Category: Film

The Devil’s Whore (2008)

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The Devil's Whore

★★★★½

First screened in 2008, this four-part TV series shows us the English Civil War through the eyes of a woman. Subtitled, in a teasing nod to the Newgate scandal-sheets, A True Account of the Life and Times of Angelica Fanshawe, it begins in the early 1640s.  Angelica (Andrea Riseborough) is goddaughter to Charles I, blessed with wealth, position and security: the first episode opens on the eve of war, with her wedding to her cousin Harry, her childhood sweetheart.  As hostilities between King and Parliament deepen, her married life comes to an abrupt close and, banished from the court, Angelica finds herself in growing sympathy with those who seek to make a better world.  The series follows her as she struggles to defend her own well-being and her family home, as the sands of political fortune shift under her feet.

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A Dangerous Method (2011)

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A Dangerous Method

★★★½

(directed by David Cronenberg, 2012)

My friend invited me to come to see this with her last night, on its first day of release.  I went knowing very little about it, and without having ever seen a film directed by Cronenberg before.  I know that when it was shown at the London Film Festival last year it had mixed reviews, but I found it a subtle and thought-provoking introduction to Freud’s and Jung’s psychoanalytic theories, and a film that was very well acted by all three of its protagonists.  Writing these words, I’m becoming aware that everything I’ve seen or done recently has been described with a surfeit of superlatives, but I’m not being unduly nice, I’ve just been fortunate to have a spate of really enjoyable things to keep me occupied.

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Bright Star (2009)

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Bright Star

★★★★

(directed by Jane Campion, 2009)

Even as a self-consciously angsty teenager I never got into Keats or, indeed, the rest of the Romantic poets. When I needed romance or torment, I turned to Shakespeare. But tonight, for the first time in my life, I wish I had a proper book of Keats’s poetry. Bright Star is one of those rare films which didn’t really grip me at the beginning, but which grew on me throughout. Now that it’s finished I’m sitting in silence in a lamplit room, watching this year’s second snow fall in dark London streets. I am almost afraid to do anything, lest it shatter the mood.

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Sherlock: Seasons 1 and 2 (2010-12)

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Sherlock

★★★★½

How on earth did I manage to miss the first season of Sherlock?  Mark Gatiss’s and Stephen Moffat’s sleek, modern take on Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories has been catapulted into the stratosphere of cult shows over the last few months.  I feel very much like a latecomer at the party.  Over the Christmas holidays I watched the first and last episodes of Series 2, which was enough to get me absolutely hooked.  After watching The Reichenbach Fall, I spent hours reading through comments on news websites, trying to figure out how he did ‘it’.  My wonderful parents bought me the Series 1 and 2 boxset for my birthday and, since then, I’ve been luxuriating in this marvellous programme, which has rekindled the kind of geekish fervour I previously reserved for The Lord of the Rings.

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The Borgias (2011)

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The Borgias

★★★★

There was apparently a very bad TV series about the Borgias in the 1980s, but fortunately I’m too young to remember that. Nevertheless, when I heard that the production company Showtime were following up The Tudors with The Borgias, I felt a frisson of excitement mixed with slight dread. The Tudors began with such promise, but I rapidly lost faith in a series which didn’t have the courage to show its protagonist ageing and thickening out.  Its focus was not on the history, but on the series of unfeasibly Sloaney-looking girls who caught the eye of Jonathan Rhys Meyer’s implausible king.

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Anonymous (2011)

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Anonymous

★½

(directed by Roland Emmerich, 2011)

One of my friends keeps saying that I should read Jasper Fforde‘s books, which are set in a world where people riot over the question of who wrote Shakespeare’s plays (he clearly thinks I’d have sympathy with such a cause). As such, how could I resist Roland Emmerich’s new film Anonymous? In retrospect, I really wish I had resisted it. But that is part of the purpose of this blog. I am here to suffer really, really silly film-making so that you don’t have to. Think of it as a noble sacrifice.

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Jane Eyre (2011)

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Jane Eyre

★★★★½

(directed by Cary Fukunaga, 2011)

This is a retrospective review, as I saw Jane Eyre a fortnight ago now. Having read glowing reports of the film, I was really looking forward to it, even though the story has had more than its fair share of adaptations (along with Emma and Pride and Prejudice). One might ask: do we need another version? However, Cary Fukunaga has done a great job and gives a much-loved classic the sensual film treatment it deserves.

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La Belle et la Bête (1946)

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La Belle et la Bête

★★★★

Beauty and the Beast has always been my favourite fairy tale.  I remember going to see the Disney film at the cinema for a schoolmate’s seventh birthday.  As a bookish only child, I took that version deeply to heart and still love it to bits; but for pure cinematic fantasy and elegance, Jean Cocteau’s 1946 version is hard to beat.  Rich, sumptuous and stylised, it’s a feast for the eyes (and is best watched with a glass of wine and some chocolate truffles).  Cocteau begins by writing out the credits on a blackboard, followed by a handwritten text in which he makes it clear that we must suspend our disbelief and enjoy the story as children would.  He signs off with the words ‘Il était une fois [Once upon a time]...’

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The Skin I Live In (2011)

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The Skin I Live In

★★★½

(directed by Pedro Almodóvar, 2011)

When my colleagues and I were discussing films, and I said I wanted to see The Skin I Live In, they said they thought it was a horror film.  That worried me: I couldn’t imagine Almodóvar making a horror film. What I found, as it unfolded, was that this was not a horror film (to my relief): it was a typical Almodóvar film wrapped in the guise of a melodramatic thriller.

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Brief Encounter (1945)

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Brief Encounter

★★★★

(directed by David Lean, 1945)

Tonight, having a desire for something simple, I sat down with a glass of wine and some white chocolate and watched Brief Encounter.  It’s only the second time I’ve seen it.  And, oh goodness, it’s such a beautiful film.  Shot on an austerity budget, predominantly in and around (the fictional) Milford Junction station, it doesn’t immediately strike you as having the ingredients for one of the great romances.  The characters are as archaic and clipped as their accents, battling back the ungovernable forces of lust in defence of what is right and proper. Like The Remains of the Day, much of what’s important is in fact not spoken.  And, like Casablanca, the conclusion has a bittersweet quality that lingers wistfully, long after the film finishes.

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