Still catching up, apologies for less than good review etc etc …

It doesn’t surprise me much now that I’ve seen this movie why it seems to be having so much trouble getting seen despite a cast led by AnnaSophia Robb and featuring small appearances from the likes of Val Kilmer (brilliant if fleeting) and Heather Graham (who quite honestly I didn’t even spot, lol). It’s a shame that it’s such a difficult movie to know “who to sell it to” – it’s certainly a children movie and children should be allowed to see it, though I’m not sure the powers that be will want them to – because it’s as beautiful if not more so than I imagined it’d be when I heard about it early last year or even late 2006.

The tagline is “You’re never too young to have a plan,” and boy, are these two kids with a plan. I mentioned when I wrote about Bad News Bears how I was sure they’d really missed a trick not casting AnnaSophia Robb in the Tatum O’Neal part when they remade it. Here, again, I’m struck by her surprising earthiness that you never really get from still or red carpet photographs of her. We meet her as her parents’ car crashes in a sleepy Texas town where a young boy lives like a ghost to his own parents. He immediately senses she’s smarter than him, though he gets the feeling she maybe screws with peoples’ heads sometimes. “I will never screw with your head,” she tells him, “ever.” And then she informs him, “I think it’s time for us to leave,” and they go, right under the nose of the boy’s father too pre-occupied with his boat in the yard.

They get married and sex is mentioned – it is in the line, “Don’t worry, I’m not ready to have sex yet,” but I just know that a lot of people won’t care about the context and will simply have a heart attack over a 13-year-old just saying the word and suggesting it’s an option, lol. There’s a great moment when they find shelter in a barn that turns out to belong to Val Kilmer (described beautifully by the boy, “He’s the nicest grown-up I’ve ever met. But I think he hates himself …”). Robb asks him what they owe him for room and board, to which the answer comes, “I think fallin’ asleep to the smell of pig shit should do it.” There’s a lot of stuff like this in the movie that makes me wonder just exactly how the movie will end up rated. Young teens definitely deserve to see it, but there are things I imagine would be cut to allow them to do so, things that need to be left in. Its morality towards the end is really difficult, like it almost turns into Heavenly Creatures and even I think some young people will need talking through it. Most adults won’t be interested in it. It’s a really unique movie, and I hate to say it ‘cos it sounds so patronising or whatever but, especially coming from America.

Of course my primary interest in the movie was AnnaSophia Robb, and she delivers a performance every bit as haunting as she did in Bridge to Terabithia. Her character takes a turn midway that gives me butterflies in my stomach every time I think about it – it’s described by the boy, “I didn’t realise it at the time, but she was starting to slip away inside herself,” and it’s so crushing. It reminded me of the scene in Stealing Home when Jodie Foster says, “I wish I could do that …” at the end of the pier. This is definitely a movie I’ll watch again and again, and if you get the chance to see it, don’t hesitate for a second.

I watched this today because it’s one of those movies I can watch any time but it was midway that I realised maybe I’d subconsciously chosen it for another reason. It connects to a lot of the movies I’ve watched recently and the feelings I’ve had watching them – from Enchanted to Penelope to Riding in Cars with Boys the other day, I even found similarities to Once here this time around. I’d never watched the introduction on the DVD of this movie before, and in it, Geoff Andrew says some things about the ending that my gut instinct disagreed with a lot, dismissing the romance at the start as meaningless teenage meanderings and such, as if the romance between Guy and Geneviève was never meant to bloom nor could have possibly bloomed, even if he’d returned to her in time. I took as much issue with that idea as I have recently with this idea that innocence lost can never be regained, etc, that I won’t go into yet again.

But as the movie went on, I did find myself looking at it in a different way from before – dare I say it, with some aging mature wisdom on my side. There are a lot of questions I’ve had over this movie in the past, like for example why I continue to love it so much when so many of the characters do things that I would never usually find acceptable. Everybody in the movie is in some way “after something” that they never ask for directly and honestly – both Guy and Geneviève in some way give up waiting for their love, the less said about Geneviève’s mother the better, Madeleine never declares her obvious love for Guy, and Roland Cassard, though perhaps the most admirable character in the movie, is always presented as a bit of a slimeball who looks down on the others – here to the rescue, yes, but through little real effort on his part. I think in the end it’s this full package of flawed characters illustrating perhaps precisely how “people things” tend to transpire whether we like them or not. Even Geneviève’s mother has a lot of pearls of wisdom, though delivered a little harshly (not to mention shrilly lol) at times.

But in the end, any amount of babble like this becomes fairly moot once you’re faced with the movie itself. From the opening title onwards – that rain falling as though from the camera itself on the people of Cherbourg, as though we the audience are already crying on the movie – this movie is simply pure magic that I could bawl through from beginning to end. The music is sublime, the colours are eye-popping, and the characters are, as I hopefully illustrated above, surprisingly complicated given the context. It has the most conflicted but beautiful ending I’ve ever seen, and I still react to it today as I did over 10 years ago when I first saw it: my stomach almost physically churns and tightens, I’m overjoyed but crushed, tears fall down my face over a wretchedly human smile on my lips. This movie isn’t beautiful … it’s beauty. If this review reads like a mess than it’s just an illustration of how the movie affects me, lol, and probably an explanation of why there hasn’t previously been a review of it here despite it being one of my all-time faves.

“Sometimes we love people so much that we have to be numb to it. Because if we actually felt how much we love them, it would kill us. That doesn’t make you a bad person. It just means your heart’s too big.”

I have the Donofrio book queued up to read really soon, like in the next couple of weeks, but I really couldn’t resist watching the movie yet again once it entered my mind this afternoon.

In answer to the question, “Why do boys suck?” I once said, “Because people expect it of them,” and it was like a revelation to me, it just popped out of my mouth without any real thought behind it but I knew immediately that it was true; and this movie kind of touches on that. Like, right at the moment of birth, we see Beverley’s horror at being given a boy – she was meant to have a girl, who would be just like her! But as Steve Zahn says, it’s a boy, and it’ll be just like him!

This movie just explains so many things, I find – I think in short it could be described as, “the cycle of shit” in life; even the marriage proposal here, “so romantic”, contains the ’s’ word, lol. Yet in Beverley’s son Jason, we see how even despite how the world can grind so many of us down and lead people to all manner of quick-fixes that make matters worse, morality and intelligence tend to thrive. The last time we see the “young” Jason it’s following the last straw for Beverley when he turns her in to her cop father for drying weed in the house. She tells her son that he’s ruined their lives, but he fires it right back at her, “That’s not what you’re supposed to tell people when they tell you the truth.” The mother-son back and forth here is as pointed yet at times hilarious as Edina and Saffy in Absolutely Fabulous (a random comparison, maybe: I’ve just finishing watching that show from start to finish, it’s on my mind), him so often telling her how she should be acting, perhaps hitting its pinnacle when he falls into a hot tub, and in the middle of pulling him out, she chastises herself and drops him back, then declares herself a bad mother, to which his response is a simple, “yeh …”.

I think what perhaps made this repeat viewing resonate with me more than any other times I’ve watched it relates to that quote that jumped out at me the very first time I saw it, “I’m 22 years old …” (the rest is below) – suddenly, I’m actually almost 30 lol. The use of the song “All I Have to Do is Dream” by the Everley Brothers, sung by James Woods and Mika Boorem (“Dad, you can’t negotiate my boobs!”) as the young Beverley early in the movie and then at the end (which I’d forgotten entirely) with Drew, suddenly made sense to me: “Only trouble is, gee whiz, I’m dreamin’ my life away …” This is a movie I’d recommend to anybody to watch from the moment they’re ready to see it (and that could be anywhere between the ages of 8 and 28 so, who knows when that is?) but that reveals itself more to you as you grow. I’m still in awe of its little pockets of realism, I find more every time I watch. I’m pretty sure it’s Drew Barrymore’s best movie to date, though that’s by no means the only reason to watch it.

July 28th, 2005:

Nothing to add to the old review (below). I think this movie’s a masterpiece. It’s even more realistic than I remember it. And I remembered how badly Steve Zahn’s character degenerates at the end, but I’d forgotten how far gone he kind of already is at the start. It’s really one of the saddest characters I’ve ever seen. I’ll definitely read the Donofrio book one day.

20th February 2004:

“I’m 22 years old – that’s almost 30, and I still haven’t accepted that this is my life. And I just wish that I could be dumb. And then I wouldn’t know better and I could be happy and stop hoping. And I’m telling you this like you’re interested in my boring life.”

This movie was a surprise. I expected to like it purely for the presence of Drew Barrymore but she amazed me. She plays between ages of 15 and mid-thirties perfectly. The movie towards the end reminded me of Ted Demme’s Blow – the way Steve Zahn’s character has totally degenerated towards the end, but is still able to express love to the son he can’t even recognise. The way real life is portrayed in this movie is shockingly true. Just a simple thing such as Drew Barrymore’s character working in a fast food joint – the way she’s joking to some people off camera and she turns for the customer window and sees some old school enemies who always “knew” she’d end up in a place like this, the way her expression just totally upturns and you know, this is the worst moment of her life.

Great performances from James Woods, Brittany Murphy (who has one of the films funniest scenes – “My daughter’s a tramp! My daughter’s a tramp!” – alongside Barrymore trying to fall down the stairs to the song “The End of the World” which accompanied Murphy’s suicide in Girl, Interrupted), and Sara Gilbert who we don’t see enough of these days as the one character who seemingly “gets it right”. Just for its portrayal of life itself, if a little depressing if it catches you in the wrong mood, this movie deserves major kudos.

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.

It’s of course even harder to write a level-headed review of this movie following Heath Ledger’s death than it was in the fog of Oscar buzz on its original release, and these are the only two ways I’ve yet seen it, so time will still tell as to whether it’s as good as I’ve found it both times around. Sky Movies had it scheduled to screen the night following Heath’s death, I think purely out of coincidence – they did a triple bill of his movies on Saturday in a specific tribute – and I kinda felt like I wanted to do something, like anything, as the news just hit me in a way I’d never have expected and it seems it hit a lot of people the same way too.

The first time I saw the movie, I kind of missed the 1963 date at the start and it took me until the late 70s/early 80s styles came in to actual realise exactly when it was all set, and it seems to me this kind of highlights why it’s so much better than the surface story would suggest. So many movies do the whole society against the minority thing, and this could’ve easily gone exactly the same way. What makes this one special is the deep-seated conflict at the very heart of the relationship – Ennis’ absolute conviction that what they’re doing is just abhorrent, and where that notion comes from. This story could happen right now – though society has just about changed for the better when it comes to accepting sexuality, it doesn’t make it any easier for those with a certain upbringing to accept who they are let alone act on it. The sixties setting here really only heightens an already tough piece of drama.

I was upset at the time when Ledger didn’t get the Oscar – though I was glad to see checking the IMDb while watching that he was nominated … I’d forgotten if it was he or Jake Gyllenhaal who got recognised (they both did – Gyllenhaal in the supporting category) – of course, I’m even more upset now. It’s probably been said all over the place especially in the past week, I’ve read it myself a dozen times, but it’s one of those things that deserves to be said so often – it’s an amazing performance. The key scene in the tent, from his half-pushing Gyllenhaal away, half-pulling him back; his long-coming emotional outburst after Gyllenhaal’s “I wish I knew how to quit you!” line; to that last line, “Jack I swear”; the one word that comes to mind about every second of this character is “beauty”. And it’s a beautiful film he lives in.

24th January, 2006:

I was one of the first people to snigger at the gay cowboy thing, I confess … I’m a South Park fan, I watch Letterman, what can I say? Add to that, I really didn’t like the hype that this movie was getting. Much as I respect Ang Lee as a film maker – even in the recent shadow of Hulk, The Ice Storm at least was a masterpiece – and good as the movie looked, it still felt a little to me like all the last remaining homophobes on the planet were finally coming out to beg redemption by praising it. I mean, didn’t Far From Heaven kinda tread this territory before without such a hue and cry?

So I began the movie looking for reasons to hate it – it’s a little obvious here, a little clichéd there, etc, etc. But, I’m glad (relieved?) to report, my prejudices are not set in stone. This movie is even more beautiful and deep than I’d been led to expect. And when I say deep, I mean I’m seriously, as Cartman would say :p The photography is gorgeous, the pacing precise and never dull, the performances, eek, I’m gonna say it, braver than anything in recent memory. Heath Ledger is going to get the Oscar, I hope Michelle Williams too. As movies go, 2005 just looks better and better the more I see – why couldn’t all these movies be scattered throughout instead of all clumped in the end???

It’s the Kermode working again – I pretty much ran to hear all I could of Scott Walker after Mark Kermode’s review of this doc, astonished that I’d never heard of the man prior to it, even more astonished after I listened. I pretty much knew that I’d like Scott Walker the minute I heard about him, kinda like Nick Drake, Donovan, and others; and in the same way, having heard him, I kinda knew I’d like this documentary, since I even liked his latest work, “The Drift”. I think the BBC show “Imagine” broadcast a shortened version of this very film, too, ‘cos I recognised a lot of it from somewhere. So it could’ve been a dual influence that brought me to fandom.

On one level I guess this is a very flat telling of Walker’s story – an artist who worked in the confines of pop just so he could write, who finally broke free, who reached a pinnacle only to be inexplicably tossed aside by the public, but who kept on working in exile to make some of the most extraordinary, difficult, unique music of the last 30 years. It’s at its best in the cool stretches where we see Walker fans simply listening to his and the “Brothers” records – their own arranger commenting on one, “I must listen to some of these … and you’re sure I did this one?” ... everyone, even Bowie, still visibly overwhelmed by the sounds he brought into the world.

One issue I have, and it’s something I guess I’ve kind of been itching to talk about overall here or elsewhere so I might protest too strong here, but it’s the narration that speaks of the past in the present tense (”... they begin to record their last album ever …”) ... I hate when historians do that more than anything in the world, and it’s even worse when it’s inter-cut with the onscreen interviewees who, naturally, speak of the past in the past tense. Just a silly grr, I guess most people are fine with this lol.

In any case, it’s a gorgeous documentary about a gorgeous artist. To go back to the Mark Kermode connection, I think this unlike Heart of Gold really could bring Walker new fans – you’ve only to hear a bar of his early work to fall in love, and even though there’s a part of me that’s naturally repelled by his more recent stuff including “The Drift”, it’s impossible to ignore and irresistible not to delve further. And if you’ve any artistic inclinations whatsoever, you’ll be inspired more than you thought possible.

“It’s life, lad … it might make you laugh at your age … but one day it’ll make you bloody cry.”

The movie gods are really smiling on me this week. This is yet another movie I watched purely for Hayley Mills but got so much more out of (has to be mentioned though – cute bottom! hehe I think with that shot my “re-discovery” of her cuteness is complete). This is a true Northern classic of Sixties British cinema, made infinitely more delightful by the fact it’s scored by none other than Paul McCartney (I’m already watching an LP of the soundtrack on eBay, lol). Can’t believe that little tidbit passed me by all these years.

From the title I fully expected this to be a kind of “problem picture” about unwanted pregnancy, but it’s nowhere near that obvious. It gets a little melodramatic at times, such as a scene where Mills is distraught about still being a virgin after 10 weeks of marriage – but by the end I was practically rolling around on the floor, those housewives staring up at the happy couples’ window, lol.

The housing scene is hilarious (“If you haven’t any children, you need a doctor’s note.” “Then we’ll get one!” “But you’re not ill are you?” “No!” “But to get a house you have to be!” “But you can’t get anywhere without forms ... you shouldn’t even be seeing me! This is most irregular.”) and John Mills (putting ketchup on scrambled eggs, lol – “You look like you’re mixing concrete. I told you – there’s too much.” “There’s not enough.”) is absolutely fantastic. That last line is so classically drab of the genre but it works perfectly. Just a beautiful picture of life that’s real as it gets.

Okay, I’ll admit that today’s viewing was pretty much intended just to catch up on the numbers, lol (I’m so close to 365, I’ve just gotta make it before the 31st lol!), so I wasn’t expecting much anyway. This one’s just the kind of Disney live action they made, seems like, hundreds of. Hayley Mills is in it a lot more than I expected when I bought the DVD years ago (so long ago I was actually surprised it still played in the machine ROFL), and she’s of course worth watching for. There are some interesting visual effects – all of them dodgy, of course, but interesting nonetheless. And it’s a lot more random in its story than expected too, really an adventure movie rather than the high seas shenanigans and swashbucklery I thought I was in for. I couldn’t summarize the plot if I tried – my attention really wasn’t with it – but I certainly wouldn’t object to watching it again.