Category: Film

Ran (1985)

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Ran: Akira Kurosawa

★★★

(directed by Akira Kurosawa, 1985)

I’ve just joined LoveFilm and am busily kicking myself for not having discovered it years ago, thereby saving myself hundreds of pounds on DVDs. I began with Ran, which is the first Kurosawa film I’ve really paid attention to (I saw Yojimbo at my university film club, but don’t remember much about it). I ordered it because I was intrigued to see how Kurosawa would adapt his source material of King Lear into a Japanese setting – Throne of Blood, which takes on Macbeth, is also on my wishlist.

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Restoration (1995)

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Restoration

★★★

(directed by Michael Hoffmann, 1995)

I don’t usually watch a film adaptation so soon after reading the book itself, but the DVD of Restoration arrived very quickly and I couldn’t resist reacquainting myself with Robert Merivel in cinematic form. I think it helped to have read the novel so recently: it made sense of the storytelling, some of which may seem confusing if you aren’t already familiar with the plot. Also, a small note for those in the UK: the film currently seems to be available only in Region 1 format, except for a version with permanent Dutch subtitles, according to Amazon.

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Henry IV: Parts 1 and 2 (c1597): William Shakespeare

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Henry IV: Part 1

In the wake of Henry V, I ventured back to the two instalments of The Hollow Crown which I should have watched before: Henry IV Parts 1 and 2. These were entirely new to me: I had never seen them before, either on the stage or on screen, and never read them either. I’ve always felt a little daunted by the history plays in general, and I steered particularly clear of anything with multiple parts (Henry VI Parts 1, 2 and 3 remain to be tackled on a future occasion). As the two plays form two halves of the same story and have the same cast, I wanted to deal with them together – and yet to consider each separately.

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Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013)

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Star Trek: Into Darkness

★★★½

(directed by J.J. Abrams, 2013)

Although I tend to write about quirkier films on the blog, I have to be honest: most of the time, like everyone else, I go to the cinema for the simple reason that I want to be entertained. I’m not a huge fan of action films; nor am I anything remotely approaching a Trekkie; but I really enjoyed the first instalment of the rebooted Star Trek franchise and wanted to see the sequel. Into Darkness obliged by completely bypassing the critical part of my brain and going straight into overdrive, leaving me with a bubbling sense of exhilaration and a grin on my face a mile wide. It may not be a great film. It may not be Art. But it was bloody good fun.

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Coriolanus (1605/8): William Shakespeare

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Coriolanus: William Shakespeare

(directed by Ralph Fiennes, 2011)

This was one of the many films I missed in the cinema, but I remember the critical acclaim that greeted its release in the UK last year. Last night I finally settled down to watch it; and what a treat it was. Fiennes’s directorial debut brings the action right up to date, telling the story with handheld cameras and news reports alongside more traditional techniques (the British newsreader Jon Snow has a cameo as the Fidelis TV presenter). Almost without exception, the excellent cast handle Shakespeare’s language with such ease that it feels almost like normal speech, and the story is presented with such clarity that (not knowing this play at all), I was completely gripped.

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The Great Gatsby (2013)

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The Great Gatsby

(directed by Baz Luhrmann, 2013)

Baz Luhrmann has made a speciality of doomed love affairs in frenzied, hedonistic settings: the swaggering drug-hazed playground of Verona Beach in his Romeo and Juliet, and the absinthe-tinted alleyways of Montmartre in Moulin Rouge. His take on the American Jazz Age in The Great Gatsby should have been sparkling. And there are moments of visual splendour, but it feels slightly strained, as if Luhrmann is trying very hard (against his instincts) to rein in his usual manic directorial style. It’s as if he set out to make, comparatively speaking, a more understated film. And the problem is that understatement isn’t really his forte. 

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Looking for Richard (1996)

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Looking for Richard

★★★

(directed by Al Pacino, 1996)

This documentary has been on my wishlist for some years, but I only bought it a couple of weeks ago. Little did I know at the time that Richard III was about to become national news. As we all know by now, the University of Leicester announced on Tuesday that the bones found in September beneath a car park, on the site of the city’s medieval Grey Friars church, were almost certainly those of Richard, buried hastily and irreverently after the Battle of Bosworth.

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Les Misérables (2012)

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Les Miserables

★★★½

(directed by Tom Hooper, 2012)

I first encountered Les Misérables in choir lessons at school, when we learned some of the songs, and I read the book when I was about fourteen, after my father, knowing how to handle me, said something like, ‘You’ll never get through that’. Now I can’t remember anything of the novel except (spoiler!) the scene of Enjolras’s death, which affected me deeply; but the musical has a secure place in my heart. I’ve seen it several times and I have the soundtrack on CD, so it’s fair to say that I know the score rather well. I was curious to see how it would translate to film (it’s important to stress that this is a film of the musical, not the original book), and overall it’s a success, even if it’s not quite as brilliant as all the hyperbolic reviews had led me to believe.

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The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)

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The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

★★★½

(directed by Peter Jackson, 2012)

On a chilly evening last Sunday in Leicester Square, waiting for the doors of the Odeon to open, I found it hard to believe that eleven years have passed since The Fellowship of the Ring came out. A fair amount has happened in those years, but in this moment they ceased to exist: the prospect of spending an evening in Peter Jackson’s version of Middle Earth made me feel as if I were sixteen years old all over again.

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Miranda (2009)

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Miranda

★★★½

Although I have a television, I don’t watch it much and so I’m usually hopelessly behind with the latest hit series. Just look at how long it took me to get into Sherlock, for example. With Miranda, however, I’m even further behind. Series 1 was aired in 2009 and Series 2 in 2010, but I knew virtually nothing about it, beyond the fact my parents had seen some of the episodes and found it amusing. (I only knew that because my mother started pouncing on every time I said ‘such fun’ in the course of a conversation, and had to explain herself.)

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