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.

Review: "The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel"

"The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" lives up to its name, a pale shadow of its vivacious 2012 predecessor about silver-haired Brits finding new life at a dilapidated hotel in India.

Of course, the filmmakers meant the title as a clever play, as young Indian entrepreneur Sonny Kapoor (Dev Patel) aims to open a second hotel in the course of the (overly jumbled) story. But still, a movie sequel that seems to declare itself "second best" should at least gain points for honesty.

"The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" was a smart and lively dramedy from director John Madden ("Shakespeare in Love") and screenwriter Ol Parker, who return for the sequel. The basic gist was about English pensioners who find they can't afford a life of quiet ease in their home country, and decamp for the lavishly overpraised Exotic Marigold.

In the end the grimy little hotel got fixed up, as did the lives of the aging Westerners who came here expecting something, and found something quite else. All their storylines got tied up in nice little bows ... and would've stayed that way, except when your $10 million film grosses $137 million worldwide.

Sequels, unnecessary except on an accountant's ledger, become a foregone conclusion.

The main players all return, with new challenges or extensions of their old ones. Widow Evelyn (Judi Dench) is happy doing a little work for a clothing company, until they offer her a full-time job with a team to manage. Her heart's with Douglas (Bill Nighy), an amiable tour guide who split up with his wife at the end of the last movie. But in the classic quandary that befalls only movie characters, neither will simply admit their feelings until the right moment and swell of music comes along.

Persnickety spinster Muriel (Maggie Smith) is busy running the hotel with Sonny, who is soon to be wed to the lovely Sunaina (Tena Desae), if he can keep his jealousy toward an old friend and competitor in check long enough. Sonny wants to buy another nearby hotel and expand the Marigold business model ("Why not die here?"), and needs backing from an American hotel chain, for some reason.

Sonny is living in fear that the would-be partner has sent an evaluator to check out his establishment, and who should show up on his doorstep just in time but a fetching American named Guy (Richard Gere), who claims to be writing a novel by mostly has eyes for Sonny's mother (Lillete Dubey), for reasons that remain mysterious to her, and us.

"The man is so handsome, he has me urgently questioning my own sexuality!" Sonny exclaims, in a typical over-the-top bit of Indian bebop.

Other characters' troubles mostly concern matters of the heart, with former ladies man Norman (Ronald Pickup) worried that his lady friend is stepping out on him. And on-the-make Madge (Celia Imrie) has not one but two rich older Indian gentlemen ready to propose to her, yet seems to hold the most meaningful conversations with her humble driver.

"The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" is a pretty transparent attempt to capture lightning in a bottle twice. It's not a bad little flick, and with Dames Smith and Dench around there's no shortage of tart retorts and looks freighted with meaning.

But it's a retread that's tired out of the gate, a contrivance of characters we know will arrive at their fated destinations promptly at the two-hour mark. Predestined, that is, unless this one does well enough to demand a third-best iteration.

Review: "My Old Lady"

Kevin Kline is in fine, fine form in “My Old Lady,” a movie that is not about his character’s wife. In it he plays a middle-aged man with a squandered life who finds that the incredibly valuable Parisian apartment he has inherited comes with a catch: the 92-year-old woman who already lives there, and isn’t about to leave.

She’s played by Maggie Smith, no slouch herself.

It seems Mathias Gold’s estranged father purchased the lovely chateau-sized place from Mathilde Girard more than 40 years ago under a “viager” arrangement. This especially French concoction involves selling a home at a low price, often to an elderly person, with the agreement that the seller will continue to live there, indefinitely. The buyer only gets the place when the seller dies.

Mathias, a failed writer, has little to show for himself other than two divorces and the clothes on this back. He used his last penny to fly to Paris to arrange the sale of his the apartment, which his hated father left him (unaccompanied by any funds, which went to charity).

Looking at a payday of millions of euros, he’s none too pleased to find Mathilde living there. A retired British teacher with an elegant if snippy personality, Mathilde has the legal right to stay – and even charge Mathias rent while he’s there!

(I feel compelled to point out that though the characters are supposed to be decades apart in age, Kline and Smith are actually only divided by 12 years -- yet another example of sexist showbiz ageism. Though both thespians have been blessed with stubbornly unchanged looks. And Smith had already been in the old biddy business for quite some time: she played a centenarian in “Hook” 23 years ago!)

Thus begins a sly contest of wills, as these two cagey warriors battle to outlast each other. To pass the time Mathias sells off some furniture for pocket money, gets advice from a real estate agent (Dominique Pinon), lines up a potential buyer and begins to take an interest in Mathilde’s daughter Chloe (Kristin Scott Thomas), who also lives at the apartment and is more openly antagonistic than her mother.

Kline has always been one of the unlikeliest movie stars, a cards-down actor who always gives the sense of an internal complexity at work, only a peek of which he’s showing us at any given time. That’s especially true with the wily Mathias, who is presented as a loathsome opportunist, and yet is winningly charismatic and droll.

Writer/director Israel Horowitz, who adapted his own stage play, manages to craft a movie about a trio of characters, all of whom are deeply flawed in some way, and yet make the audience care deeply about them. Just when we might feel ready to judge them for some past action, new information comes along that makes those dark deeds, if not justifiable, then at least relatable.

Filled to the brim with smart, snappy dialogue and engaging characters, “My Old Lady” is one of those movies that keeps revealing new layers to itself. I certainly hope Kline’s turn, one of the best of his career, is remembered come Oscar nomination time.

Video review: "Gnomeo & Juliet"

A second-rate rip-off of "Toy Story" mixed with a dose of Shakespeare, "Gnomeo & Juliet" is a British animated film that is meant to be enjoyed by the very youngest audience, and merely tolerated by their parents.

The set-up is that the star-crossed lovers, and all of their kin, are garden gnomes made of clay. They go about their business in the split backyard of an English duplex, tending their gardens and whatnot. When humans come around, though, they revert to their familiar (and tasteless) statuesque forms.

Gnomeo (voice by James McAvoy) is the hell-raising son of the matron of the Blue gnomes, while sweet Juliet (Emily Blunt) is royalty of their arch-enemy Reds. When they fall in love, it sets up a war between the clans, with the unfortunate ones ending up in a pile of smashed bits.

Directed by Kelly Asbury ("Shrek 2"), "Gnomeo & Juliet" has some fairly clever ideas, but always chooses the lowest common denominator when it comes to humor and characterization. The movie is pitched at about a pre-kindergarten level, and anyone more than a few years above that will find themselves frequently bored.
In this terrific age of animation in which we find ourselves, this film just doesn't measure up.

Extras are a bit sparse in the DVD version, and don't substantially improve even if you upgrade to Blu-ray.
The DVD has a "Crocodile Rock" music video, and featuettes with Ashley Jensen (who plays the princess' frog sidekick) and Elton John. That's it.

If you choose the Blu-ray/DVD combo pack (available in both 3D and regular versions), you get all the DVD stuff and several deleted or alternate scenes, including two alternate endings. There's also a "Fawn of Darkness" featurette.

Movie: 2 stars out of four
Extras: 2 stars

Review: "Gnomeo & Juliet"

Tolerable but forgettable, "Gnomeo & Juliet" is a halfway clever idea executed with minimal effort and ingenuity. In its (allegedly) humorous take on the classic play about star-crossed lovers, the film continuously reaches for the lowest-hanging fruit -- in its jokes, in its animation style and its brazen, narrow appeal to tykes.

Right from the start we're instructed that this is a movie with little patience for complexity. A gnome begins reading the introduction of "Romeo and Juliet," but is banished from the stage for his "long and boring prologue."

The hook is that the entire cast is gnomes -- not the mythical creatures, but garden gnomes. Cutesy to some and horrifying to others, these little ceramic cherub-cheeked critters are like a cross between hobbits and dwarves.

(They also, now that I think about it, bear a startling resemblance to Smurfs, who are getting their own movie soon.)

Not even bothering to hide how much they've lifted from "Toy Story," the gnomes come alive only when humans are not around, but suddenly revert to their statuesque forms if interrupted in their doings.

Interestingly, though they seem to have all the flesh-and-blood urges of people, they're still made of clay or whatever, and shatter if they fall or are struck. All of the older gnomes are chipped and faded, and even young rascal Gnomeo (voice by James McAvoy) has a scratched eyebrow and cheek from getting into so many (literal) scrapes.

The warring clans are the Red and Blue gnomes, marked by their pointed hats and/or clothing, who belong to elaborate gardens nestled side-by-side in a British duplex owned by neighbors who despise each other. (Their addresses are "2B" and a crossed-out "2B," in one of a few funny throwaway puns.)

The gnomes carry on that hostility, led by Lord Redbrick (Michael Caine) and Lady Bluebury (Maggie Smith). Various contests and sorties into enemy territory keep things going, with lawn mower racing being a big thing, and vandalizing the others' flowers and cheesy garden decorations.

Gnomeo, the son of Bluebury, falls for Juliet (Emily Blunt), Redbrick's only child, but of course their love is doomed. Eventually, their romance will overpower the hatred between the Reds and the Blues. I don't think I'm giving away much by saying that this ending is decidedly less tragic -- and G-rated -- than the play.

A few of the supporting characters breathe a little life into the stale proceedings. Juliet has a right-hand-woman, Nanette (Ashley Jensen), a frog statue who dispenses water and flighty advice. Featherstone (Jim Cummings) is an abandoned plastic pink flamingo, who's a bit dazed after 20 years of solitude but has a poignant story to tell.

Director Kelly Asbury ("Shrek 2") seems content to pitch things at about kindergarten level, with a sparse layering of in-jokes to keep parents minimally involved. Elton John is an executive producer, and provides some of his classic songs, plus a few new ones.

"Gnomeo & Juliet" sets some kind of notorious new record for screenwriting-by-committee, with no less than nine people receiving a writing credit -- 10, if you throw in Bill Shakespeare.

2 stars out of four

Review: "Nanny McPhee Returns"

Just a few weeks ago I was reviewing "Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore" and lamenting that movies made for the very youngest children always seem to aim so low. It's almost as if because the intended audience is small, filmmakers feel like their ambitions must likewise be puny.

And then along comes another sequel, "Nanny McPhee Returns," to demonstrate how family films can actually be enjoyable for the entire family.

In case you didn't catch the first movie from five years ago, Emma Thompson wrote both screenplays (based on a series of books by Christianna Brand) and stars as the stern and horrendously ugly titular character. Always sent to the worst families in England, Nanny McPhee goes where she is needed but not wanted, but as soon as she is wanted but not needed, off she goes again.

McPhee is part Mary Poppins, in that her nanny skills are augmented by supernatural powers, but no spoonfuls of sugar to be found here. She doesn't sing either, preferring a stern look and a grunt to get her point across.

If things really get out of hand, she bangs her magic walking stick on the ground, and higgledy-piggledy ensues, usually followed by life lessons. (The film was originally titled "Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang," which is much better.)

The first film took place sometime in the 1800s, and for the sequel the action has moved up to World War II. Young mother Isabel Green (Maggie Gyllenhaal, doing a snappy British lilt) is up to her neck running her husband's farm while he's off fighting in the war, looking after their three children, Vincent, Norman and Megsie (Oscar Steer, Asa Butterfield and Lil Woods).

Things go from chaotic to unmanageable when Isabel's rich niece and nephew, Cyril and Celia, come to stay (played by Eros Vlahos and Rosie Taylor-Ritson). "We're in the land of poo," Cyril observes from their limousine upon surveying the Green farm. Things between the cousins grow worse from there.

Nanny McPhee soon arrives -- ostensibly dispatched by the Army -- to take charge of the situation.

There's a lot of charming antics going on. The prize piglets escape from their pen and must be rounded up, but not before engaging in a little synchronized swimming. Isabel's scheming brother-in-law (Rhys Ifans) is out to sell the farm, because he's got a pair of hitwomen (you read that right) after him for gambling debts.

Maggie Smith shows up as Isabel's forgetful employer, who has a tendency to sit in cow patties and fill up filing cabinets with syrup. And I got a kick out of the helpful manual published by the War Department, "Defusing Your Bomb: Three Simple Steps to an Explosion-Free Day."

The gag is that Nanny McPhee's warts, snaggletooth and other gruesome features disappear as the children learn to behave. There's even a suggestion that she's been at this for some time (watch for Maggie Smith to flash a familiar token).

This film is rated PG, though I cannot conceive of it offending anyone, unless you consider a burping bird to be risqué material.

"Nanny McPhee Returns" may not be the most original material, but director Susanna White pitches the tone just perfectly, a combination of fairy and morality tales. Compared to so much of the dim-bulb rubbish churned out for tots, it practically qualifies as enchanted.

3 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "Clash of the Titans"

So they're remaking "Clash of the Titans," the 1981 mythology epic starring Harry Hamlin, Laurence Olivier and a whole lot of Ray Harryhausen stop-motion puppets. The new version comes out next spring, and is to star Sam Worthington (that guy's everywhere lately) and all computer-generated effects.

"Titans" is seen today as something of a cheese factory, mostly due to the relative crudity of the stop-motion visual effects in comparison with more modern ones. But I still think it's a wonderfully entertaining fantasia, a mash-up of Greek mythology that would probably mortify Edith Hamilton, but representing an exciting menagerie of amazing creatures and stories.

Granted, you don't see stop-motion used anymore to portray realistic creatures or things, because even the most meticulous puppet looks manufactured and fake, especially in close-up. And as groundbreaking as the achievements of Harryhausen ("Jason and the Argonauts") were, he never perfected stop-motion to the point where he was able to achieve seamless action. His skeletons, dragons and other critters always had a herky-jerk hitch to them.

Nowadays you only see stop-motion used for films like "Coraline," where the subjects are highly stylized and not intended to be an exact replica of reality.

As a kid watching "Titans" in the theater, I was really enthralled with the idea of Zeus (Olivier) and the other Greek gods reigning from Olympus, interfering with the lives of humans as a way to play out the conflicts between themselves. Interestingly, there's a subtle but distinct feminist subtext, with the goddesses Hera, Thetis and Athena (Claire Bloom, Maggie Smith and Susan Fleetwood, respectively) ganging up to thwart the will of Zeus. Zeus, as portrayed in the film, is the ultimate male pig, sleeping around with various humans that strike his fancy, resulting in a number of mortal offspring.

One of them is Perseus (Hamlin), and Zeus intervenes again and again to aid his son. The gods use tiny clay sculptures to represent their human pawns, moving them across the board like a chess piece. For example, Thetis plucks the figure of Perseus up and places him in an amphitheater in a faraway city, so the real Perseus wakes up hundreds of miles away from where he went to sleep. I just love that device.

The other thing that really stands out about the film is the villain Calibos, played by veteran TV actor Neil McCarthy in devil make-up that's still quite impressive. Calibos is the son of Thetis, and like Perseus was a favored child himself until he drew the wrath of Zeus for killing his herd of flying horses. Calibos was punished by being turned into a misshapen demon.

He's actually a rather sympathetic figure, since his betrothed Andromeda (Judi Bowker) spurned him after he was cursed. One wonders how she would have felt about Perseus if he, too, was struck down.

In vengeance, Calibos has placed his own curse on the city. Andromeda's spirit is transported to Calibos' lair in the swamp, where he provides her with a riddle for every suitor to her hand. Those who fail to solve it are burned at the stake. Perseus, of course, takes up the challenge of the riddle, although he only solves it by cheating.

At the direction of Zeus, Perseus is given three magical gifts: a shield, a sword and a helmet that turns the wearer invisible. He uses these to slay the Medusa, whose head he in turn uses to turn the Kraken into stone. The Kraken is the last of the titans, the powerful giants who ruled before Zeus and the other gods took over, and Poseidon releases him from his undersea cage when directed to smite whatever city of mortals has offended the gods.

If you know anything about Greek and Roman mythology, then you know that the movie mixes and matches the different legends and stories liberally. For example, Perseus is shown taming the winged horse Pegasus (which actually was accomplished by Bellarophon) prior to setting out on his journey that eventually leads him to Medusa. But in the relevant mythology, Pegasus actually springs forth from the body of Medusa when Perseus cuts off her head. Thetis was not even one of the major Greek gods, and Calibos was created out of whole cloth for this movie.

I'm interested in how the remake, due in March, will turn out; I'm intrigued by the casting of Liam Neeson as Zeus and Ralph Fiennes as Hades. In terms of which Greek legends they will distill for their story, it appears they're taking a completely new path. I'm excited to see the new version, although I'll miss Calibos.

3.5 stars