Rev Stan's film blog

Quick review: Helen Mirren is stern and French in The Hundred-Foot Journey

Synopsis: An Indian family set up a restaurant in France opposite the Michelin starred eatery owned by the formidable Madame Mallory (Helen Mirren) which causes friction.

Stan's thoughts: Bit behind with reviews (again) so some even quicker thoughts than usual... This is a lovely gentle Sunday night type of film. Don't watch it if you are hungry because it is laden with food porn.

It's basically a story about people from very different backgrounds but equally passionate and skilled in cooking who clash but in the end learn something from each other. I don't think that's a plot spoiler particularly because you can see it coming with a blindfold on and it's the journey, as the title suggests, rather than the destination which gives its warmth and humour. There is also a nice romantic sub plot. 

Drags its feet a little bit but a film that leaves you with a warm fuzzy glow, a smile on your face and a raging appetite.

Ratings

• Stan’s 60%
• IMDB 75%
• Metascore 55%
• Rotten Tomatoes 68%
• RT Audience Rating* 74%

Recently seen

Dracula Untold

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Obvious Child

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* Based on number of people who rated the film 3.5/5 and higher

Review: The sharp and sweet Obvious Child

Synopsis: A jilted, twenty-something, stand up comic gets knocked up on a one night stand and is forced to assess her life.

Stan's thoughts: A rom-com that gets an airing at my favourite, discerning cinema-goers chain Curzon is always going to get my attention. Likewise a rom-com that isn't pushed as being 'quirky' - which in movie speak usually means a female protagonist who wears flat shoes and normal clothes.

So that's how I ended up watching Obvious Child on a Friday morning at the Curzon in Victoria with about five other people (I was on holiday, not bunking off). And, it lived up to the promise. It has moments of refreshing honesty and a sharp wit but it was also a lot sweeter than I expected. The abortion storyline (it's not a spoiler, it's in the trailer) is also handled with honesty and sensitivity.

Obvious Child is a rom-com that avoids a lot of the usual cliches, succeeds in making you laugh but also leaves you with a warm fuzzy glow. Isn't that what rom-coms are supposed to do?

Ratings

• Stan’s 75%
• IMDB 72%
• Metascore 75%
• Rotten Tomatoes 88%
• RT Audience Rating* 78%

Recently seen

Two Days One Night

Welcome to New York

What If

Lucy

The Rover

Guardians of the Gallaxy

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Begin Again

Boyhood

Jersey Boys

 

* Based on number of people who rated the film 3.5/5 and higher

Review: Daniel Radcliffe does rom-com in What If (aka The F-Word)

Synopsis: Wallace (Radcliffe) is still moping after chucking his two-timing girlfriend and doesn't go out much. Then he meets Chantry (Zoe Kazan) who is in a long term relationship. Men and women can just be friends right?

Stan's thoughts: First I must just say that Radcliffe is playing his natural English accent in a film set in Toronto implying that he hasn't long been in the country ie was brought up in the UK but he's called Wallace. Nobody in England is called Wallace other than Gromit's friend.

The other thing to push to one side is the very obvious attempts at humour. You know the sort of stuff that's been done a zillion times that just isn't funny any more. Some of it is slapstick - someone standing behind a closed door and in front of an open window...for example. Some of it just silly - the drunken phone call to the other half who is in an important meeting.

Oh and one other thing I'm trying to ignore is the line from a female character about a 'brazilian' being a waste of time when she didn't manage to cop off. Got a bit of feminist rage at that moment.

Right, now that is all out of the way what you are left with is actually quite witty and warm if a little predictable. Laughed out loud a few times and was definitely rooting for Wallace and Chantry which is important. There are some quirky little animated sequences which were a nice touch particularly over the end credits and definitely worth sitting through.

It's not as quirky as it thinks it is but it is good to see the likes of Jemima Rooper and Rafe Spall on the big screen in supporting roles.

Don't want this to sound overly negative because on the whole I enjoyed it and had a warm fuzzy glow when I walked out of the cinema, it just take a while to get into its stride and decide what it wants to be.

Ratings

• Stan’s 60%
• IMDB 73%
• Metascore 59%
• Rotten Tomatoes 70%
• RT Audience Rating* 78%

Recently seen

Lucy

The Rover

Guardians of the Gallaxy

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Begin Again

Boyhood

Jersey Boys

Bright Days Ahead

Fault of Our Stars

The Young and Prodigeous TS Spivet

* Based on number of people who rated the film 3.5/5 and higher

Review: Keira Knightley and Mark Ruffalo make music in Begin Again

Synopsis: Abandoned alone in New York by her boyfriend, whose music career is taking off, Gretta (Keira Knightley) meets washed-up music producer Dan (Mark Ruffalo) who sees something special in her songs.

Stan's thoughts: The music in this is lovely. The film reminded me of Once. Initially I couldn't quite reconcile Keira Knightley's singing voice with her but apparently it is her own voice and not bad either. Naturally I bought the soundtrack - Maroon 5's Adam Levine plays her boyfriend and sings a few of tracks, a couple have quickly turned into earworms.

Mark Ruffalo is a favourite of mine and is always fun to watch even when his character is behaving like a cock and James Corden does a good James Corden turn as Gretta's fellow struggling musician friend.

Overall this is a lovely, gentle film which appealed to the hopeless romantic deep inside me. It twanged all the right chords and even more so when it didn't go quite where I expected.  There is nothing offensive or challenging, the sort of film that just leaves a warm fuzzy glow and certainly one I'll be adding to my Sunday night DVD collection when it comes out.

Ratings

• Stan’s 75%
• IMDB 78%
• Metascore 62%
• Rotten Tomatoes 82%
• RT Audience Rating* 87%

Recently seen

Boyhood

Jersey Boys

Bright Days Ahead

Fault of Our Stars

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Belle

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* Based on number of people who rated the film 3.5/5 and higher

Review: The surprisingly good Her

Synopsis: Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) is a lonely divorcee who develops a relationship with an intelligent operating system, Samantha (Scarlett Johansson), which is designed to organise his life.

Stan's thoughts: Written and directed by Spike Jonze, Her certainly has his idiosyncrasies. On paper its an odd and not wholly promising premise: A man falls in love with a computer.

However, what you get is something that is an intelligent and, ironically, very human look at relationships. The expectations, disappointments, joy and pain is all played out. The fact that one half of the relationship is an operating system throws up its own set of ironies.

Samantha is not some electronic sounding automaton but sounds and thinks like a human and is therefore subject to similar feelings of love and hurt albeit with a heightened ability to rationalise them. How the relationship pans out raises questions about artificial intelligence and the drive for something that is close to human.

The futuristic world that Jonze has created is not that far removed from our own; telecommunications and virtual technology has advanced a bit but in some ways humans have become lazy about their relationships. Theodore works for a company that writes personal letters for people. While he is very good at his job, has an amazing way with words, he is essentially manipulating other people's relationships when they are too lazy to do so themselves.  

There is also irony in the fact that he knows what to say when he is writing as someone else but in his own life never has quite the same eloquence and struggles with the same emotional engagement.

I confess that the trailer for this didn't really pique my interest too much but I'm so glad I gave it a go. It's an odd idea but well executed, interesting and entertaining so go with it.

Ratings

• Stan's: 75%
• IMDB: 83%
• Metascore: 90%
• Rotten Tomatoes: 94% 
• RT audience rating: 85%

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Review: Probably the only person not to like Richard Curtis' About Time

Synopsis: Tim (Domhnall Gleeson) discovers from his father (Bill Nighy) that he can travel back in time to moments in his life so Tim decides to use this skill to get a girlfriend.

Stan's thoughts: I really liked the first half an hour or so when Tim was getting the hang of the time travel (although don't think too much about how it all works) and refining his seduction technique over and over again but ultimately this feels like a 2 hour lesson in making the most of each day and I got a bit bored. 

The characters are all standard Curtis fare - Bill Nighy pretty much playing the sort of dad you've come to expect, there's a ballsy mum, an away with the fairies uncle and family friend who is just obnoxious.

Any delight really came from the new talent and theatre spotting. Domhnall Gleeson is shaping up to be the go to actor for nice British chap in the vein of Colin Firth and perhaps Hugh Grant (and yes I know he's Irish).  Then there was the fabulous Lydia Wilson as Tim's hippy and slightly bonkers sister (think Charlotte Colman-esque in Four Weddings) and the Vanessa Kirby as the vampish best friend of Tim's beau who is played by Rachel McAdams - the token American. Also bit parts for Stan fav Harry Hadden-Paton and Tom Hughes.

The Old Vic Theatre makes an appearance as does the National Theatre and the South Bank. Spent a little while also trying to work out which tube station Tim and love-interest were at.

So a great sight-seeing film but it begs the question why am I'm paying more attention to the locations and thinking about which plays I've seen the actors in and the conclusion I've come to is that it just wasn't enough of anything to add up to much. Not funny enough, not quite charming enough, a plot that was plodding and formulaic and all just a bit too sentimental.

Was really looking forward to it too.

Ratings

• Stan's: 50%
• IMDB: 70%
• Metascore: 57%
• Rotten Tomatoes: 71% 
• RT audience rating: 83%

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Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World - Review

First post using the typepad app on my iPhone start counting the typos...
Having a bit of a good run with rom-coms at the moment which is a rarity as they are normally so contrived and, well, annoying rather than funny.
Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World sees comedy stalwart the dour faced Steve Carrell team up with Brit-darling Kiera Knightly (I'm warming to her). Carrell is Dodge a (surprisingly) dour-faced and dull insurance salesman whose wife, when they find out that the world is going to be obliterated by an asteroid in 21 days, pegs it.
Knightley plays the flighty Penny who lives downstairs and is in the process of splitting up with her boyfriend.
The two are thrown together as the end of the world approaches as both attempt to see loved ones - Dodge is trying to find his first love and Penny wants to get to her family in England.
There are some great laugh out loud moments mainly at the beginning as societal norms collapse under weight of the impending doom and everything becomes try now or never. Not that everyone acknowledges the end of the world there are a couple of characters who seem determined to carry on as normal.
It is also quite moving - well I had a little cry anyway so it gets thumbs up for that.
And you can't help thinking about what you would do in the same scenario.
It isn't going to win any awards but I enjoyed it and am going to give it 70%.
On IMDb it has 72% with a meta score of 59% while on Rotten Tomatoes is has 52% from critics and 62% of site visitors gave it three and a half stars or more.

Battle of the Emily Blunt rom-com's: Your Sister's Sister vs 5-Year Engagement

Emily Blunt has managed to star in two romantic comedies in the space of just a couple of weeks so which is the best?

The first, Five-Year Engagement, is about a couple whose plans to get married get postponed when Violet (Blunt) gets offered the job of her dreams. Tom (Jason Segel) gives up his on-the-rise chef's job so they can move across country for what should be a fixed term job.

Violet's contract job gets extended, Tom hates the new life  and can't get a job as good as the one he left behind and the cracks begin to appear. 

And it is funny and well done and entertaining to a point  but can't resist a few of the usual rom-com contrivances and cliches. Tom breakdown is a little OTT, for example. 

The second, Your Sister's Sister sees Blunt as best friend Iris to Mark Duplass' Jack. Jack is struggling to come to terms with the death of his brother, who happens to be an ex of Iris's. 

Iris suggests he has some time out and goes and stays in her family's holiday home in the mountains but when he arrives Iris's half sister Hannah (Rosmarie DeWitt) is there. She has just split up with her long term girlfriend.

Jack and Hannah get drunk and end up in bed together and then Iris turns up to check on Jack and it is obvious that she has feelings beyond friendship for Jack. Should he and Hannah confess?

The script was mostly improvised and there certainly aren't the contrivances and knock-about comedy of Five Year Engagement. And for that I really liked it. It's warm and intelligent and funny - more of what the industry is calling a 'dramedy' rather than a rom-com and that is perhaps why I liked it so much.

Five Year Engagement suffers in the comparison. If I hadn't seen Your Sister's Sister afterwards I probably would have rated it high but the latter was just a more satisfying and rounded film for me, it felt more natural, probably because of the improv.

So Five Year Engagement gets 59% from me (IMDb 67%/63% Rotten Tomatoes) and Your Sister's Sister gets 75% (IMDb 67%/Rotten Tomatoes 86%)

 

Review round up: Salmon Fishing In The Yemen and Jeff Who Lives At Home

Salmon Fishing In The Yemen

Haven't read the book so didn't have any preconceived ideas about this. And, I also wasn't planning to see it but ended up buying a ticket on a whim. But I'm really glad I did because it's a nice gentle rom com. Funny and warm, if a little predictable it worked for me. A pleasant couple of hours in the cinema and so I'm giving it 73%. 

On IMDb it has 69% and a Metascore of 58% while on Rotten Tomatoes it has 68% and 72% of site visitors gave it three and half stars or higher.

Jeff Who Lives At Home

From the trailer this could have gone one of two ways: quirkily funny or just irritating. It's about Jeff who is too old to be still living at home and sits around smoking dope and generally not doing anything useful. He believes that everything is a sign, that fate will lead you down the right path and in the process of following 'a sign' one day he ends up on a voyage of self-discovery.

And it worked. It is nicely quirky with some laugh out loud moments. Susan Sarandon as Jeff's mum is particularly good and the Porsche scene still makes me chuckle.

I'm giving it 73% while on IMDb it has 70% with a Metacritic score of 60%. On Rotten Tomatoes it has 77% and 74% of site visitors gave it three and half stars or more.

Midnight in Paris - why I didn't like it as much as the critics

Woody Allen's latest film, heralded in some quarters as a return to form, is clever and funny and there are many film-makers who'd be happy to produce something thus labelled. But that is about it and I kind of expected more from Woody Allen.

On holiday in Paris with his fiancee, script writer turned wannabe novelist Gil (Owen Wilson) goes for midnight walks across the city. One night he is picked up by a vintage car and transported back to his favourite era, the Paris of Hemmingway and Fitzgerald, Gaugin and Dali. Indeed he is literally transported back in time and so starts a series of encounters with his favourite writers and their contemporaries from the art world of the day.

Meanwhile back in the real world his fiancee Inez (Rachel McAdams) is reigniting an old friendship with Paul, an intellectual braggart (Michael Sheen) and you can see what is coming from a mile off.

OK so it's a pleasant enough ride, sentimental but in a good way. It's high brow in its references but even with my limited knowledge of the writers of the period there was enough to amuse and engage. It is has some nice little cameos - Adrien Brody as Dali is favourite. And yes it is cleverly contrived but I didn't bound out of the cinema thinking 'wow that was great'. It was more 'that was fun now what is next?'

I think the problem, for me anyway, is that the central couple just aren't likeable. Inez and Gil seem incompatible from the outset and are irritating in their own ways. I've never really warmed to Owen Wilson as an actor and he gets the 'the Woody Allen role', the sort of mumbling-bumbling-whiney personality which inevitable makes me bristle and feel all assertive and full of Kathy Bates-esque no nonsense. Bates, incidentally, was my favourite character in it, playing the literary agent of the day, Gertrude Stein. If Allen set out to make us sentimental about the past he did it by giving all the period pieces the charm and interesting characters.

So yes it was fun and clever and a mildly interesting exploration of our rose-tinted view of the past but it was also at times predictable and at little irritating. I'm sure when I check the critics will have loved it but for me it was a pleasant 'OK' and I'm going to give it 60%.

And yep I was right on IMDb it gets 80% with a Metacritic score of 81% while on Rotten Tomatoes it has 95% from critics and 83% of users rated it three and a half stars or more.