get a gruff reception from Agent Tequila (Channing Tatum), but a warmer welcome from Merlin’s opposite number Ginger Ale (Halle Berry) who has developed a maguffin for dealing with headshots. Et voila – despite Colin Firth being shot in the head last time out – Harry lives! But will Harry recover his memories and his co-ordination in time to save the world from the depredations of drug baron Poppy (Julianne Moore) or does his distrust of Agent Whiskey (Pedro Pascal) bespeak incurable paranoia?

This sequel was written by Vaughn and Jane Goldman, but the tone is off; right from the twisted but not funny use of Chekhov’s meat-mincer in Poppy’s introduction. The fact that Eggsy and Merlin face the same Kingsmen apocalypse in this first act as the original’s third act feels very lazy, as does the Hollywood cliché for raising stakes in the finale.  This is a bloated movie: Tatum is barely in it,  Jeff Bridges even less so, and the impulsive jackass President played by Bruce Greenwood (!) feels like a late Trump-bashing addition to the script; especially his final scene which is a transparent and asinine piece of wish fulfilment. The running time could be trimmed by removing Elton John; his foul-mouthed temper-tantrums in support add nothing. Indeed all the swearing lacks the purposeful artistry of a McDonagh or Mamet.

A notably bombastic yet unmemorable score is punctuated by ecstatic uses of Prince’s ‘Let’s Go Crazy’ and John’s ‘Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting’ for elaborate fights as Vaughn relentlessly searches for but never really finds an action sequence to equal the church brawl from the original. Like The Matrix Reloaded, physical reality is traded for bullet-time and CGI, and the magic of choreography is lost. Oddly the most effective use of music is the most muted; John Denver’s ‘Country Roads’ for an all guns blazing character moment. Hanna Alstrom’s Princess is now Eggsy’s girlfriend, possibly as a response to criticism, yet Poppy Delevingne’s femme fatale Clara is subjected to even more tasteless comic use than Alstrom was… Moore’s super-villain has an interesting plan; but you feel Vaughn and Goldman understand it to articulate something meaningful that they never actually articulate.

This strains to equal the fun quality its predecessor had naturally, but, despite many misgivings, there are enough good action sequences, gags, performances, and uses of pop to make this worth your cinema ticket.

3/5

Top Performances of 2015

As the traditional complement to the Top 10 Films list, here are the Top Performances of 2015. The refusal to isolate single winners is deliberate; regard the highlighted names as the top of the class, and the runners up being right behind them, and the also placed just behind them. They’re all superb performances.

Best Supporting Actress

Kristen Stewart (Sils Maria) Who knew Stewart had it in her to stop biting her lip and actually act again? As Juliette Binoche’s foil she displayed an unsuspected flair for comedy alongside an argumentative intelligence.

Suzanne Clement (Mommy) Clement as the neighbour across the way was the heart of Xavier Dolan’s movie. She recovered from her own trauma by helping troubled Steve, and stood in for us; bearing tearful witness to events.

Katherine Waterston (Inherent Vice) Waterston made an unexpected breakthrough as Doc’s ex-girlfriend. She had few scenes, but the memorable mix of warmth and wisdom in the opening convincingly set Doc on his quest.

Runners Up:

Mackenzie Davis (The Martian) Davis broke out from indies with panache, grabbing a blockbuster role where she wasn’t just random NASA tech, but instead shared many archly comic moments with Chiwetel Ejiofor.

Julie Walters (Brooklyn) There was great comedy from the nightly dinner-table feuds at Mrs Kehoe’s and Walters provided most of it as the landlady with a waspish putdown for every tenant and every occasion.

Lea Seydoux (The Lobster) All the qualities attributed to her in Spectre, and entirely absent there, were on display here where she was icy cold, forceful, implacable, and without vanity as a sharp-suited rebel leader.

Also Placed:

Elizabeth Debicki (UNCLE) It was only in retrospect I realised she wasn’t actually a great villain. Debicki had used her commanding presence to temporarily conjure the impression of greatness from a threadbare part.

Chloe Grace Moretz (Sils Maria) Moretz was a hoot as a misbehaving starlet doing a play to gain prestige. She pulled off an uncanny balancing act between elements of Jennifer Lawrence and Lindsay Lohan’s personae.

Elisabeth Moss (Listen Up Philip) Moss, as the long-suffering photographer girlfriend of novelist Philip, confidently took over the film for an unexpected segment tracing her own independent story of artistic development.

Best Supporting Actor

Edward Norton (Birdman) Norton was transparently playing with his own persona, and having the time of his life doing it, but the hilarity of his preening self-regard was balanced by his self-awareness of his failings.

Benicio Del Toro (Sicario) Del Toro cut lines to make stoic DoD ‘adviser’ Alejandro troublingly mysterious, an inspired move as he slowly revealed himself to be a man without limits; breaking the law to do the right thing.

Colin Firth (Kingsman) Firth was effectively playing The Avengers’ Mr Steed, and clearly loving it. His A Single Man tour de force of dry heartbreak now has a stellar contrast on his show-reel: his amazing kill-crazy rampage.

Ewan McGregor (Son of a Gun) McGregor rediscovered his charisma as an armed robber in a post-Moulin Rouge! best. Charming, but ruthless on a dime, he combined both qualities in a deliriously jump-started interrogation.

Runners Up:

Jeff Daniels (The Martian, Steve Jobs) Daniels’ Newsroom-based resurgence saw him verbally duel with Sean Bean and Michael Fassbender with much gravitas, but he also displayed his considerable comic abilities in both roles.

Josh Brolin (Inherent Vice, Sicario) Brolin played law-men fond of crossing the line, but Graver’s dirty warrior sought cynical order rather than law-abiding chaos, while Bigfoot suffered from incommunicable psychic pain.

Benedict Wong (The Martian) Wong was wonderful as Bruce, the ever-harried Jet Propulsion Lab director given impossible deadlines and tasks; his hang-dog expression always one step away from total defeat.

Michael Pena (Ant-Man) Ant-Man sans Edgar Wright’s visual panache plodded like hell for the first act and a half, save his showpiece narration, but Pena’s hysterically distracted inept nice guy criminal kept it going.

Also Placed:

Sean Harris (MI5, Macbeth) The wiry, soft-spoken Harris was scary in MI5 by virtue of his villain’s cunning and utter indifference to casualties, and, as Macduff, he set about revenge with an unnerving feel of unfussy control.

Jonathan Pryce (Listen Up Philip) Pryce let rip as the elder statesman novelist: self-preening, condescending, and supportive to his protégé; hiding his guilt behind anger to his daughter; and denying to himself his own sadness.

Seth Rogen (Steve Jobs) Rogen’s shambling, slightly bewildered Steve Wozniak was a man on a mission, and always bound to fail, but his live-action Fozzie Bear helped humanise Fassbender’s Jobs tremendously.

Best Actress

Emily Blunt (Sicario) Blunt is assured as an FBI ‘thumper’ who joins a taskforce to hurt drug cartels. Mission-creep gives her doubts, but she’s too dogged for her own good, staying to find the task-force’s true purpose, becoming a Creon to Del Toro’s Antigone – devotion to the law is the right thing.

Rooney Mara (Carol) Mara is terrific as the ingénue who is seduced by Carol and her high society, but has both cruelly taken away from her, and then sets about making her own way in the world. Rooney uses the most subtle facial expressions to chart her transformation from ingénue to equal.

Greta Gerwig (Mistress America) Gerwig shines as the somewhat ridiculous, casually abrasive Brooke, who stumbles through life from one disaster to the next with little self-pity and can charm and/or guilt-trip people into bailing out her last/buying into her next madcap venture.

Lola Kirke (Mistress America) Kirke impressively held her own against Gerwig as the perceptive, quiet Tracy; an aspiring writer who got carried away by Brooke’s mad enthusiasm, but never quite lost sight of the ridiculousness of her venture; and played disappointment exceptionally well.

Runners Up:

Cate Blanchett (Carol) Blanchett was rather good as the socialite whose charming facade masks despair, exhaustion, desire, and a recklessness that at times comes very close to making her dangerous to herself and others. But Carol’s fiery decision to be herself gave her less a meaty arc than Mara.

Rebecca Ferguson (MI5) Was Ilsa Faust a properly defined femme fatale or not? Does it matter when Ferguson gave a performance of such rare mystery and ambiguity? In never quite being able to count on her there was a mix of Han Solo roguery with a more enigmatic quality; even after all explanations.

Emma Stone (Irrational Man, Birdman) Stone delivered an amazing rant in Birdman as well as sparking off Edward Norton, and then displayed her full range with a quiet performance as a student enamoured with her professor in Irrational Man; articulating outraged conscience with great sincerity.

Also Placed:

Juliette Binoche (Sils Maria) Binoche was fully committed to her role as an actress over-analysing to death taking the other part in a two-hander play that made her, and her failed attempts to keep a straight face and seriously engage with  her while she PA defended comic-book movies was a particular joy.

Maika Monroe (It Follows) Monroe gave a strong performance, especially in playing early scenes with a dreamy quality which allowed an ambiguity later about her character hallucinating as PTSD before it became clear ‘It’ was very real and needed a Ripey response Monroe was well capable of giving.

 

Best Actor

Michael Fassbender (Macbeth, Steve Jobs) Fassbender’s low-key delivery gave us a weary warrior who lost his mind from one damn killing too many, while his irrepressible warmth allowed Jobs say horrible things but remain charismatic till the belated quasi-apology “I’m poorly made.”

Michael Keaton (Birdman) Keaton made a spectacular leading man comeback with a transparent riff on his own persona. His comic timing was superb, his lack of vanity Oscar-worthy (cough), and he outdid Edward Norton (Greatest Actor of His Generation TM) in artistic and emotional angst.

David Oyewelo (Selma) Oyelowo gave a fiery performance as MLK, whipping up a mass demonstration for a Voting Rights Act. He oozed charisma in three speeches, but was extremely vulnerable in King’s guilt and self-doubt over deaths caused by his rhetoric and leadership, and shame at his infidelities.

Matt Damon (The Martian) Damon’s best studio lead since The Adjustment Bureau was powered by Drew Goddard’s hilarious screenplay. As a one-man show on Mars his sequences were a never-ending vlog of riffs and one-liners, and Damon delivered with immense charm and comic timing.

Runners Up:

Jason Schwartzman (Listen Up Philip) Schwartzman was on familiar Bored to Death turf but he made Philip intriguing. A hugely narcissistic novelist, lacking in empathy, and casually abrasive, but also talented, capable of being hurt to a devastating degree, and perhaps too emotionally guarded because of that.

Keanu Reeves (John Wick) Keanu made one hell of a comeback as a civilised hit-man universally beloved in the hit-community, larger underworld, and the small town he retired to. Keanu’s stunt-work was an endearing mix of fluency and occasional rustiness, and he made us love Wick too.

Joaquin Phoenix (Inherent Vice, Irrational Man) Phoenix shambled endearingly as the perma-stoned PI straight man to a merry-go-round of lunatics, while his self-loathing philosophy professor embracing Dostoyevskyean freedom saw him deliver a truly amazing expression: guilt, fear, relief, and panic.

Also Placed:

Oscar Isaac (A Most Violent Year) A Pacino quality came off Isaac’s performance as oil entrepreneur Abel Morales. Early, subtle Pacino. Abel would not be bullied, would not break the law, and would not accept dirty deeds on his behalf. Isaac played this principled soul with a quiet, dignified stillness.

Tom Cruise (MI5) His implausible early escape up a pole got a few laughs at my screening. I believed Cruise could do it, he’s a fitness nut. Also in other ways, but plane stunt nuts is good; and there’s a self-deprecating quality to Cruise, absent from his 90s heyday, that makes him very winning.

Patrick’s Day

The enfant terrible of Irish cinema writer/director Terry McMahon follows up Charlie Casanova with another exercise in epating les bourgeoisie.

Patrick (Moe Dunford) was born on St Patrick’s Day. And so every year his devoted mother Maura (Kerry Fox) has made a ritual of getting him a silly hat or glasses, going for a meal, and taking a photo. But this year she loses her son. He finds himself in the company of suicidal air hostess Karen (Catherine Walker), who takes him back to her hotel room; across the corridor from his; and deflowers him. But the reason Patrick is a taciturn virgin at 26, and seems mildly out of it, is that he has mental health issues. But as Karen is drawn into Maura’s attempts to control her son’s life, along with Garda Freeman (Philip Jackson), the question is posed – who is truly crazy here? Patrick and Freddie (Aaron Monaghan) in the psychiatric hospital or the ‘sane’ world outside?

McMahon’s script is artificial and problematic. Karen’s dialogue, especially her use of ‘kiddo’ and her initial introduction, is the worst offender for ham-fisted dialogue, but there are also wearisome cinematic clichés that telegraph their arrival; like Maura knocking all her photos with Patrick off the wall. All give the impression that McMahon is scripting based on how people act in films rather than from any sort of observation of how people act in reality. Karen’s suicide attempt with pills is remarkably inept, and not deliberately so as is with Colin Firth in A Single Man, and her suicidal impulses are never explored and quickly forgotten. There’s a scene with a dog in which Patrick tosses a scrap of food into traffic for the dog to get, the dog of course gets hit by a car – why do that? Well, the script said to; so Patrick could bring the dog inside to the cafe where the manager recognises Patrick’s condition, saying his son had the same. This scene’s remarkable, contrivance aside, because it’s not clear at all what Patrick’s condition is…

Patrick seems off from the start, but maybe that’s the tranquilisers he’s on zoning him out. He has a regimen to control his schizophrenia. But then later it’s revealed that he has intellectual disability. He has a mental age of 14. But then a later anecdote indicates that at age 9 he couldn’t distinguish between fact and fiction. But then the schizophrenia is emphasised again… John Nash is a paranoid schizophrenic given to auditory and visual hallucinations. He’s also a mathematical genius whose invention of game theory earned him the Nobel for economics. Schizophrenia and intellectual disability are not connected. McMahon is depicting a thirtysomething woman having sex with a man with a teenage boy’s mind. Far from realising how dubious this is Patrick’s Day expects us to unfurl a banner with ‘Amor Vincit Omnia’ on it for the finale. And that’s before we get to the compound of Ken Kesey and RD Laing that is the presentation of the psychiatric hospital run by bad people and the madness of mother Maura constantly kissing her adult son on the lips.

We are meant to feel traumatised by Patrick’s treatment at the hands of authority figures in the third act. But it’s impossible to feel anything when it’s so obviously George Lucas’ proverbial cinematic gimmick of drowning a bag of kittens to make the audience cry – everything has been so contrived that McMahon has unintentionally achieved a Brechtian alienation. Dunford’s performance is one of blank bafflement alternated with childish surliness and childish exuberance. It’s not possible to care about Patrick’s distress because he’s scary – he has the force of a strong man, able to break noses with a single sharp punch, but the self-control of a petulant child – and the film doesn’t seem to realise that. Dunford, like Walker, Jackson, and Fox, is a good actor being incredibly ill-served by the script in which McMahon’s desire to provoke outweighs all else. RD Laing and Ken Kesey were of their time (and Adam Curtis has persuasively argued that Laing has had a baneful effect on modern medicine), and simply replicating their ideas is a startlingly outdated, unoriginal way to criticise Ireland 2015.

Patrick’s Day is technically very competent but its script is so troubling both aesthetically and morally that you wish Terry McMahon would just drop his auteurist ambitions and direct someone else’s screenplay next time.

0.5/5

Kingsman: The Secret Service

Director Matthew Vaughn eschews the current gritty James Bond formula for an R-rated absurdist spy fantasy from Mark Millar’s comic-book.

Kingsman begins as it means to go on; tongue firmly-in-cheek; as terrible CGI explosions rock a Middle Eastern fortress, only for the falling stones to form into the title credits. Our hero Galahad (Colin Firth) is on a mission that goes fatally wrong, leading him to pay his respects to the widowed Michelle (Samantha Womack), and give a promise of aid, if ever needed, to her infant son Gary. Nearly two decades later a Kingsmen rescue of kidnapped climate change expert Professor Arnold (a cameo too good to spoil here) goes awry. A replacement Lancelot must be recruited, and all the Kingsmen must put forward a candidate. At this precise moment Gary, now known as Eggsy (Taron Egerton), gets into deep trouble with his criminal stepfather Dean (Geoff Bell), and calls in Galahad’s favour. Galahad proposes Gary as the new Lancelot, and so begins a dangerous mentoring in privatised espionage…

Kingsman is a blast. There’s a certain X-Men: First Class vibe to the Lancelot competition presided over by Merlin (Mark Strong) at a country house, with nice class warfare between chav Eggsy and upper-crust Digby (Nicholas Banks) and Charlie (Edward Holcroft). Egerton is endearing as someone hiding his potential because of his circumstances, and Sophie Cookson as sympathetic toff Roxy is a winning foil. Less sympathetic is the leader of the Kingsmen, Arthur (Michael Caine). There’s an odd meta-textual dance here between Egerton having played toff in Testament of Youth and cockney Caine’s enthronement as a cinematic elder. But that’s as nothing compared to the meta-madness when Galahad discusses old Bond films with lisping tech billionaire Valentine (Samuel L Jackson). Firth is effectively playing The Avengers’ Mr Steed, and loving it, while Jackson seems to be nodding to his Unbreakable role as a squeamish super-villain, with a surprisingly interesting motivation, who delegates murder to lethal blade-runner henchwoman Gazelle (Sofia Boutella).

Vaughn’s use of music deserves special mention. Eggsy’s car-thieving exploits are rousingly accompanied by Dizzee Rascal’s ‘Bonkers’, a surrealist gore-fest is played out to the strains of Elgar (in what feels oddly like a nod to Dr Strangelove), and then there’s ‘Freebird’… Vaughn tops Cameron Crowe’s demented use of that song in Elizabethtown, and, given that Crowe had a band rocking out on the guitar solo and determinedly ignoring the giant flaming bird flying past, that’s saying something. A vicious sermon by the great Corey Johnson is interrupted by utter carnage as Galahad gets embroiled in a fight to the death with the entire congregation. If The Matrix lobby scene used a high concept to banish guilt over massacres by heroes this pushes the envelope even further. Cinematographer George Richmond and Vaughn close up on the action and deploy a grainier look to hide cheats in their sustained bloodthirsty mayhem. And what mayhem it is – a choreographed wonder of continual stabbing, shooting, garrotting, strangling, bludgeoning that produces jaw-dropped, impressed disbelief.

There’re quibbles to be had, notably the rather tasteless use of Hanna Alstrom’s Swedish princess and the sudden ending, but Kingsman’s bloody good fun.

4/5

2014: Hopes

The Monuments Men

George Clooney stars, co-writes with Grant Heslov again, and directs what seems like a promising mash-up of The Train and Ocean’s 11, arriving sometime in February. Somewhat based on fact, a crack team of art experts and soldiers are assembled in the dying months of WWII to try and rescue priceless works of art from wanton destruction at the hands of nihilistic Nazis. The team includes regular Clooney cohort Matt Damon and the great Cate Blanchett, alongside the undoubtedly scene-stealing comedic duo of Bill Murray and John Goodman, and oddly Jean Dujardin. Can Clooney pull off a more serious art heist from Nazis caper? Fingers crossed he can.

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Wes Anderson returns in March, apparently in thrall to Lubitsch and Lang. Edward Norton did so well in Moonrise Kingdom that he’s invited back alongside Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, Tilda Swinton, and Owen Wilson. Newcomers are Ralph Fiennes, Saoirse Ronan, Jude Law, Mathieu Amalric, and F Murray Abraham. Fiennes is the legendary concierge of the titular hotel in inter-war Europe, where any gathering storms are ignored in favour of absurd murder plots, art thefts and family squabbles gone mad, as Fiennes gives his lobby-boy protégé an education in dealing with the upper classes which he’ll never forget; if they escape a sticky end long enough to remember.

Veronica Mars

AW YEAH!! It was cancelled in 2007 but Kristen Bell’s iconic teen detective snoops again as creator Rob Thomas sends NYC legal eagle Veronica back to sunny Neptune to attend her high school reunion. Present and correct are friends Mac (Tina Majorino) and Wallace (Percy Daggs III), nemesis Madison (Amanda Noret), and frenemy Dick (Ryan Hansen). Dad Keith (Enrico Colantoni) remains a sage, warning against the obvious peril of insipid boyfriend Piz (Chris Lowell) being replaced in her affections by roguish ex Logan (Jason Dohring), who is once again accused of murder and asking for V’s help. Please let the sparks of ‘epic love’ spanning ‘decades and continents’ rekindle!

Frank

Lenny Abrahamson is the opposite of a Talking Movies favourite, but he’s teamed up with the favourite di tutti favourites Michael Fassbender. Thankfully Abrahamson’s miserabilist tendencies and agonising inertness have been put to one side for this rock-star comedy co-written by journalist Jon Ronson, a man with a verified eye for the absurd having written The Men Who Stare at Goats and The Psychopath Test. The original script loosely based on a cult English comic musician follows wannabe musician Jon (Domhnall Gleeson), who discovers he’s bitten off more than he can chew when he joins a pop band led by the enigmatic Frank (Fassbender) and his scary girlfriend Maggie Gyllenhaal.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Literally everything I loved most about the original disappeared with the time-jump. So the major attraction of April’s sequel isn’t Robert Redford as a shady new SHIELD director, but Revenge’s icy heroine Emily VanCamp as the mysterious Agent 13. Samuel L Jackson’s Nick Fury and Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow regrettably take the place of Tommy Lee Jones and Hayley Atwell in support, but Anthony Mackie as sidekick Falcon is a major boon. The real worry is that directors Joe and Anthony Russo (You, Me and Dupree, yes, that’s right, that’s their resume) will be intimidated by their budget into endless CGI action and precious little else.

X-Men: Days of Future Past

I’m excited and nostalgic, because May 23^rd sees the arrival of the X-3 we deserved, but never got. Bryan Singer returns to the franchise he launched for one of Claremont/Byrne’s most famous storylines. In a dystopian future, where mutantkind has been decimated by the Sentinels of Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage),Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page) Wolverine (Hugh Jackman – this is a movie, not a comic, it’s all got to be about Wolverine!) is sent back into the past by Professor X (Patrick Stewart) and Magneto (Ian McKellen) to alter history by rapprochement of their younger selves (James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender). Jennifer Lawrence co-stars, with every X-Men actor!

22 Jump Street
A proper summer blockbuster release date of June 13^th for this sequel recognises the hilarious success of the absurd original. Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Channing Tatum) (or was it the other way round?) go undercover in college to crack another drug ring, and once again their fantastic bromance starts to crack under the strain. The original’s unwieldy team of writers and directors are back, as are Ice Cube, Nick Offerman, Rob Riggle and Dave Franco. Amber Stevens and Wyatt Russell are the college kids, but sadly Brie Larson is absent. Jonah Hill appears in full goth gear, which seems to suggest that the absurdity levels remain healthy.

The Trip to Italy

It’s not clear yet if we’ll get this as an abridged film or just be treated to the full version as 6 episodes on BBC 2. In either case Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon reunite to play heightened versions of themselves as they bicker their way around restaurants in Italy for the purposes of writing magazine reviews. 2010’s endearing roving sitcom The Trip, with its competitive Michael Caine impersonations was a joy, and director Michael Winterbottom takes the show on tour here. And no better man for the job, as this originated with their duelling Al Pacinos at the end of his A Cock and Bull Story.

Magic in the Moonlight
Woody Allen’s latest should hit our screens around September. This time round the cottage industry is giving us a period romantic comedy, set in the south of France, which takes place in the 1920s and 1930s. The cast is as usual intimidating: Emma Stone, Colin Firth, Marcia Gay Harden, the imperious Eileen Atkins (one of the few actresses capable of domineering over Judi Dench), and Jacki Weaver. Will F Scott and his ilk make an appearance? Who knows! There are no details, just stills of open-top cars, drop waists, and cloche hats so this could be a close cousin of Sweet & Lowdown or Midnight in Paris.

Gone Girl

The start of October sees the great David Fincher return, with his first film in three years, and it’s another adaptation of a wildly successful crime novel. Nick (Ben Affleck) and Amy (Rosamund Pike) are seemingly the perfect couple, but when she disappears suddenly on their 5^th wedding anniversary, Nick becomes the prime suspect as he discovers his wife told friends she was scared of him. Could he have killed her? Or is the truth far more twisted? Gillian Flynn has adapted her own work, and, incredibly, penned an entirely new third act to keep everyone guessing. The unusually colourful supporting cast includes Neil Patrick Harris and Patrick Fugit.

The Interview
The pitch is that an attractive talk show host and his producer unwittingly get caught up in an international assassination plot. So far so blah, if that was say Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson directed by Shawn Levy, except that the host is actually James Franco, the producer is Seth Rogen, the interview is in North Korea, and the awesome Lizzy Caplan is the rogue femme fatale CIA agent who drags them into all sorts of mischief. And it’s written and directed by Rogen and Evan Goldberg who distinguished themselves with 2013’s best comedy This is The End. This is very likely to mop up the non-Gone Girl audience.

Interstellar

Christopher Nolan tries to redeem himself after TDKR with a small personal project, taking the same release date as The Prestige did. Well, small, in that the WB needed Paramount to stump up some cash for it, and personal, in that Spielberg spent years developing it; albeit with the assistance of Jonathan Nolan. Scientists attempt to observe a wormhole into another dimension, and that’s about all we know, other than vague speculations about ecological crises. Matthew McConaughey 2.0 stars alongside Anne Hathaway, Casey Affleck, Matt Damon, John Lithgow, Jessica Chastain, and, yes, Michael Caine – who is now as essential a part of the signature as Bill Murray for Wes Anderson.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part I

Jennifer Lawrence goes for third biggest hit at the North American box office for the third year in a row with her latest turn as rebel heroine Katniss Everdeen on November 21^st. Having survived the Quarter Quell and the destruction of her District, she discovers President Snow has Peeta hostage, and that the rebellion has a leader, President Coin (Julianne Moore), ready to embark on a full-scale bloody war of rebellion against the Capitol. Recount writer (and Buffy shmuck) Danny Strong is the new screenwriter, and Elementary star Natalie Dormer joins the cast, but director Francis Lawrence remains in situ, with his considered visual style.

Christmas Movies in Meeting House Square

‘Christmas on the Square’ takes place this year in Meeting House Square, Temple Bar from December 17^th – 21^st. 11 festive screenings over 5 days will play Old Hollywood gems such as Some Like it Hot and Holiday Inn alongside more recent classics like Annie Hall and Die Hard and perennial family favourites such as Elf and The Muppet Christmas Carol.

Online booking is now open at www.entertainment.ie/meetinghousesquare. Free blankets will be handed out to keep warm and a selection of hot drinks (including traditional mulled wine, hot chocolate, tea, and coffee) and festive food will all be available for purchase.

Tuesday, December 17^th

How the Grinch Stole Christmas, 5pm

Ron Howard’s remake of the classic cartoon about a creature intent on stealing Christmas throws a ton of CGI and crazy sets at the screen and elides a good deal of the absurdity of Dr Seuss’ original rhymes, but Carrey’s improvisations impress.

Cast: Jim Carrey and Taylor Momsen

Running time: 104 mins

Cert: PG

Holiday Inn, 8pm

At an Inn which is only open on holidays, a crooner and a hoofer vie for the affections of a beautiful up-and-coming performer. Based on a story idea by Broadway song-writing legend Irving Berlin this flick also includes an animated sequence mocking FDR.

Cast: Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire and Marjorie Reynolds

Running Time: 100 mins

Cert: G

Wednesday, December 18^th

Elf, 5pm

After inadvertently wreaking havoc on the elf community due to his ungainly size, a man raised at the North Pole is sent by Santa Claus to the U.S. in search of his true identity. Can he romance a cute colleague (Zooey Deschanel) and reconnect with his father?

Cast: Will Ferrell and James Caan

Running Time: 97mins

Cert: PG

Some Like it Hot, 8pm

When two musicians witness the St Valentine’s Day Massacre, they flee 1920s Chicago in an all female band disguised as women, but complications set in when they meet singer Sugar Kane… Think of it as Billy Wilder doing Shakespeare’s cross-dressing rom-coms.

Cast: Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis

Running Time: 120 mins

Cert: PG

Thursday, December 19^th

Polar Express, 5pm

On Christmas Eve, a doubting boy boards a magical train that’s headed to the North Pole and Santa Claus’ home. Director Robert Zemeckis uses motion capture to allow Tom Hanks play multiple roles but the uncanny valley phenomenon sinks scenes that aren’t spectacular musical numbers.

Cast: Tom Hanks and Chris Coppola

Running Time: 100 mins

Cert: PG

Bridget Jones, 8pm

A British woman is determined to improve herself while she looks for love in a year in which she keeps a personal diary. King of the British rom-com Richard Curtis pens the screenplay for this incredibly commercially successful contemporary riff on Jane Austen scenarios.

Cast: Renee Zellweger, Colin Firth and Hugh Grant

Running Time: 97mins

Cert: 15

Friday, December 20^th

The Muppet Christmas Carol, 5pm

The Muppet characters tell their idiosyncratic version of Charles Dickens’ classic tale of an old and bitter miser’s redemption on Christmas Eve. Michael Caine is rather good as Scrooge, but this is all about Kermit, the Great Gonzo and Miss Piggy as Dickensian characters.

Cast: Michael Caine and Dave Goelz

Running Time: 85

Cert: G

Trading Places, 8pm

A snobbish investor and a wily street con artist find their positions reversed as part of a bet by two callous millionaires. Writer/director John Landis came to this off a streak of classic comedies that included Animal House and The Blues Brothers.

Cast: Eddie Murphy, Dan Aykroyd and Jamie Lee Curtis

Running Time: 116 mins

Cert: 15

Annie Hall, 11pm

Neurotic New York comedian Alvy Singer falls in love with ditzy singer Annie Hall in Woody Allen’s classic 1977 breakthrough. The many highlights include the Marshall MacLuhan cameo, Christopher Walken’s crazed monologue, and Alvy’s flashbacks to his Brooklyn childhood; depressed by the universe’s finite expansion.

Cast: Diane Keaton and Woody Allen

Running Time: 93 mins

Cert:  PG

Saturday, December 21^st

Monty Python’s Life of Brian, 8pm

Brian (Graham Chapman) is born on the original Christmas, in the stable next door to Jesus. He spends his life being mistaken for the messiah, but along the way gets lessons in Latin from a centurion, and ponders Roman’s rule’s good points.

Cast: Graham Chapman, John Cleese and Michael Palin

Running Time:

Cert: 15

Die Hard, 11pm

Vacationing NYPD cop John McClane tries to save estranged wife Holly Gennaro when her office party is taken hostage by German terrorist Hans Gruber during a Christmas party at the Nakatomi Plaza in Los Angeles. Director John McTiernan spectacularly orchestrates arguably the ultimate action film.

Cast: Bruce Willis and Alan Rickman

Running Time: 131 mins

Cert: 15

Ticket prices:

Adults: 5 euro

OAP/Student: 4 euro

Child: 3 euro

Family (2&2): 15 euro

Group of 10 people: 45 euro

Meeting House Square (MHS) is a unique outdoor space and venue in the heart of Temple Bar, Dublin’s Cultural Quarter. You can simply turn off the rain at the flick of a switch as the new bespoke retractable canopy blooms on Meeting House Square.

‘Christmas on the Square’ is presented by Temple Bar Cultural Trust and Dublin City Council.

Gambit

Colin Firth assumes Michael Caine’s role in an unnecessary remake of 1966’s unloved art forgery caper that fell flat next to Peter O’Toole’s How to Steal a Million then, and which falls equally flat now.

Firth is Harry Deane, a put-upon art expert who curates the private collection of vulgar multi-millionaire and ‘degenerate nudist’ Lionel Shahbandar (Alan Rickman). Firth has reached the end of his tether and plans to exploit Shahbandar’s uncontrollable desire to lord it over his hated Japanese rival by buying the second long-lost painting in a matching set of Monets; having outbid said rival for the first painting a decade before. Tom Courtenay’s Major Wingate provides the forged Monet, while the spurious provenance comes from Texan rodeo-rider PJ Puznowksi (Cameron Diaz). Puznowki’s grandfather stormed art-laden Nazi bunkers, and Deane is convinced this will hook Shahbandar into believing that Gramps Puznowki may have liberated a Monet back to Texas. All Deane has to do then is authenticate the forgery and 12 million pounds is his… But cons are never that simple, hilarity ensues.

Regrettably hilarity does not ensue, at quite some length. For reasons passing understanding the movie opens with a truncated version of how Deane wishes the movie to play out; which is very disorienting. First you think that the plan has gone very well, and that it’s going to hit a snag after the original caper. Then you realise that was a dream sequence, and so when you find that plan dragging on forever in real time later you’re needlessly impatient; because you’ve seen how fast it can go. The actors are stranded trying to mug laughs out of a weak script. Diaz goofs around like she’s back in 1998, Rickman squeezes some smiles from being comically obnoxious, Firth does an uptight Englishman without flexing his acting muscles, and the venerable Tom Courtenay (who provides oddly sporadic voiceover) is entirely underused.

The Coen Brothers screenplay undoubtedly attracted these actors, and there are numerous small touches that scream Coens such as Shahbandar’s eccentric security system and his nudism, garrulous and seemingly idiotic Japanese businessmen, Stanley Tucci’s demented big entrance, and the neighbour who wordlessly punches Deane in the nose in several scenes (a particularly unfunny but typical touch). But this is a film set in England with predominantly English characters which appears to have been bolted together entirely from Hollywood clichés about England and Englishness. Constantly inserting the words sod, bugger, and bollocks into dialogue does not make it instantly authentically English, guv’nor… This film surely hurts the Coens’ reputation as it is a laugh-free zone in which they only script one mildly amusing sequence; in which Firth, Diaz and Rickman engage in some extremely old-fashioned farce involving missing trousers and endless room-swapping at a swanky hotel.

Gambit was a film that should only have been remade by Steven Soderbergh. Avoid.

1/5

Oscar Schmoscar: Part III

The annual parade of pomposity and razzmatazz known as the Academy Awards lurches around yet a-bloody-gain this Sunday, so here’s a deflating reminder of its awful track record.

The Academy is Hollywood’s way of slapping itself on the back for doing a damn fine job, and as no genre was as quintessentially American as Hollywood’s standard-bearer the Western, you’d imagine that Westerns received the slap on the back a good number of times, yeah? No. No… The Academy’s only given the Oscar for Best Picture to three Westerns in its entire history, Cimarron, Dances with Wolves, and Unforgiven. I guess Stagecoach, Destry Rides Again, Red River, Bend of the River, Shane, The Searchers, Gunfight at the OK Corral, Rio Bravo, The Magnificent Seven, For a Few Dollars More, El Dorado, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, True Grit, The Outlaw Josey Wales, and Pale Rider all sucked then. But I mean the Academy know best, right? I mean it’s not like Orson Welles watched Stagecoach repeatedly before Citizen Kane to learn movie directing or anything, right? Right??

The Academy will always favour what I’ve previously dubbed ‘Immersive Acting’ over great ‘just acting’ of subtlety and power. Colin Firth won for The King’s Speech and not for his superior performance in A Single Man. Immersive acting produces terrific performances but it also has a curiously self-promoting showiness, as if acting somehow consisted of weight-loss and skills-training. The non-actor voters at the Academy only seem to be impressed if actors obviously do ‘hard work’. ‘Hey look, she’s doing an accent’, ‘Hey look, he learnt how to stammer’, ‘Hey look, she learnt to dance’, ‘Hey look, he’s playing a real person’. Bending your own life for a certain period of time to make it the same as the role (Day-Lewis in a wheelchair…) doesn’t make you a better actor than someone who reads the script, thinks about it, and gives a great truthful performance. It’ll win you more Oscars though…

We shouldn’t let it be thought that the Academy are competent to tell us what the best films of any year are when they’re incapable of recognising that Shame, Martha Marcy May Marlene, and Take Shelter were all amazing films made in 2011. This event needs to be denied the oxygen of publicity, without which it would surely shrivel down to a size more commensurate with its questionable judgement. That’s why every year this blog will never speculate about the nominations before they’re made, comment on them after they’re made, or make any acknowledgement of the winners. When the Oscars are worthy of coverage, I will cover them. I look forward to the day when blockbusters, comedies, small dramas, and epic dramas that have been released throughout a year and not merely in the last three months of the calendar jostle for deserved recognition. But I don’t hold my breath.

Show me someone who truly values the Oscars and I’ll show you someone who learnt to love movies from statistics books or marketing texts, not from watching damn good movies…

What the Hell is … Method Acting?

It may seem obvious, as it’s an endlessly cited term, but I’d like to examine it because I’ve been musing for a few years now about a brace of BBC documentaries which seemed to imply there were two styles of acting filed under the one term…

 

Method Acting was invented by Constantin Stanislavsky who directed the first productions of Chekhov’s four major plays (The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters, and The Cherry Orchard) from 1898 to 1904 at the Moscow Art Theatre. So far, so good – you couldn’t hope for a better provenance, and sure enough Stanislavsky wrote numerous books on the more realistic style of acting and staging that he had developed, which focused on emotional authenticity and hyper-detailed/intrusive sound design to suggest the surrounding world offstage respectively. Best to gloss over the fact that Chekhov thought him incredibly ponderous in his staging, and given to destroying comedic scripts by weighing them down with psychological realism. The Method made the leap from Russian into English and from Russia to America and, as taught by Lee Strasberg in the Group Theatre in New York, became a vogue in Hollywood in the 1950s. But what exactly is the Method? The late great Dennis Hopper, in a detailed BBC interview a few years ago spoke extensively of the Method as a way of imbuing acting with felt emotions thru the use of a magic box of memories. In short the actor playing a role mined his own experiences for emotional equivalents and thought of them to achieve the desired emotion rather than trying to imagine out of nowhere an authentic emotional response to a fictitious event.

So if Hopper was told onscreen that his father had died, Hopper the actor wouldn’t start crying because he had intellectually thought about the troubled father-son relationship of his character and conjured an appropriate level of sorrow, he would start crying because he would have thought of the death of a beloved relative and hammered into that memory until real tears started to flow – and the audience would never know that these real tears were being shed for a real person and had nothing to do with the character’s father. Hopper then clarified this point, saying that it was crucial for Method Actors to continually renew their magic box of memories with new emotional triggers because otherwise memories would cease to be vivid and fresh and the resultant acting wouldn’t be authentic but would simply be ‘just acting’.

 

Fine, that’s good Method Acting, and Brando, James Dean and Hopper all gave great performances in the 1950s, and seemed to redefine the lexicon of screen acting. Except…Marlon Brando wasn’t really a Method actor. Sure he mumbled onscreen like Dean, but not to somehow be in the moment in character, but because of a hilarious inability/refusal to learn his lines. In theatre other actors on Broadway spoke in awe of how he could use tiny details of stage-craft to convey sucker-punches of emotion, how Brando hunched over a counter with his legs wrapping around a bar-stool could convey a helplessness and a weak despair that could reduce an audience to tears. In other words he wasn’t Method acting, he was merely ‘just acting’ exceptionally well. Indeed Brando only spoke of using the Method for one film, Last Tango in Paris, and felt violated as a result of how much of his own life Bertolucci had tricked him (as he saw it) into revealing to millions of people by talking about his own parents when his character spoke about his troubled relationships with his parents. Brando vowed never to make himself that emotionally vulnerable again, and to never dig deep into his own soul for roles in that fashion ever again, before triumphantly boasting that in future he’d ‘just act’, and no one would be able to see that he wasn’t engaging on the Method level – purely because he knew he was that good at regular acting.

Where then does that leave Brando’s performances in Apocalypse Now and The Godfather? Physically changing his appearance to more closely resemble the role as written shows great commitment but it’s not strictly speaking Method acting in the Dennis Hopper magic box of memories sense. Brando’s dismay at his one use of the Method technique of using real emotional traumas mirrors Stanislavsky’s alarm at the hysterical reactions this technique was producing in some of his actors. Ironically Brando’s vow to merely ‘just act’ really well seems, in its emphasis on improvisation and physicality, to actually replicate Stanislavsky’s later emphasis on physical actions and improvisation rather than the magic box of memories to achieve subconscious authenticity. So, as Brendan Behan said of every Irish Republican endeavour thru history, the first agenda on the item was the split – another type of Method.

 

A type of Method exemplified by those 1970s show-offs Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro, and their more recent confreres, Daniel Day-Lewis and Christian Bale. The fact that Al Pacino is the one member of the 1970s generation of Method actors who does the most theatre work, associated with Lee Strasberg, and can still be found at the Actors’ Studio even now, should give the answer to the question of where the dividing line between the two Methods lies. What Hoffman, De Niro, Day-Lewis, and Bale do is not Method acting as Stanislavsky originally understood it; certainly it’s hard to think of Chekhov doing anything but throwing his hands up in even more than usual horror/despair at their antics. Hoffman’s continual improvisations would destroy any Chekhov play, or indeed any play, hence his great difficulty in performing Macbeth on Broadway until another actor menaced him into just finding truth in the words Shakespeare had written for him… Indeed if you watch the extras on Marathon Man you can see Hoffman’s insistence on endless improvisation damn near destroying that film as it leads to endless deleted scenes where the other actors get so rattled by his in-character ramblings that their minds go visibly blank, because they can’t improvise, and they start nervously babbling but all they have to babble as dialogue are the screenplay’s plot points; whose premature disclosure is not advisable in a suspense thriller, and is the reason those scenes were unusable.

Pacino never worked the same way that De Niro and Hoffman did in their hey-day, and that Day-Lewis and Bale still do. What this quartet does can only work for film, it is utterly unsuited to theatre, and given that Stanislavsky was a theatre director perhaps we need a new term for this quasi-hysterical evolution of his later conception of the Method. I’d like to propose ‘Immersive Acting’ as a more accurate term, because that is what they do. They don’t bring their own experiences to the role as Dennis Hopper propounded with his magic box of memories, instead they take the role and bend their own life for a certain period of time to make it the same as the role; think of De Niro driving a taxi, Hoffman long-distance running, Day-Lewis learning the craft of butchery, and Bale losing a terrifying amount of weight; and then they play that, interpreting Stanislavsky’s emphasis on physicality as meaning the actor gaining subconscious authenticity in the role almost thru sheer muscle memory.

Immersive acting produces terrific performances, but I think it needs its own term to emphasise its peculiarity, its curiously self-promoting showiness, as if acting somehow consisted of weight-loss and skills-training. Colin Firth’s reaction to a phone call in A Single Man has nothing to do with physically immersing himself in his role, but it will break your heart. Not bad for ‘just acting’.