Review: "The Lady in the Van"

The best storytellers often seem to have things happen to them that are worthy of a story.

Take Alan Bennett, a well-regarded playwright living in a quaint house in London’s Camden Town during the 1970s. He allowed a homeless woman living in a van to park in his driveway out of pity. She stayed 15 years, resulting in a love/hate relationship for the ages.

He turned the tale into a hit play in the late 1990s, and now adapts it into this screenplay. Bennett teams up with director Nicholas Hytner, who previously helmed other film versions of his plays, “The History Boys” and “The Madness of King George.”

It’s a lovely story, a bracing mix of sweet sentiment and acerbic confrontation. Alex Jennings is sensitive and quietly charismatic playing Bennett himself. But the movie is largely a showcase for Maggie Smith, who originated the role onstage and also performed it on radio broadcasts.

It’s the perfect marriage of performer and script, letting Smith explore a seemingly repellant person and find out a little about how she got that way. I won’t say that we end up adoring her, but we gain a firm grasp of her humanity.

The screen version of Bennett is a bit of a pisser himself, a loner who enjoys his status and his solitude. He arranges for clandestine trysts with other men, since being openly gay is not really an option in that time period, though his sexuality is not much of a mystery to his few friends and neighbors. Roger Allam and Deborah Findlay play the seemingly nice couple across the street, who are obsessed with their snooty image and the bohemian charm of their street.

One of the neighborhood traditions is seeing who has to “host” Mary Shepherd, an eccentric old lady who lives in an ancient van that she parks in front of a house for weeks or months at a time. She’s seen as annoying but harmless, a combination of local mascot and curse, and it’s become something of a game as to who she will favor with her presence. Soon enough Bennett becomes the lucky one.

Then the van breaks down and she goes from boarder to squatter.

Smith, as Miss Shepherd, can be hilarious one moment and abhorrently inappropriate the next. She seems to have a very high opinion of herself, and has a habit of making the most outlandish statements, which she will temper ever so slightly as to their veracity by adding the word “possibly” to the end.

Miss Shepherd makes all sorts of little requests, which soon turn into demands, such as using the lavatory. She spends most of her time in the van, which is filled to the brim with assorted bits of junk. As time goes on the van/home changes, acquiring new coats of paints and even a complete change-out to a new vehicle. But Miss Shepherd remains as unalterable as a mountain.

Eventually we learn more about her and her real background, which I’ll not reveal here.

Miss Shepherd does get some visitors, mostly unwanted: a social worker (Cecilia Noble), who warns Bennett that by allowing her to stay so long he’s acquired some measure of responsibility over her. And a shadowy man named Underwood (Jim Broadbent), who comes banging on the van at night, making threats and demanding cash.

“The Lady in the Van” is a cozy little picture, the sort of movie that leaves us feeling a little warmer and wiser than before. It’s a reminder that life is what happens to us while we’re looking the other way.

Video review: "Mr. Holmes"

Some of the best stories involve taking a well-known, even tired narrative and putting a clever twist on it. In “Mr. Holmes,” we get to hang out with Sherlock Holmes, who here is presented as a real person, now 93 years old and mentally doddering.

Expertly played by the great Ian McKellen, it’s an exploration of the hero myth when the hero has lost his grasp on the very thing that made him revered.

Directed by Bill Condon (“Gods and Monsters”) from a screenplay by Jeffrey Hatcher, based on a novel by Mitch Cullin, “Mr. Holmes” finds the storied sleuther long retired and living in a remote farmhouse with his housekeeper (Laura Linney) and her precocious son, Roger (Milo Parker), whom he befriends. His former partner Watson made him famous by writing about their cases, though Holmes feels too many liberties were taken with the facts.

His memory is failing, and Holmes is trying far-out remedies to restore it, like jelly made from a rare Japanese plant. Meanwhile, he is vexed in trying to accurately recall his final case from decades ago, which caused him to give up the detective business forever.

Essentially, Holmes is investigating himself, leveraging the remains of a formerly formidable intellect to grasp for new understanding about the things in life that are truly important. He’s a man who has always prized the logical aspect of human behavior, and learns that the emotional part is less easily mastered.

“Mr. Holmes” is one of those movies where not a lot really happens, but we’re overjoyed by its subtle little perambulations.

Alas, special features are… not so special. The DVD and blu-ray both come with just two making-of featurettes.

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Review: "The Book Thief"

We can never run out of World War II films because it was the most transformative event in recent history, and possibly the entirety of human existence. They could release a movie about the war every day for the rest of my life, and we still would never have adequately captured the extent of human misery compressed into those six years.

Certainly, I would never tire of them.

“The Book Thief” comes at the war from the perspective of an intelligent, sensitive German girl who comes to live with her foster parents in a small village. The war, seemingly distant and only distasteful, comes to relentlessly dominate the lives of the townspeople. While many knuckle under the Nazi regime, children like Liesel and a few brave adults find ways to stand up without getting knocked down.

Director Brian Percival and screenwriter Michael Petroni, adapting the award-winning book by Markus Zusak, go for a straightforward approach – focusing on the children with the grown-ups occupying the background. The result is simple, plaintive, a bit on the sappy side but also burning brightly with heartfelt emotions.

The performances really push the experience, especially young French-Canadian Sophie Nélisse as Liesel and Geoffrey Rush as her foster father, Hans. Emily Watson also shines as her churlish foster mother, Rosa, though it’s a less showy part.

Roger Allam provides the seductive, slithery voice of Death, who narrates the proceedings and claims many victims throughout the course of the story. The first is Liesel’s brother, who dies along their journey to their new foster parents. At the hasty funeral she steals her first book, a guide to grave digging, something that eventually becomes her signature habit.

Her greeting upon being presented to her foster parents is huffy indignation from Rosa, who was expecting two children – and the commensurate stipend from the state that came with them. She’s a harsh disciplinarian and treats Hans with the smallest measure of kindness possible.

Hans is quite a character, a shy, passive man who accepts his wife’s many abuses without complaint, but secretly harbors the soul of an artist. His only real talent is with the accordion, and his working life is spotty at best.

He becomes Liesel’s guardian angel and supporter, quietly encouraging her rebellious ways. She begins sneaking into the library of the town’s burgermeister to read his books – later, with the tacit approval of his wife. When the Third Reich begins holding rallies in town, she scavenges a charred book from the pile that has been burned as too dangerous for people to read.

Liesel’s journey from girl to woman takes a big step when a young Jewish man, Max (Ben Schnetzer), shows up on their doorstep looking for refuge. The son of a man who saved Hans’ life during the First World War, he is ensconced in the basement as their hideaway and Liesel’s secret tutor.

She also finds a strange allure to Rudy (Nico Liersch), the boy who lives next door, and they form a relationship that’s part friendship, part rivalry and the chaste beginnings of an adolescent romance. The very picture of Aryan youth, Rudy is a star athlete who draws the eye of Nazi recruiters, but he secretly idolizes Jesse Owens.

I enjoyed “The Book Thief” and its performances, though the film carries a sort of restrained reverence for its subject matter that is a little maudlin. Still, here’s another wonderful tale from amidst the horror.

Review: "The Angels' Share"

“The Angels’ Share” is really two rather different movies, either of which I would’ve enjoyed watching on their own, but don’t really fit together in any satisfying or even logical way.

The bulk of it is a rough-and-tumble drama about Robbie, a young Scottish thug trying to turn his life around, bonding with his community service coordinator and vowing to become a better man for his girlfriend and newborn son. It’s a gloomy yet affecting story, with Paul Brannigan quietly charismatic in his debut role.

But then the film turns, seemingly on a dime, into a whimsical caper/comedy about Robbie and his fellow ex-cons conspiring to pilfer some bottles from an extremely rare cask of whiskey. It’s a jolly sequence, and lightweight as a breeze wafting over the highlands.

And therein lies the problem. These two tales are completely different in tone and mood, one heavy and sobering and the other joyous and trivial.

Cinematically speaking, they occupy different corners of the periodic table. Trying to graft them onto each other feels like an ill-conceived alchemy experiment.

I still enjoyed the movie in its pieces, though the experience is like two boxes of puzzle pieces that got jumbled together.

Robbie is a lifelong criminal, the child of deadbeats and a future one himself. He’s been in jail several times, including a stint for seriously disfiguring another youngster. The scene where Robbie meets with his victim and family is unnerving, and powerful.

When we first encounter Robbie he’s just been in another scrape with a longtime rival, and the prospect of serious prison time seems real. But the judge is swayed by his stable relationship with Leonie (Siobhan Reilly) and their forthcoming baby, and sentences him to community service.

Harry (John Henshaw) is an older single chap who coordinates the offenders’ service. He immediately takes a shine to Robbie, and there’s a hint of trouble in his own past. Harry sees the challenges Robbie’s up against, including his girlfriend’s brothers beating him to a pulp in the hospital and warning him never to come near his own son.

Harry also introduces his young ward to his love of fine whiskey, and they discover Robbie has a fine nose. This leads to a trip to a countryside distillery, the revelation about an invaluable Malt Mill cask that will soon go to auction, and an introduction to Thaddeus (Roger Allam), a veteran whiskey dealer who will become important later on.

(The title refers to the 2% of the spirits lost to evaporation every year.)

Robbie forms a crew from his fellow ex-cons, including Rhino (William Ruane), an agreeable scamp, compulsive kleptomaniac Mo (Jasmin Riggins) and Albert (Gary Maitland), an affable lummox who’s so dimwitted he seems to have sprung forth from the earth, innocent of history or even basic knowledge about the world around him. (Confronted with Edinburgh Castle overlooking the city from a cliff, Albert demands, “Why’d they put it up there?!?”

Director Ken Loach, working with longtime screenwriting collaborator Paul Laverty, has long made it his mission to focus on working-class citizens of the U.K., and to find compelling stories amid their everyday tribulations.

His best move was casting the unknown Brannigan, who had his own real-life scrapes with violence and the law. (The nasty scar on his cheek isn’t a makeup effect.) He reminds us of a young Ewan McGregor, who broke out nearly two decades ago with “Trainspotting.” The first part of “The Angels’ Share” favorably recalls that film; but the latter portion belongs to a different category of filmmaking altogether.

Review: "Tamara Drewe"

"Tamara Drewe" is a story about writers, and does a lovely job of depicting the interior worlds they inhabit, and the fragile egos that often accompany a lifetime spent mostly inside one's own head.

It's a comedy, but in that distinctly British mode that always involves a generous ladling of misery. It succeeds as a comedy of manners and observation, though it errs in presenting us with a wide array of interesting characters, and then selecting the least compelling among them to drive the story.

The film is based on a comic strip by Posy Simmonds that is essentially a modern take on Thomas Hardy's fourth book, "Far from the Madding Crowd." The screenplay by Moira Buffini even gifts us with a Thomas Hardy scholar, one of a half-dozen or so authors living at Stonefield, a writer's retreat in the idyllic (and fictional) village of Ewedown.

An inside joke is that the Hardy expert, who's been toiling away on a book about him for two years, spends much of his time convincing others that Hardy is not a dreadful bore.
"Tamara Drewe" is anything but dull.

Stonefield is the demesne of Nicholas Hardiment, a successful writer of crime novels all featuring the same hero, and his long-suffering wife Beth (Tamsin Greig), who manages the farm and the writers-in-residence, while bearing his numerous affairs. Nicholas is played by Roger Allam in a spot-on performance as a man who holds nothing but condescension for those around him, including his fans, but is smart enough to conceal it.

Storytellers are really liars and thieves, Nicholas sermonizes, and seems intent on proving his own platitude.

The guest writers are mostly would-be and wannabe authors, and one suspects Nicholas only keeps them around for the extra income. Glen, the Hardy scholar, is the only American in the group, and seems more interested in sticking his nose into Stonefield's ongoing passion plays than finishing his book. Glen is played by Bill Camp in a wondrous turn that lets the audience see him thinking.

Things are shaken up with the arrival of Tamara Drewe (Gemma Arterton), a local girl who was mostly known for her impish sense of humor and huge nose. She's since had the nose bobbed into a cute lightly-freckled button, and has become a thriving columnist for a London newspaper.
The ostensible purpose of her return is to fix her family's old home up for sale, but there's clearly some puckish pride in showing off to the yokels how luminous she turned out.

All the men at Stonefield are instantly transfixed the moment Tamara climbs over the neighboring fence wearing short-shorts -- none more so than local handyman Andy Cobb (Luke Evans), who had a fling with her when they were teens. She hires Andy to renovate her home -- which used to belong to his family -- and maybe measure her personal drapes.

Things spin sideways when Tamara falls for Ben Sergeant (Dominic Cooper), the drummer and songwriter for a famous rock band, Swipe. Soon the tiny town is atwitter over a famed musician residing in their midst. Andy, meanwhile, can't believe he lost out to a guy who wears makeup.

It's around this point that the plot takes an unexpected, and for me unappreciated, turn. Two 15-year-old girls (Jessica Barden and Charlotte Christie), who had been acting as sort of the local Greek chorus commenting on the comings and goings and trystings of the main characters, suddenly jump into the driver's seat and speed off.

Things eventually get righted, but I kept yearning for the focus to return to the flighty Tamara, the drolly narcissistic Nicholas and the self-deprecating Glen. Instead, we spend an entire reel of film with the screechy, whiny, manipulative brats at the fore.

I don't hold it too much against the film, though, because director Stephen Frears ("The Queen") has such a great touch with his actors, that everything that comes before or after that wrong turn is such a delight. These characters are so vibrant, flawed and alive, I just loved spending time with them.

3 stars out of four