Previously adapted into an acclaimed BBC miniseries in 1978, this pared-down version of John le Carré’s novel stars a well-cast Gary Oldman as George Smiley, the British spy played by Alec Guiness role in the miniseries. Smiley is aptly referred to as “The Anti-James Bond” in a recent Atlantic article by that name and is, one imagines, probably more typical of anyone whose profession requires the utmost care and covertness. A man in late middle age, he has recently retired, or been retired, along with his old boss, “Control” (John Hurt). He spends his time on ordinary chores like getting his glasses repaired and wonders what went wrong in his marriage. He does not stand out in a crowd or make a fuss over how he likes his martinis, if indeed he drinks martinis.
But, following a botched Hungarian operation in which an agent is shot, he becomes the ideal man to flush out a probable mole within “the Circus,” as the London MI6 headquarters is known. The Hungarian fiasco is the tense beginning; merely by varying his shots, director Tomas Alfredson (the Swede best known for Let the Right One In) creates a good deal of suspense. After that, not so much. Despite telegraphing a good deal of story into a two-hour window and featuring several significant characters, the pace is measured without particularly building tension. That is, it manages to be confusing yet slow, being most noteworthy for its sense of English gloom. Rather than the glamor of the Bond series, the emphasis is on the mundane and drab surroundings at headquarters, where in 1973 microfilm represents new technology. That’s fine, but only if used as a counterpoint to what is quietly happening, which is only the case sometimes. The story is reasonably revised to fit the needs of a feature, but the characters probably seem less noteworthy with screen time reduced.
viewed at Ritz 5 12/19/11 [PFS screening] and reviewed 12/19/11
Showing posts with label middle-aged. Show all posts
Showing posts with label middle-aged. Show all posts
Friday, December 23, 2011
Friday, August 26, 2011
The Hedgehog (***1/4)
When someone asked me, before I saw this, what it was about, I said something like that it was about a middle-aged woman who blossoms. To which the reply was, isn’t that what every independent movie is about. Actually, this is a French movie, and while I have definitely seen French variations on that theme, in no case was the story told from the point of a precocious eleven-year-old who plans to commit suicide on her twelfth birthday.
This suicide plot point is lifted right from the Muriel Barbery novel the film is based on, and of course gives the story some measure of suspense. It’s something about how the girl (who’s a year older in the book) is disgusted by the banality of the adult world around her, specifically that of her parents, and sees their elite lifestyle as a trap best avoided by dying. Still, her apparent contempt for the bourgeousie who inhabit her posh Paris apartment building is tempered by the fact that she also seems intensely curious about them.
The building’s newest resident is of the same class as the others, yet that is tempered either by the fact that he is Japanese, or cultured rather than crass. And somehow, the girl, the Japanese man, and the middle-aged woman, who is the building superintendent, form a mutual bond. This is the sort of movie in which the superintendent happens to have seen a 50-year-old Japanese film but never eaten Japanese food and the pre-teen happens to be a knowledgeable player of Go, the chess-like Japanese game that she insists is nothing like chess, nor Japanese.
Even so, the idea that the girl really plans to kill herself is easily the least believable aspect of the story. Insofar as the rest of the plot hinges in some way on the planned demise, the story suffers, but not so much as you’d think. As elegantly told by the director, Mona Achache, the story is almost a fairy tale Where in Barbery’s novel the youngest character can merely seem like a snob, Achache emphasizes the kindness behind the diffident exterior. In embodying both, actress Garance Le Guillermic is a real find.
IMDB link
viewed 9/14/11 at Ritz 5 and reviewed 9/15/11–10/11/11
This suicide plot point is lifted right from the Muriel Barbery novel the film is based on, and of course gives the story some measure of suspense. It’s something about how the girl (who’s a year older in the book) is disgusted by the banality of the adult world around her, specifically that of her parents, and sees their elite lifestyle as a trap best avoided by dying. Still, her apparent contempt for the bourgeousie who inhabit her posh Paris apartment building is tempered by the fact that she also seems intensely curious about them.
The building’s newest resident is of the same class as the others, yet that is tempered either by the fact that he is Japanese, or cultured rather than crass. And somehow, the girl, the Japanese man, and the middle-aged woman, who is the building superintendent, form a mutual bond. This is the sort of movie in which the superintendent happens to have seen a 50-year-old Japanese film but never eaten Japanese food and the pre-teen happens to be a knowledgeable player of Go, the chess-like Japanese game that she insists is nothing like chess, nor Japanese.
Even so, the idea that the girl really plans to kill herself is easily the least believable aspect of the story. Insofar as the rest of the plot hinges in some way on the planned demise, the story suffers, but not so much as you’d think. As elegantly told by the director, Mona Achache, the story is almost a fairy tale Where in Barbery’s novel the youngest character can merely seem like a snob, Achache emphasizes the kindness behind the diffident exterior. In embodying both, actress Garance Le Guillermic is a real find.
IMDB link
viewed 9/14/11 at Ritz 5 and reviewed 9/15/11–10/11/11
Friday, January 21, 2011
The Illusionist (***3/4)
This nearly silent gem—nothing to do with the 2006 Illusionist starring Edward Norton—goes into the Oscars as the biggest of underdogs in the animated feature category, where it’s competing with Toy Story 3 and How to Train Your Dragon. But it’s a lovely, gentle reminder that the format is not merely the province of talking toys and flying lizards.
The filmmaker, Sylvain Chomet, is best known for the kooky Triplets of Belleville, also animated. But Chomet adapted a script cowritten by the late Jacques Tati, and those familiar with Tati classics like Mon Oncle and Mr. Hulot’s Holiday will recognize the nearly wordless style of storytelling. I confess I’ve always found the notion of a story without dialogue charming, perhaps first in Mad Magazine’s old Spy vs. Spy cartoons. More recently, Mr. Bean’s Holiday owed an obvious debt to Tati.
The hero of the story is indeed a magician, modeled after Tati himself and given his birth name, Tatischeff. Unlike Norton’s character, however, he is no longer young, and merely competent rather than brilliant. He plays for audiences that are often meager or indifferent. But on a visit to a Scottish island so poor that electric light—in the late 1950s—seems like a gift, he finds an appreciative crowd as well as a poor maid whom he takes away. They live in Edinburgh and there make new lives. (His relationship with the girl is fatherly rather than romantic.)
Chomet does take advantage of the animation form. The Edinburgh here is beautiful to look at, and the exaggerated body shapes of the minor characters provide some of the humor. However, the story is much more character-driven than in most “cartoon” films. Tatischeff is a loner, his kindness mixed with a certain diffidence. Only a photograph he carries hints at a different sort of past. The movie is no tragedy, but it is melancholy at times. Chomet’s lovely piano score sets an elegant mood in both the comic and the sentimental moments.
IMDB link
viewed 1/30/11 at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 1/31–2/3/11
The filmmaker, Sylvain Chomet, is best known for the kooky Triplets of Belleville, also animated. But Chomet adapted a script cowritten by the late Jacques Tati, and those familiar with Tati classics like Mon Oncle and Mr. Hulot’s Holiday will recognize the nearly wordless style of storytelling. I confess I’ve always found the notion of a story without dialogue charming, perhaps first in Mad Magazine’s old Spy vs. Spy cartoons. More recently, Mr. Bean’s Holiday owed an obvious debt to Tati.
The hero of the story is indeed a magician, modeled after Tati himself and given his birth name, Tatischeff. Unlike Norton’s character, however, he is no longer young, and merely competent rather than brilliant. He plays for audiences that are often meager or indifferent. But on a visit to a Scottish island so poor that electric light—in the late 1950s—seems like a gift, he finds an appreciative crowd as well as a poor maid whom he takes away. They live in Edinburgh and there make new lives. (His relationship with the girl is fatherly rather than romantic.)
Chomet does take advantage of the animation form. The Edinburgh here is beautiful to look at, and the exaggerated body shapes of the minor characters provide some of the humor. However, the story is much more character-driven than in most “cartoon” films. Tatischeff is a loner, his kindness mixed with a certain diffidence. Only a photograph he carries hints at a different sort of past. The movie is no tragedy, but it is melancholy at times. Chomet’s lovely piano score sets an elegant mood in both the comic and the sentimental moments.
IMDB link
viewed 1/30/11 at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 1/31–2/3/11
Friday, December 25, 2009
Friday, January 16, 2009
Last Chance Harvey (***1/4)
Never surprising but always charming sums up this semi-comic romance. Dustin Hoffman is the divorced Harvey, and Emma Thompson the late-to-love Kate, an airline employee in London. There American Harvey has arrived for his daughter’s wedding. It is only a question of when and how Harvey and Kate will meet, and what Harvey will do about his job as a composer of jingles, which allows no time for a holiday, let alone a romance.
Rather than boring in its predictability, though, the movie feels comfortable like an old slipper. It’s familiar, but infrequently clichéd or sappy. Writer-director Joel Hopkins has not larded it up with potty-mouthed children, overly horny old people, or wisecracking pals. The only one-liner I noticed was the reference to Kate’s aging mother, who keeps calling during her blind date, as “human contraception.” (I’ve noticed how the cell phone has altered the course of romantic comedy. It has nearly ruined plots about people becoming disconnected—there’s one here that only works to the extent we believe that Kate and Harvey have failed to exchange numbers. Now the cell phone is a marker of annoyance, or of someone who is too busy, rude, or, like Harvey, too disconnected to interact with those in his presence.)
The thing that this movie makes me think is that, generally, speaking, the best romantic comedies are the ones that allow a bit of sadness to creep in. It’s in the forlorn look on Thompson’s face, when Kate feels left out of a conversation with the blind date’s younger acquaintances, or on Hoffman’s as Harvey tries to make conversation when he sees his daughter, who seems more comfortable with her father-in-law to be. The almost inevitable pairing in any romantic comedy represents, ideally, the end of a long stretch of disappointment, perhaps of romantic failure, perhaps of doubt that the happy ending would come, as this movie’s title suggests. It’s why people cry at weddings. Last Chance Harvey certainly isn’t given over to sad moments, but without psychoanalyzing lets us know these characters have known them. Most of all, though, it creates the feeling of serendipitously connecting with someone.
IMDb link
viewed 2/8/09 at AMC Plymouth Meeting; reviewed 2/8–10/09
Rather than boring in its predictability, though, the movie feels comfortable like an old slipper. It’s familiar, but infrequently clichéd or sappy. Writer-director Joel Hopkins has not larded it up with potty-mouthed children, overly horny old people, or wisecracking pals. The only one-liner I noticed was the reference to Kate’s aging mother, who keeps calling during her blind date, as “human contraception.” (I’ve noticed how the cell phone has altered the course of romantic comedy. It has nearly ruined plots about people becoming disconnected—there’s one here that only works to the extent we believe that Kate and Harvey have failed to exchange numbers. Now the cell phone is a marker of annoyance, or of someone who is too busy, rude, or, like Harvey, too disconnected to interact with those in his presence.)
The thing that this movie makes me think is that, generally, speaking, the best romantic comedies are the ones that allow a bit of sadness to creep in. It’s in the forlorn look on Thompson’s face, when Kate feels left out of a conversation with the blind date’s younger acquaintances, or on Hoffman’s as Harvey tries to make conversation when he sees his daughter, who seems more comfortable with her father-in-law to be. The almost inevitable pairing in any romantic comedy represents, ideally, the end of a long stretch of disappointment, perhaps of romantic failure, perhaps of doubt that the happy ending would come, as this movie’s title suggests. It’s why people cry at weddings. Last Chance Harvey certainly isn’t given over to sad moments, but without psychoanalyzing lets us know these characters have known them. Most of all, though, it creates the feeling of serendipitously connecting with someone.
IMDb link
viewed 2/8/09 at AMC Plymouth Meeting; reviewed 2/8–10/09
Friday, March 2, 2007
The Wild Hogs (**1/2)
? Four middle-aged pals (Martin Lawrence, John Travolta, Tim Allen, William H. Macy) try to recapture old times, and some version of their manhood, by taking off on an impromptu motorcycle trip.
+ Really the only thing to recommend this movie is a few laughs. I chuckled, for example, when the four guys go skinny dipping in a pond and are then embarrassed when a family of four decides to join them. The borderline campy stuff involving the Hogs’ encounters with a nasty biker gang also had its moments. Macy, playing the meekest of this not-so-wild quartet, not surprisingly gives the best performance. Lawrence’s dialogue is refreshingly free of the tiresome racial humor he typically spouts in his starring roles.
- There’s little to fall back on when the jokes don’t work, which is about half the time. (Come on, a computer keyboard does not smoke when you spill liquid on it.) The characters are seriously one-dimensional (I barely remember Tim Allen’s at all) and secondary to the formulaic plot, which in turn is secondary to sight gags and other humor revolving around the Hogs’ attempts to assert their masculinity. The theme of trying to recapture their youth is redundant, since each of the men is notably infantile. (Even the women they’re paired with are a decade or more younger.) When these four cowardly lions predictably get their courage back via a grand showdown with the biker gang, it could not be less believable. For a middle-aged guy like me, this kind of killed the fantasy.
= **1/2 In a season of truly bad comedies, the unwavering mediocrity here stands out.
IMDB link
reviewed 3/1/07
+ Really the only thing to recommend this movie is a few laughs. I chuckled, for example, when the four guys go skinny dipping in a pond and are then embarrassed when a family of four decides to join them. The borderline campy stuff involving the Hogs’ encounters with a nasty biker gang also had its moments. Macy, playing the meekest of this not-so-wild quartet, not surprisingly gives the best performance. Lawrence’s dialogue is refreshingly free of the tiresome racial humor he typically spouts in his starring roles.
- There’s little to fall back on when the jokes don’t work, which is about half the time. (Come on, a computer keyboard does not smoke when you spill liquid on it.) The characters are seriously one-dimensional (I barely remember Tim Allen’s at all) and secondary to the formulaic plot, which in turn is secondary to sight gags and other humor revolving around the Hogs’ attempts to assert their masculinity. The theme of trying to recapture their youth is redundant, since each of the men is notably infantile. (Even the women they’re paired with are a decade or more younger.) When these four cowardly lions predictably get their courage back via a grand showdown with the biker gang, it could not be less believable. For a middle-aged guy like me, this kind of killed the fantasy.
= **1/2 In a season of truly bad comedies, the unwavering mediocrity here stands out.
IMDB link
reviewed 3/1/07
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