Review: Coriolanus
Ralph Fiennes makes his directorial debut with a modernised retelling of William Shakespeare’s tragedy Coriolanus. Fiennes directs himself, in the lead as the titular army general and a cast including Gerard Butler, Vanessa Redgrave and Jessica Chastain in this interesting, wildly uneven experiment. Despite flashes of brilliance, Coriolanus struggles to engage the viewer for much of its two hours.
Coriolanus opens on 20 January across the UK
Remaining true to the bard’s text, Coriolanus is set in a far-from-Italian Rome, where news footage sets a scene of rebellion and a march on a grain depot leads to the introduction of Fiennes’ Caius Martius (not yet deemed Coriolanus) who sneeringly dismisses the mob. As Martius’ wartime foil Aufidius, leader ofRome’s greatest enemy, the Volscian people,Butler brings his trademark charisma to a role that makes scant use of it. A mash of accents and ethnicities, the setting feels ambiguous and confused. As Coriolanus rises and falls in the esteem of the Roman people, too much attention has been paid to making this a modern tale, rather than a coherent one. Hearing Shakespearean dialogue amongst army fatigued, militia equipped with laser sighted weaponry will always be disorienting, but there’s little here to identify with. By the time Coriolanus is exiled from his city, the film has lost any chance it had of becoming a compelling experience.
Read More…
Review: Take Shelter
Take Shelter, starring Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain (yes, her again), is a difficult film to categorise, especially without giving too much away. Words like “apocalyptic” and “thriller” have been attached to it, but that’s not really what director Jeff Nichols’ film is. While Take Shelter is at its best when it emulates a thriller, this drama is a perfect example of a film that gets all dressed up with nowhere to actually go.
Take Shelter this Friday 25 November at cinemas across the UK
Set in rural Ohio, Take Shelter is the story of Curtis (Shannon) who is struggling with raising a deaf daughter, alongside his wife Sam (Chastain). The film opens with the onset of a storm, a motif that repeats throughout the course of events. As the rain falls upon Curtis, he looks at it in his hand, noticing its amber colouration and rubs it between his fingers, later describing it as thick, like motor oil (chubby rain, perhaps?). Subsequent visions, revealed to be dreams shake him deeply, driving him (to the point of obsession) to expand the old storm shelter on their land. As the visions become more volatile and threatening, the greater the impact they have on his day-to-day life, as his personal and working relationships become strained. Curtis’ fears take such a grip on his life that concerns over his sanity grow within his family and friends, not to mention in his own mind.
Read More…
Review: The Help
Having already proven to be a huge box office success in the US, The Help hits UK cinemas on 26 October. Featuring a terrific ensemble cast, this adaptation of Kathryn Stockett’s book is headed up by Emma Stone as Eugenia �?Skeeter’ Phelan, a young journalist raised by her black maid who sets out to give a voice to the women who raise white children but aren’t even allowed to use the same toilets as the families they work for. The Help wonderfully conveys the 1960s setting and while Stone is a strong lead, this film truly is about the help, as the supporting players steal the show.
Tate Taylor, director of The Help: What's not to like about this film?
Newly employed at the Jackson Journal in Mississippi, Skeeter, a would-be “serious writer” tasked with ghost-writing a housekeeping advice column, seeks tips from her friend’s maid, Aibileen. Faced with the loss of her own family’s maid- and the woman who raised her, Skeeter becomes determined to “show what it’s really like in Jackson… the good and the bad” and convinces Aibileen to share her life’s story. The following tale and that of her fellow maid and confidant, Minny, gracefully encompasses difficult topics such as maternal neglect, domestic abuse, miscarriages, gender roles and, of course, racism. The script perfectly delivers humour, drama and sentimentality without losing direction.
Read More…
Review: The Debt
The Debt, director John Madden’s remake of 2007’s Israeli thriller Hahov hits UK cinemas this Friday, featuring another superb performance from Jessica Chastain as she continues to take 2011 by storm. Set in 1997, The Debt focuses primarily on events taking place in 1966 when three Mossad agents set out to bring Nazi war criminal, Dieter Vogel aka the surgeon of Birkenau (a character based on the infamous Josef Mengele), to justice in Israel.
Sam Worthington and Jessica Chastain in The Debt
The film begins quietly enough in 1997 as now-retired Mossad agent Rachel (here played by Helen Mirren) attends a booking reading of her author daughter who has penned Rachel’s life story. A mysterious road-side death later, the action moves to East Berlin in 1966 where Chastain (as the younger Rachel), along with Sam Worthington (David) and Marton Csokas (Stephan) take over the reins of the narrative. What follows is a suspenseful operation to capture the man they believe to be Vogel. It is once their enemy has been detained that The Debt truly excels. Jesper Christensen provides fantastic support as the smarmy, manipulative Vogel. As good as Chastain, Worthington and Csokas are it is Christensen’s performance that provides the foundation.
Read More…
