There's nothing more challenging that trying to review a movie nearly three months after you saw it, especially when it's added to the release schedule at the last minute. So all I have time and capacity for is a short review.
"Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool" has a premise that seems like pure Hollywood hooey: a faded film actress and Oscar winner, virtually forgotten in late middle age, takes up with an aspiring actor several decades her junior from the rough neighborhoods of England. But that actually was the romance between Gloria Grahame in the late 1970s, as recounted in the memoir of Peter Turner, and adapted into a feature film by director Paul McGuigan and screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh.
The film is a showcase for solid performances from Annette Bening and Jamie Bell. It's also a sensitive meditation on the power of love and loyalty.
Grahame was a major player in the 1950s, headlining in films like "The Bad and the Beautiful," "The Big Heat" and "The Naked Alibi," a favorite femme fatale. But she garnered a reputation for being difficult to work with and neurotic about her looks -- not to mention tawdry tabloid articles about her cheating on her second husband, Nicholas Ray, with his underage son, Anthony, who would go on to become her fourth husband.
The story takes up as she's eking out an existence on the British stage, and bumps into Peter, an unsophisticated wannabe. She's clearly in charge of every step of their relationship, including when it will begin and end, and the strange and wonderful reconciliation they find after her health starts to fail.
Vanessa Redgrave and Frances Barber turn up as Gloria's mother and sister, respectively, and their quietly savage undermining lets us understand how she became a bundle of barely stitched-up wounds. Julie Walters and Kenneth Cranham plays Peter's simple parents, who are bewildered by their son's tortuous romance with this odd, beguiling woman.
It doesn't add up to more than a portrait of unlikely romance, but "Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool" is worthwhile if only to see Bening and Bell pour their souls into their performances.
Shakespeare has rarely translated well to film, and even when it does -- "Shakespeare in Love," "Romeo + Juliet" -- it's usually in a modernistic, revisionist way that steps outside the rigid confines of the Bard's plays. And the reason is simple: with nigh on half a millennium separating our version of the English language from his, it's very difficult for anyone who's not a PhD in literature to comprehend just what the heck the characters are saying.
"Coriolanus," based on one of Shakespeare's lesser-known works, lies somewhere in between classic and revisionist approaches. The dialogue is tweaked enough to make it so the layman can usually follow along, but the bones of the story is unchanged.
Ralph Fiennes, who also makes his directing debut, plays the title character, an over-proud general just returned triumphant to Rome. A rigid, inflexible man, he thinks his honor has won him the right to become consul, but the common people do not love him, and scheming politicians maneuver to rob him of the title. Enraged, Coriolanus joins forces with his mortal enemy to wage war against the empire.
It's grandiose, heavy stuff, and both Fiennes and Vanessa Redgrave were passed over for Academy Award nominations they probably deserved. Gerard Butler plays Coriolanus' enemy Tullus Aufidius, and the cast is rounded out by Jessica Chastain and Brian Cox.
Bonus features are the same for Blu-ray and DVD editions, and include a making-of featurette and an audio commentary track by Fiennes.
"Anonymous" is being hyped as a conspiracy theory story, the gist being that William Shakespeare was not actually the author of all those flowery plays and sonnets. This is not a new idea, as Shakespeare was a commoner of humble schooling, and the Brits retain their class snobbery.
The most common theory I've heard is that his contemporary and fellow playwright, Christopher Marlowe, actually penned "Hamlet" and all the other great works. Marlowe is present in this movie as a minor antagonist, but he's not presented as Shakespeare's doppelganger.
Instead, it's nobleman Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, who allowed an actor named Shakespeare to be his frontman. This Oxfordian Theory is dismissed by most literary authorities as loony -- literally, Looney, after the English schoolteacher who came up with it.
But this film is not really about promoting an alternate theory of authorship so much as presenting an intriguing (if unlikely) scenario and seeing how it would play out. It makes for a ripping good story, whether or not it's factual.
For those offended at the idea of director Roland Emmerich taking liberties with the biography of a beloved artist, consider the long cinematic tradition of this M.O. Start with "Shakespeare in Love," which won a Best Picture Oscar for a wholly fictitious take on the Bard's love life. Or "Amadeus." Or "Lust for Life."
In some ways, crafting a fantasy out of the life of an artist is the ultimate tribute to their creativity.
And to those still doing a double-take from two paragraphs above -- yes, this sumptuous period piece is from the filmmaker behind "The Day After Tomorrow," "Independence Day," "2012" and other schlocky blockbusters. All I can say is the German director has traded in disaster flicks for straightforward drama, and takes to it like a duck to water.
Rhys Ifans plays Oxford, a haughty middle-aged lord who summons young Ben Jonson (Sebastian Armesto), a struggling young writer, to make him an offer.
(Interesting that they call themselves writers, rather than playwrights -- back in Elizabethan times, if you wrote for a living it was plays, or sonnets or poems. Books were too expensive to print to be the basis of a vocation. And newspapers and magazines were still a ways off.)
The earl desperately wants to see his work performed, but his station does not allow him the luxury of being an artist. His idea is to have Jonson pose as the author. Unfortunately, Jonson confides in his friend Will Shakespeare (Rafe Spall), a bumbling actor who cannot even write his own name.
Shakespeare suggests he serve as a further buffer between the mysterious nobleman, and jumps at an opportunity to become the most celebrated writer in London.
The story (screenplay by John Orloff) jumps back in forth in time to 40 years previously, when Oxford was a young lord who caught the eye of Queen Elizabeth (played by Joely Richardson as a young woman and by Vanessa Redgrave late in life). The later tale is dominated by a struggle over succession made by a couple of young lords, the Earl of Southampton and the Earl of Essex.
In both parallel stories it is the Cecil family of royal advisors, first William (David Thewlis) and then his son Robert (Edward Hogg) who act as Svengali to Elizabeth, manipulating her and twisting events to suit their purposes. Like many villains depicted from this era, they are Puritans who use religion as both shield and weapon.
It is true that "Anonymous" has a very large cast that can often be hard to keep track of. There are also several shocking revelations about hidden ties between various parties, which are as unlikely as someone else writing Shakespeare's plays but still have a delicious impact on their own.
Shakespeare himself remains a rather minor character, which is further evidence that Emmerich and Orloff see the whole Oxfordian Theory as a mere jumping-off point for a great story, rather than the crux of their movie.
When you see as many romantic comedies as I do, you practically shiver when you spy one on your calendar. After a thousand Meet Cutes and a thousand 90-minute dances in which the couple pretends to hate each other right up until the moment they realize they're in love, one craves something with a modicum of originality and heartfelt emotion.
Blow some kisses to "Letters to Juliet" for having both, if in modest quantities. The cast is attractive and engaging and we like spending time with them (with one notable exception), and all the gorgeous Tuscan landscapes are almost worth the price of admission by themselves.
Amanda Seyfried is some kind of workaholic, appearing in five movies in the last two years in addition to starring in the HBO series "Big Love." Here she plays Sophie, an ambitious wannabe writer who finds a long-lost love letter while traveling in Tuscany, and resolves to reunite the lovers and rekindle the romance. Of course, she finds some of her own along the way.
That might sound nice, except that she's already engaged to Victor (Gael Garcia Bernal), a chef who's about to open his own restaurant in New York, and seems to view the trip as an opportunity to meet with suppliers and scout out exclusive vineyards.
Bored, Sophie visits the Casa de Giulietta in Verona, supposed home of the family that inspired "Romeo and Juliet." There's a tradition of visitors (read: women) attaching letters about their romantic troubles on the wall, and Sophie stumbles across "Juliet's secretaries" -- women who collect the letters, and answer them.
Beneath a broken brick Sophie finds a worn letter written in 1957 by Claire, an English girl who ran away from Lorenzo, her Italian lover. She writes her back, and to Sophie's surprise Claire herself appears a few days later, with her grandson in tow. Claire resolves to find her soul mate, and Sophie, sensing a good story, tags along.
I'm don't think I'm giving away anything in saying that Claire eventually finds her Lorenzo. The trailer for "Juliet" happily gives away this information, and even if it didn't, the parameters of a film like this demand such a resolution. Vanessa Redgrave -- still a stunner at 73 -- invests the character with a shy sort of determination that's enchanting.
Less interesting is the romance on the main stage. Claire's grandson Charlie is a completely stock character -- the uptight British prig whose fussiness and constant annoyance at the female lead are supposed to mask the passionate heart beneath. Hugh Grant and Colin Firth milked this sort of role for years.
I don't blame actor Christopher Egan, who's just playing the cards screenwriters Jose Rivera and Tim Sullivan dealt him. The trouble is, they spend so much time making Charlie an unlikable twit, that when Sophie starts to fall for him we don't understand what it is she's supposed to be seeing.
Director Gary Winick has a nice eye for capturing the rolling hills and dirt roads of the countryside, the pastoral outdoor feasts, and the colorful Italian folk who all seem to have an instinctive understanding of the emotional logic of Claire's quest for lost love, and never question it.
Except for Romeo being such a star-cussed jerk, "Letters to Juliet" is an agreeable romp. In romcom terms, it may not be a soul mate, but makes for a pleasant enough one-off blind date.
It's always funny to watch a film from back when that was considered racy in its day. "Blow-Up" was the first English-language film by the Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni, and was picked up by MGM for release in the U.S.
But with its generous helping of nude(ish) flesh, the film couldn't get past the censors, still functioning in 1966 but wavering as more films with provocative material were becoming mainstream. MGM created a special distribution wing for "Blow-Up."
Seen today, the movie would be unlikely to get anything harsher than a PG-13 rating. The nudity is mostly oblique -- Vanessa Redgrave famously played an entire extended scene topless, but her breasts are never fully seen.
Based on a short story about a hip British photographer, "Blow-Up" is framed as a whodunit, but mostly is an exploration of swinging London of the 1960s. At the time of its release, it was viewed as a celebration of everything "mod." But I think the film, and Antonioni, paint a more critical of this movement than first glance would suggest.
Start with the fact that the protagonist, Thomas, is completely unlikeable. As played forcefully by David Hemmings, Thomas is vain, selfish, egotistical and utterly unconcerned with anyone's feelings than his own. A famous fashion photographer who yearns to be taken more seriously as an artist, Thomas treats his models as beautiful playthings to be manipulated and disposed of.
Perhaps the most famous image from the film is from Thomas' photo shoot with a supermodel (Veruschka von Lehndorff, playing herself) in a skimpy dress. At one point he straddles her on the ground while she writhes. Then he gets up and leaves abruptly: He's finished with her, and therefore she holds no more allure for him once her image has been satisfactorily captured.
At one point he complains about having to photograph women, referring to them as "these bitches." In another famous scene, he cavorts with two young girls who have come to his home studio hoping to become models, chasing them around and tearing off their clothes in a fascinating sequence that blends eroticism, subjugation and misogyny. They're all laughing, but Thomas wears a sadistic expression throughout.
Thomas doesn't seem to stand for anything, or possess any underlying principles. He's pure id, completely caught up in whatever grabs his interest in the moment, then moving on to the next thing once he quickly grows bored. He buys a huge airplane propeller from an antique store, then forgets all about it until the delivery man shows up with it.
He wanders into a park and takes some pictures of a man and woman canoodling. The well-dressed man is suspiciously older than the girl, whose name turns out to be Jane. She catches sight of Thomas taking their photograph, and confronts him to demand the pictures -- even trying to snatch away his camera and biting his wrist when he resists.
Later she shows up at his studio, again insisting upon obtaining the negatives. Thomas plays with her cruelly, thinking she's just cheating with a married man and doesn't want to get caught. She even undresses in hopes of seducing him in exchange for the photos. Thomas again resists temptation, and gives her a different roll of film.
When he blows up the pictures, he sees what appears to be a figure standing in the bushes with a gun. He returns to the park and finds the older man stone dead. Was the couple's foray into the park a set-up to kill him? Is Jane a terrified dupe or part of the plot?
Antonioni deliberately keeps the potboiler aspects of the plot at arm's length in order to explore the London scene -- the fashion, the music, the freewheeling spirit. Near the end there's an extended chase sequence where Thomas thinks he spots Jane on the street, and pursues her. This is where things really get interesting.
Antonioni depicts the twentysomethings of mid-60s England not as vibrant, brash rebels, but zombie-like figures dulling their senses with booze, drugs and emotional detachment.
While chasing Jane, Thomas stumbles into a club where a rock 'n' roll band is playing. Hundreds of young people decked out in fashionable clothes stand or sit, listening intently to the music but barely moving. They have no expression on their faces. A few heads nod almost imperceptibly in time, but otherwise everyone seems more mesmerized by the concert than enjoying it. A lone couple dance nonchalantly, their rhythmic activity serving only to underline the torpor of the rest of the crowd.
The band was played by The Yardbirds, performing their song "Stroll On." The guitarist is annoyed by static from a faulty amplifier, and starts hammering it with his guitar. Eventually he smashes the instrument and throws the battered remains of the neck into the crowd, which suddenly erupts into frenzy. The once-comatose audience scrambles for the trashed relic, which Thomas manages to grab hold of and flee the club, pursued by others who want the souvenir.
Once he gets away, Thomas looks at the half-guitar and sullenly tosses it onto the street. Another young man picks it up, inspects it, and throws it back down. It's Antonioni's comment on how the things the mod crowd value are so shallow and ultimately worthless.
Thomas wanders into a party looking for his friend and business partner, Ron, and finds everyone stoned out of their minds. He tries to explain to Ron about having witnessed a murder, but can't pierce his friend's drug-induced haze.
Returning to his studio, he discovers all the photographs but one stolen. He returns to the park to find the body gone. His chances of exposing the crime -- and gaining fame and fortune for doing so -- are gone.
Wandering around the park, he comes across a troupe of mimes riding around in a jalopy. (The same group opened the film, accosting Thomas for money, which he bemusedly gave.) He watches them conduct a mime game of tennis, even returning an errant "ball" that goes over the fence near him, and hearing the sound of nonexistent racquets.
I tend not to like rambling storylines like this, but I think "Blow-Up" is the rare film where the subtext is more interesting than the surface.
