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The Way (2010)
A travel movie made by non-travellers
This was a travel movie, but it felt like the director and producers have never been travelling before - and by travel, I mean buses instead of first-class flights; hostels instead of all-inclusive hotels. It felt like they've never walked 10km, let alone the 600km of El Camino. So here's how it works:
When you're travelling, you do end up talking to a lot of new people, and sometimes you see the same person a few times. But unless you really hit it off, you don't spend more than a couple of hours with them.
Long walks are actually pretty gruelling, even for young, fit, active people. A sedentary middle aged man would have had blisters, cramps and sore muscles by the end of Day 1.
People in hostels get annoyed when they have an early start and you wake them up by crashing around their room after midnight.
The only part that played out as it would have in real life was the ending, so at least the movie finished on a good note. Getting that far required much less effort than walking the actual Camino - but much more effort than the fictional Tom needed to walk his fairy tale version of it.
The Fall (2016)
Fascinating viewing for any sports historian
It was only 35 years ago, and the main players are still only in middle age, but international sport has changed completely since the events described. In the 1980s, the athletes were mere pawns in grand geopolitical games: there were major boycotts of the 1976, 1980 and 1984 Olympics; the Eastern bloc used sports to try to prove their superiority over the West; and South Africa was in the middle of a 30-year ban. All three of these are touched on in The Fall, the story of the women's 3000m at the 1984 Olympics.
Mary Decker, as a white, photogenic woman who consistently beat the Soviets on the track, had been the media's golden girl for over a decade. When the Soviets withdrew, the press wanted another angle, and it fell into their lap when South African wonder runner Zola Budd, who earlier that year had run faster over 3000m than Decker ever had, applied for British citizenship to run at the Olympics.
Budd's own story was complicated. As a teenager in 1984 was naive and unworldly. She only ever wanted to run, but found controversy swirling wherever she went - about her fast-tracked citizenship; about her views on apartheid; and about Mary Decker, whom she knew only from photographs.
In a time before 'personal brand', Facebook and Instagram, what we saw was what the journalists chose to show us. As a result, the athletes' personal lives were a mystery to the public, and nobody knew what was going on behind the myriad headlines - even for America's golden girl.
On its simplest reading, this movie is just the back stories of two runners competing against each other on the world's biggest stage. But those stories touch on so many things - sports psychology, family dynamics, global politics, press influence - that the story transcends the sport or just the one race.
This documentary is worth seeing for anyone who wants to see what actually goes into the making of a world-class athlete.
Deux jours, une nuit (2014)
I can see what they were aiming for
The movie definitely had its good points. The acting was fine, and there was some sort of examination of the impact of mental illnesses, on both on the person suffering and their near families.
But the strength of the movie became its weakness. By focusing so much on the main character, there was almost no analysis of the doubtlessly complicated relationships of the other employees, either with each other or with their significant others. None of those who said no had anything more nuanced to say than that they needed the money.
And this is even before we get to the main premise of the movie. In France, which has some of the most employee friendly regulations in the world, telling someone second hand that they're losing their job would be enough to land you in court, even if the reason for the sacking wasn't mental illness, which on its own is probably illegal.
The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice (1951)
Is this Shakespeare's worst play?
No, I'm not trolling. I like a lot of Shakespeare's plays so I thought I'd try Othello. I hope it's the last time I see any version of probably the most implausible movie I've ever seen. In case you missed it:
* Someone suggests to Othello, a newly married man who's infatuated with his wife, that she's cheating on him. Instead of telling him he's out of line, Othello believes him.
* He goes on a military campaign and takes with him not just his wife, but also her maid.
* He tramples on a handkerchief that he later says is of utmost sentimental value to him.
* Despite being in charge of the Venetian army, he has hours every day to talk one-on-one, to one of his advisers, about his personal life.
* Iago and Cassio have a conversation about Bianca in which Cassio doesn't once mention Bianca's name.
* Desdemona mentions Cassio all the time. If she was having an affair with him, wouldn't she try to make it a bit less obvious?
* Roderigo tells Iago that he doesn't trust him, and not thirty seconds later agrees when Iago suggests he kill Cassio.
* Cassio, dying, says that he had two killers, but nobody bothers to look for the second one.
* Othello overhears a conversation between Emilia and Desdemona which makes it clear that Desdemona has done nothing wrong, but still thinks she's being unfaithful to him.
* Despite the fact that there's precisely, exactly, zero chemistry between Cassio and Desdemona when they're together, and the fact that nobody but Iago is suspicious, and that Cassio is already seeing someone else, and that Othello raises his suspicions with not a single other person, and the overheard conversation, he still thinks she's unfaithful.
* He locks himself in their bedroom, knowing that Emilia has seen him, before he kills her, making him the only possible murderer.
* When Emilia points out that Desdemona is (was) innocent, Othello, having been sure enough of her guilt for days and days, and sure enough to kill her only ten minutes earlier, suddenly decides she was innocent.
OK, so I get that people don't always act rationally when love is involved, but seriously, that doesn't even explain even half of the above.
I did battle my way to the end of it, but honestly, that's an hour and a half of my life that I'll never get back.
Samayou yaiba (2009)
Police drama, Japanese-style
A widower's teenage daughter is murdered. A mysterious phone call tells him who the killers are and he plots revenge. Seems like just another prosaic police, victim and killers, good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, movie, right?
Well, yes and no. The difference between this movie and most of its genre is that the emphasis is on characters, not plot. The characters often make stereotyped (or implausible) choices, but the rationale is far more well-considered than it would normally be - there are no mavericks who know what is right and alienate anyone who disagrees, and the audience is never expected to go blindly along with the hero's motives, but is left to draw its own conclusions. In this sense it was very different from most similar American movies, in which such things are much more clearly, and often simplistically, defined.
There were flaws, and it was necessarily slow-moving at times, especially when it needed to show just how anguish the father was experiencing, but on the whole well worth a look.
Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)
Tarantino jumps the shark
I loved Pulp Fiction, enjoyed Reservoir Dogs and had heard good things about Kill Bill, so was expecting something outstanding. It turned into the biggest disappointment of any movie that I have ever seen. Several times in the last hour I thought that Tarantino could not possibly let things get any worse, and each time I was wrong.
This movie couldn't decide what it wanted to be. There were some serious parts, some facetious ones and some fantasy ones, which just did not work. Any one style would have, but three did not. It was, at times, samurai, gangster and drama movie, and again, any one of the three would have been fine - but only one.
The constant change of styles was bad enough, but even many individual scenes were poorly done, independently of anything else. In combination, they meant that the movie, which actually started out moderately well, deteriorated into a series of scenes that worked badly on their own and terribly in combination.
I know that everyone loves this film. I know that both critics and the public rate it highly. I know that I'm analysing it in a lot of depth, rather than just sitting back and enjoying it, as everyone else does. But how anyone can relax, sit back and enjoy it with so much going wrong, I will never know.
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1981)
Could have been good, let itself down
Let me say first of all that this is easily my favourite of all Shakespeare's plays. The way that it interweaves the fantastical and the real is exceptional. But this production did not do it the credit that it deserves.
There were a lot of good things here. All Shakespearean productions seem to have at least one actor who doesn't seem at home with the language. It looked for a while as if this one would get away from that. Unfortunately, Puck's entrance kind of spoiled this for me, and as he is a major player it was doubly disappointing. He was totally miscast, and some of his better known lines were almost painful.
Having Titania's bed chamber looking like a Rubens painting was a great touch - to say nothing of Titania herself, who, played by Helen Mirren, was outstanding. Making her attendants so numerous and so young was also excellent - in theory. But again, none of them (in their, admittedly few, speaking parts) seemed in any way comfortable with the language. I realise that Shakespeare can't be easy for 10-year-olds, but surely they could have done a little better.
The sets were also a disappointment, the forests clearly being indoors and the puddles therein being miraculously free of mud. I don't know what would have been wrong with just shooting that part outdoors.
It must be a tough production to get right. There were certainly some good things there, but some unnecessarily bad ones as well. I enjoyed it, but the Hollywood version from 1999 is better, and probably easier to source.