Wow, there are some pretty awful things said out there about this lol. It seemed like a perfect partner for the Streisand Star is Born and I wasn’t far wrong. I certainly wouldn’t go as far in damning this as some have – even in the area of Neil Diamond’s “performance” I found nothing to really despair over. People have called it bad acting. I’d say, thank god he didn’t act, because, it’s true, he clearly can’t. What he gives in front of the camera is importantly not acting, and I think compared to a lot of so-called “acting” over the years – even, dare I say, some of Streisand’s stuff in the aforementioned Star is Born, deserves the bad-mouthing more – I honestly have to say, he’s not that bad at all. This is one case where the Kermode “I’d rather an actor who can sort of sing than a singer who can sort of act” rule is well-broken in my eyes, maybe because I’d always rather the writer of the songs sang his own songs rather than anybody else … that this in itself is a whole part of the story here makes Diamond the only honest choice for the part.

The only real problem with this movie is, like A Star is Born, the way it feels so by the numbers over the story. The conflict is shattered the moment Diamond’s father gives him his blessing way too early in the game (I haven’t seen the original of this – yes, spank me – but I thought this familial conflict was like the whole point of the story? lol, here it’s like, “no, no, no … oh, okay …”) ... and as such, the great songs notwithstanding, I have to say I was probably moved more by the Krusty the Clown version on The Simpsons lol …

But the songs are great, and it’s great to see Diamond singing them. It deserves to be repeated how great a double bill this and A Star is Born are too. Despite how disappointed I was with both of them, there’s something about the very idea of their existence that makes me know I’ll still do it again one day, probably more than once. They certainly feel like great movies because of the giants behind them, and there are definitely glimmers of their genius that break through the iffy surface.

I can’t not give this movie less than 5 hearts anymore – perhaps particularly since I changed my ratings from stars to hearts lol. Even the corny jokes (not to mention gag Bono) worked more on me third time around here and the good here is so good you just can’t help but surrender. It owes a terrific debt to one of my all-time faves, Pink Floyd: The Wall, not just in “Strawberry Fields” as mentioned below but also the whole “I Want You” scene is pretty much “Another Brick in the Wall”; and though Julie Taymor can’t (yet) hope to entirely compete with Alan Parker, it’s certainly a worthy comparison.

It’s all about the freedom the movie has – leaping from a Bono cameo to Eddie Izzard pretty much sums it up (incidentally, as I commented while watching it this time with my sister, it’s not so much the mere appearance and singing from Bono that wows here; it’s when he speaks following the song when you truly realise how it’s perhaps the most selfless thing he’s ever done); from a gorgeously scored climax intercutting Vietnam and Colombia University to the completely random but equally beautiful women in the sea over the eponymous song sequence. It’s a movie that’s undeniably “all over the place” and yet you can’t quite fathom how it could be any other way. I’ve watched it more now than any other film of the past year, and that stat will only increase as time goes on, so the watchability factor definitely comes into play in the rating too. And if I haven’t said enough about how incredible Evan Rachel Wood is, then mark my words I’ll have plenty more to add in the future, she blows my mind, nevermind every movie or scene I see her in, every frame.

January 10th, 2008:

I really need to start half stars here, I think, lol. That I couldn’t resist watching this again so soon should speak well of the movie in itself. When it’s good, like in “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” and “Strawberry Fields” as mentioned below, or the exploding newspaper over the instrumental climax to “Day in the Life” – not to mention just about every second Evan Rachel Wood occupies the screen – it’s great. When it’s bad, though – and I’d be amazed if even the most ardent of fans don’t feel this during at least some portion of the movie, though I’d personally cut half an hour or more – it’s even worse than I thought on the first viewing. I still really don’t know what to make of the rollercoaster of love and hate this movie takes me on. I’m often tempted to use the phrase “flawed masterpiece” but more often than not I ultimately fall down on one side or the other … but here … I really don’t think that phrase has ever applied more to a movie. I think I’ll be coming back to this many more times.

7th January, 2008:

Ah Julie Taymor First, this movie tackles the whole High School Musical thing into the dirt in just one 2-3 minute scene (“I Wanna Hold Your Hand”). There follow a plethora of standalone interpretations of Beatles songs set loosely to a little love story (rather than the other way around as some plot summaries will tell you :P) but I’m not sure it ever comes together in quite the way it should and for a Julie Taymor movie, no matter what anyone tells you, it’s really not that startlingly visual. Okay, no, it comes close to Pink Floyd’s The Wall during “Strawberry Fields” but that’s all I’ll give it; let’s face it, for the title track alone she had the Rufus Wainwright/Dakota Fanning and Fiona Apple/Paul Thomas Anderson music videos to contend with.

It’s just so about the Beatles songs; even the ones that aren’t sung come in in lines like, “She came in through the bathroom window!” and “when I’m sixty-four …” ... by the time a character called Dr. Robert walks in, you’ve practically cringed yourself inside out so it doesn’t matter anymore. I’m quite the pushover sometimes, so by the time it came to the two girls singing “love, love, love” to a couple of police officers on a rooftop as the hero (Jude) sings out for his Lucy (yeh), I can’t deny I was emotionally armless and I for one will be returning to this again one day, just to see if I was just another sucker or if there’s actually something here.

Watch if you can’t get enough of Beatles covers, pretty people and good lipsync; but don’t expect a whole lot more. For the visuals, I’d personally sooner watch Julie Taymor’s Titus again; for the music, I’ll keep praying Cirque du Soleil will tour their “Love” show or at least produce a DVD, in the meantime I recommend I Am Sam. Though it has its moments, this movie is in places so cheesy and simplistic in the worst way. I think it could’ve been much much more.

“Take this sinking boat and point it home, we’ve still got time …”

Spoiler Warning I guess – not that you could possibly spoil this one.

Y’know, call me dumb just one more time but even at the Oscars after seeing the movie 3 times, I didn’t fully listen to that lyric until now. As the last couple of reviews might’ve shown, I’m still bobbing up and down a little off the ripples left by the wave of depression Enchanted left me with, and I couldn’t help but notice that this movie ends quite the same way as that one with the “lovers” at the outset not ending up together; but, I don’t know, here I bought it with tears in my eyes, perhaps because I believed they made the right choice … perhaps because I believed they knew there was still some work ahead … perhaps because in the end, it’s a matter of consistency, and this movie is 100% so.

While so many things now tell you, “if it’s f*cked, move on or replace it,” this movie presents us with a character who brings a lowly hoover for a busker to fix rather than simply buy a new one because all she can even afford to give him for his songs is 10 cents. It simply asks people to make an effort, all the while telling the inspiring story of someone far too old by society’s standards to be still living with his pa finally taking the steps to making a name for himself as a singer-songwriter in tandem with fixing an old and clearly dear relationship.

Again I find myself commenting on the thing I should find annoying about this movie that proves the movie’s brilliance by the sheer fact that it doesn’t annoy me. There’s a whole sequence that basically shows how everyone is trying to be a musician; from the trying to get the loan and the bank guy breaking into song, cutting to the street and a random busker drumming, to the party where it’s a requirement that you sing. I hate this kind of thing normally not because it’s false – on the contrary, it’s the truest and mostly most beautiful thing there is – but it’s very demoralising to anyone (in which case I guess, lol, everyone) wanting to get their songs heard. But like I say, it’s amazing that this really never gets to me like I’d think it would in this one.

Then there are the peripheral characters. The man in the clothes shop telling Guy, “You’re gorgeous,” the aforementioned bank guy, and my god, the studio guy – that in itself is the series of shots I’d personally say define this movie, him going from “these bunch of f*ckin …” to the total childlike enthusiasm at the mixing desk when he realises how good they are … it’s just an astonishing few pieces of film.

I’m just amazed by how much more I got out of this movie this viewing after seeing it at least 3 times already … you get this initial feeling like it’s that typical variety of indie movie where they just point the camera at two people and improvise or something, in this case perhaps buoyed by the quality of the songs … but, simply that whole thing about the hoover, I’d just never realised the significance of it as it compares to the big picture, the whole idea of fixing something that, in general, in today’s world, is more often just slung out for a new model, it just really shows how beautifully written and considered it is. It’s such an important message for the world right now.

December 3rd, 2007:

I’m slightly annoyed I didn’t get to see this a lot earlier than I ultimately have, because as soon as it began I realised that no matter what it did, it would be a miracle if it lived up to the expectations I’ve built up for it over the months and months of hype and general gushing of those who had seen it. It sounded perfect – in a nutshell, as a more recent review I read put it, it’s the Irish, musical, Before Sunset. The songs are beautiful even if, like me, you’ve heard them dozens of times before the movie begins.

For almost the whole first 85 minutes, I had that feeling. It’s not living up to what I psyched myself into expecting, etc, all the while cursing the destructive power of hype. “It’s good,” I thought – the music’s great of course, the story well-paced, the performances perfect – “but it’s not overwhelming me.”

But it’s all in the ending. When it all comes together, in at most 3 little shots. And it was literally like one second I was dry and the next my face was streaked with tears, and they didn’t stop till the last credit rolled off the screen. This movie is just too beautiful for words.

“You’re playing with your life.”
“So? You’ve got to play with something.”

I remember seeing the trailer for this, seems like ages ago now, before anyone was really talking about it much at all, and I was really excited despite, I realise even more now having seen it, not really being such a huge fan of Edith Piaf, and not really knowing all that much about her life. And though I’d seen Marion Cotillard in a lot of stuff, like Innocence and more recently A Good Year, she’d never struck me either as a particularly outstanding actress nor, as here, as knock-out beautiful as she is.

It’s a beautiful film that kind of closes in on the sorrow in Piaf’s life, cutting in between her close to death and at two stages of her childhood (played by two absolutely wonderful girls both rightly given more screentime than I expected), with her in her prime scattered in between. At the end, an interviewer asks her about each phase we’ve seen: “What advice would you give a woman/a young girl/a child?” to which her every answer is “Love.” The structure first strikes one as jumpy, but the more I think about it now, the more phenomenally coherent I find it. To someone who knew so little about, basically, “what was she so sad about?”, the delivery of information is perfect.

Marion Cotillard is as perfect as “they” say. I really didn’t expect it, and much as I’ll love it if Julie Christie gets the Oscar, Cotillard’s performance is simply so much more. It’s in the later scenes of Piaf’s life that my heart simply drops out of my chest at how much Cotillard vanishes in the role. The make-up, of course, helps; but it’s a two-way effort of make-up, Cotillard working with it as much as it works with her. It’s truly astonishing.

Well, finally, I loved this one so much it went over A Clockwork Orange in my 1971 list and thus shot straight to the top of my favourite movies of all time … kinda knew that’d happen sooner or later. Again, there’s little to say that I haven’t said below or that others haven’t said before, but I noticed a couple of cute things this time around worth mentioning, both of them costume related; the way Harold is dressed exactly the same as the psychiatrist in their first meeting, and the way Maude is dressed almost exactly the same as a little girl walking in the same way as her behind her at one of the early funerals … Maude, though, carrying that bright yellow umbrella that makes her look more like the little girl, lol. It’s just an absolutely beautiful movie I could quote or talk about scenes from for hours. “For me, they will always be glorious birds …” – “Most of life’s sorrow comes from people who are this – but allow themselves to be treated like that …” I probably should’ve saved it for Valentine’s Day … though that’s reserved for Hannibal still this year One day I’ll write a much longer review … for now, just consider it an even higher recommendation, if you’ve not seen it yet, than I gave for Beautiful Girls a few weeks ago.

January 5th, 2006:

I’m surprised by how much I said in my first review of this (below). I really can’t think of much to say about it right now, I need to watch it so many more times. I want to know ths movie by heart. Everything about it is perfect. Its offbeat take on life, death, and love is beyond compare. Maude is one of the greatest movie characters ever.

18th October 2004:

Someone recommended this movie to me a while ago and I already knew about it and knew it was a movie I wanted to see, and after that recommendation, I wanted to see it even more. I don’t know why it took me till now to finally see it.

I was barely even in the right frame of mind to watch it, nevertheless it belongs forever in my top 100 movies of all time. It’s only just at 100 after a first viewing but I just know it’s going to rise and rise. These two characters are people I want to hang with forever. Harold and Maude belongs in that group of movies that just tell you to grab life by the balls. It’s almost terrifying in that aspect, Maude is so free-spirited she would make almost anyone on earth feel somewhat lifeless.

And the soundtrack by Cat Stevens … well, it’s awesome, but more than anything makes me want to hear more Cat Stevens. Why is this soundtrack never uttered in the same breath as Simon and Garfunkel’s The Graduate and Aimee Mann’s Magnolia? I see something of Cameron Crowe’s influence coming from this movie too, I wonder if he’s ever mentioned it on a commentary anywhere – I’m going to have to watch Almost Famous again.

Definitely one of the most romantic movies of all time.

Little to add to the first review here but on BAFTA night to single out Sam Riley. I was shocked by his exclusion from most of the awards, let alone the whole movie in other categories, when nominations were first announced; after watching his performance a second time, my mind simply boggles. I honestly think this whole movie belongs up there with the likes of There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men this year, and his performance up with Day Lewis and Depp, not to mention the cinematography … it of course baffles me even more that it’s excluded from so many categories at the BAFTAs, and I hope it wins all that it’s up for.

November 27th, 2007:

I really didn’t know how I’d fare with this one, not really being a huge fan of Joy Division nor really even knowing much of their story or music except for what was touched on by the brilliant 24 hour Party People ... to illustrate how little, I didn’t know anything about Ian Curtis’ epilepsy. And I’ll admit, in light of 24 hour Party People, I did find myself wondering about the need for this movie.

It didn’t take long for me to realise this was one of the best movies of the year, though. I can be pretty picky about movies like this if they don’t feel like they gel as a whole from the start – the ensemble, the design, the authenticity, especially these days when it’s so much more possible, everything has to be right about these movies – and if nothing else, this one is certainly the best “period” movie of the year technical-wise up with Zodiac and American Gangster. This one betters both those by far though with the other less technical stuff – the stuff that makes cinema get inside you. The performances are all perfect, believable – I think it says it all that even Craig Parkinson’s turn as Tony Wilson works following Steve Coogan’s, at the time, seemingly irrepeatable take on the guy.

The soundtrack, of course, is perfect. Mark Kermode has said all that needs to be said about how right the decision to have Sam Riley do his own singing was – the cool thing I think he didn’t mention though is how the band sounds too. Like I said, I’m not a Joy Division fan – I’m one of those people who know the songs but wouldn’t immediately name the artist … at best I’d be, like, “ummm … someone from the Manchester thing?” lol. But in addition to being a portrait of a doomed young artist to rank up there with The Doors, to a lesser extent Last Days, etc, this actually made me for the first time want to listen to the music too. The black and white photography is simply beautiful, it’s the kind of movie where almost every frame is an art print, and it’s far from being all misery like it could’ve been. It’s one of the best British films in ages, and I haven’t done my double bill recommendation thing in ages … even if it’s obvious, I can’t think of a better pair than this and the aforementioned Party People.

If someone had told me this had been “Josie and the Pussycatzed up” on its way to the screen, I might’ve got overly excited. I was pretty excited to see a Chipmunks movie anyway, but slipping in a little music industry satire too? How could it fail?

Well, it turns out the brilliant Josie did just about all you can do with that without needing a repeat, and when it comes to the Chipmunks … I’d really prefer it were kept a little more cute and traditional.

I think it was of this Mark Kermode said, “it’s not quite Garfield ...” while I’d say, that’s just about exactly the level it’s at. It has its moments, at 90 minutes it’s not worth complaining about, but really, I’d sooner get some nostalgia and watch the old TV show and get the satire from Josie. That said, if a sequel means Chipettes? Well I’m so there, lol One thing’s for sure, the look of the chipmunks is the least of this movie’s problems … I know a lot of people nearly died when the teaser poster was unveiled but I really don’t see the problem … Theodore in particular is adorable, I want one! And they each have distinctive personalities to the point where you know which is which long before they don the colour-coded sweaters. The point where childhoods really start being raped is with the too-modern songs the guys are singing – but even that complaint gets fairly shot down by the closing credits showing all the albums released under the Chipmunks name over the decades … they have always changed with the times. There’s really nothing wrong with this movie, it’s really just a matter of how well you take it.

One thing I hadn’t bargained on was the major Christmas theme running through the movie. Of course, the Chipmunks’ Christmas album is one of their most popular recordings so I should’ve known. Still, at least I slipped it in before January was out … and it gives me a good excuse to watch it again since at that time of year I’ll pretty much watch anything

I actually originally wanted to watch this not because I loved Interview with the Vampire but ‘cos it features Marnie Reece-Wilmore – Debbie Martin from “Neighbours” at a time when a) I used to watch it and b) I swear, just the greatest period of soaps ever, ever lol. I’d kind of convinced myself her role was pretty minor, though, and I doubted that a Vampire Chronicles movie that involved none of the talent of Interview could even come close to being as mesmerising.

I was right on the Marnie front – her appearance is recognisable in a “Keisha Castle-Hughes in Revenge of the Sith” kinda way, and for a fan clutching at straws (she’s really not done a lot since Neighbours), it’s worth waiting for. And overall, though like I said it couldn’t touch Interview, and I haven’t read the book yet so I can’t comment on the adaptation quality, it’s still a much better movie than I expected. Stuart Townsend is just about as perfect as the rock star Lestat as Cruise was originally, and Aaliyah is a pleasant surprise as the queen. I really can’t imagine who else could’ve played her. The music is mercifully decent too.