CarlGardner.co.uk - Reviews http://carlgardner.co.uk/reviews/ Reviews of items I have seen, read, eaten or participated in en carl@freelanceintellectual.com Copyright 2009 2009-12-21T19:36:01+00:00 Son, aunt and mother http://carlgardner.co.uk/reviews/comments/son_aunt_and_mother/ http://carlgardner.co.uk/reviews/comments/son_aunt_and_mother/#When:19:36:01Z Nowhere Boy, directed by Sam Taylor-Wood

© Mars Distribution

Nowhere Boy is bound to attract interest because of its subject; and hardened fans of John Lennon will of course love it. It's important to ask about a film like this, though, how interesting it would be were its central character not a famous personality. The answer, I'm afraid, is that Nowhere Boy would not be of great interest. It covers a key period of John Lennon's life, from when he was fifteen until his departure with the Beatles for Hamburg. But music is in …

Continue Reading... ]]> Film, Cinema 2009-12-21T19:36:01+00:00 Bump, clunk, scream! http://carlgardner.co.uk/reviews/comments/bump_clunk_scream/ http://carlgardner.co.uk/reviews/comments/bump_clunk_scream/#When:13:05:00Z Paranormal Activity directed by Oren Peli

Blumhouse Productions/Icon

Katie and Micah, a young couple in San Diego, hear strange bumps in the night; Micah buys a fancy video camera to capture evidence in case something weird is happening in their home. And it is. We, the audience, see through the lens as the video evidence accumulates, the bumps get bumpier and the nights get both stranger and scarier.

Paranormal Activity isn't your normal cinematic experience - although obviously a lot of work and editing has gone into it, it's very proudly a low-budget Blair …

Continue Reading... ]]> Film, Cinema 2009-11-22T13:05:00+00:00 Chekhov and a chick-pea http://carlgardner.co.uk/reviews/comments/chekhov_and_a_chick_pea/ http://carlgardner.co.uk/reviews/comments/chekhov_and_a_chick_pea/#When:20:00:01Z Cold Souls directed by Sophie Barthes

Adam Bell | Samuel Goldwyn Films

Cold Souls is an entertaining watch, and amusing – though not hilarious, not especially satirical, and doing nothing very original. It's a bit like Being John Malkovich crossed with Eternal Sunshine, and not quite as interesting as either.

Paul Giamatti plays himself. Exhausted with anxiety during rehearsals of Uncle Vanya (there's a Woody Allenish feel about this, as about much of the film), he chances upon an article in the New Yorker about a new technique for lifting your psychic burdens …

Continue Reading... ]]> Film, Cinema 2009-11-16T20:00:01+00:00 I’m scared, Harry http://carlgardner.co.uk/reviews/comments/im_scared_harry/ http://carlgardner.co.uk/reviews/comments/im_scared_harry/#When:14:51:01Z Harry Brown, directed by Daniel Barber

©Lionsgate

The director Daniel Barber and his cast and crew do well with this material. Harry Brown begins in a very artsy way – not that there's anything wrong with that - but becomes more straightforward as the action gets moving, while retaining some interest in visuals throughout. Performances are decent all round, Emily Mortimer and David Bradley I thought doing particularly well, she as the idealistic, perhaps naive Detective Inspector Frampton and he as Harry Brown's grumpy old mate Len - each making something of a part …

Continue Reading... ]]> Film, Cinema 2009-11-10T14:51:01+00:00 Inglourious, stupid and objectionable http://carlgardner.co.uk/reviews/comments/inglourious_stupid_and_objectionable/ http://carlgardner.co.uk/reviews/comments/inglourious_stupid_and_objectionable/#When:10:12:01Z Inglourious Basterds, directed by Quentin Tarantino

© François Duhamel/The Weinstein Company

In this stupid and objectionable film, Brad Pitt plays Lieutenant Aldo Raine, a rhetorically and morally challenged Tennessee tough who, in advance of D-Day, recruits emigré German and Austrian Jews to form an irregular band of marauders to torture and murder German soldiers in occupied France. They plan to blow up Hitler and his Nazi high command at a film premiere in Paris: unfortunately, British intelligence has the same plan, as does the young, secretly Jewish woman who will welcome the Führer to …

Continue Reading... ]]> Film, Cinema 2009-09-07T10:12:01+00:00 A French folly http://carlgardner.co.uk/reviews/comments/a_french_folly/ http://carlgardner.co.uk/reviews/comments/a_french_folly/#When:00:13:01Z Les Demoiselles de Rochefort directed by Jacques Demy

Hélène Jeanbrau/Ciné Tamaris

Jacques Demy’s 1967 musical is sheer nonsense. Enjoyable nonsense, undoubtedly, but nonsense through and through. Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorléac, sisters in real life, play twins here. Delphine Garnier teaches ballet while Solange composes concerti at her piano. Each dreams of Paris, and meeting her dream man. We get to know them and their circle, inhabitants of Rochefort each with his or her sad story – until a fair comes to town and, with a romantic sailor and Gene Kelly thrown in, magical …

Continue Reading... ]]> Film, DVD, Cinema 2009-08-16T00:13:01+00:00 Programmes and people http://carlgardner.co.uk/reviews/comments/programmes_and_people/ http://carlgardner.co.uk/reviews/comments/programmes_and_people/#When:06:26:01Z Moon, directed by Duncan Jones

© Sony Pictures Classics

Sam Rockwell plays Sam Bell, an astronaut living alone on the far side of the Moon working out his contract with Lunar Industries, a company that mines material to make alternative energy on earth. Sam’s looking forward to coming home soon: his contract’s nearly up. But as he watches taped messages from his wife and daughter, strange things begin to happen; following an accident, he begins to wonder how alone he really is.

The plot isn’t easy: Sam is confused by what’s going on for …

Continue Reading... ]]> Film, Cinema 2009-08-12T06:26:01+00:00 Offensiv? Wassever http://carlgardner.co.uk/reviews/comments/offensiv_wassever/ http://carlgardner.co.uk/reviews/comments/offensiv_wassever/#When:06:00:01Z Brüno, directed by Larry Charles

© Universal Pictures

If there's a country that should love Brüno, then it's his home country Austria. It's famously stuffy in parts; but in contrast, Austrians love a good stunt - or Aktion - that punctures it all. So Vienna is the home of the absurd, ritualistic Neujahrskonzert, but also of the superb Vienna Vegetable Orchestra, whose version of the Radetzky March is the best you'll ever hear. I knew Sacha Baron-Cohen from his character Ali G, but had missed his previous film Borat: a friend …

Continue Reading... ]]> Film, Cinema 2009-07-24T06:00:01+00:00 She really is good http://carlgardner.co.uk/reviews/comments/she_really_is_good/ http://carlgardner.co.uk/reviews/comments/she_really_is_good/#When:15:54:00Z Emmy the Great at the QEH

Aurélien/CreativeCommons

I don't often go to anything that could be called a "gig" - my idea of a concert often involves Mahler and my idea of a music festival is the Proms. But the Queen Elizabeth Hall is a pretty safe venue for the likes of me, free of "mosh pits" and the like, so I was happy to be dragged along to hear Emmy, the 24-year old British singer-songwriter whose debut album, First Love, was released this year. She must have a pretty broad …

Continue Reading... ]]> Music, Concerts 2009-07-20T15:54:00+00:00 England refashioned http://carlgardner.co.uk/reviews/comments/england_refashioned/ http://carlgardner.co.uk/reviews/comments/england_refashioned/#When:00:03:00Z The Northern Clemency, by Philip Hensher

photo courtesy of simonknott.com

This is a subtly political novel. In the reading it hardly seems so at all, except for a few obviously political passages like the mass picket at Orgreave - which are arguably superficial, although the Orgreave scene is a fine set-piece. For the most part Hensher’s narrative is resolutely domestic and personal: it’s about childhood and adolescence, boys who are good with girls, pet snakes, middle-aged dissatisfaction, a woman’s crush on her boss, an arrest, dementia, migration. It’s a provincial novel …

Continue Reading... ]]> Books, Fiction 2009-06-30T00:03:00+00:00 Don’t you want to be happy? http://carlgardner.co.uk/reviews/comments/dont_you_want_to_be_happy/ http://carlgardner.co.uk/reviews/comments/dont_you_want_to_be_happy/#When:14:21:01Z This Sporting Life, directed by Lindsay Anderson

©Park Circus

This is a fabulous film. David Storey is one of our most underrated writers, and this, his screenplay of his own outstanding novel, is superbly filmed by Lindsay Anderson and played by Richard Harris, in the role of his career, and Rachel Roberts. I have to admit to a small obsession with This Sporting Life: rugby league was a big part of my teenage life in Warrington, and this, perhaps the most famous film about sport, is rugby league's most important representation in high …

Continue Reading... ]]> Film, Cinema 2009-06-07T14:21:01+00:00 All the world’s a set http://carlgardner.co.uk/reviews/comments/all_the_worlds_a_set/ http://carlgardner.co.uk/reviews/comments/all_the_worlds_a_set/#When:23:19:00Z Synecdoche, New York directed by Charlie Kaufman

Abbot Gensler, ©Sony Pictures Classics

Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Caden Cotard, a theatre director whose marriage falls apart as he is struck by a strange neurological condition - and who, handed unlimited funds for his work, realises a mad artistic vision of his own life -  and all life - in a vast, hangar-like space in New York. He hires actors to play himself and his lover Hazel, and life and representation merge till we are no longer sure who is director, who is actor, and …

Continue Reading... ]]> Film, Cinema 2009-05-26T23:19:00+00:00 Starstruck in America http://carlgardner.co.uk/reviews/comments/starstruck_in_america/ http://carlgardner.co.uk/reviews/comments/starstruck_in_america/#When:23:57:00Z In The Loop, directed by Armando Iannucci

©IFC Films

It's such a shame – but I'm afraid In The Loop just doesn't live up to expectations. Directed and co-written by Armando Ianucci, it's based of course on his TV comedy The Thick of It. But if you loved that series, I think you'll find the film version disappointing.

Tom Hollander plays a hapless international development minister Simon Foster, propelled into the eye of a political storm by saying a war is “unforeseeable”: doves in Washington seize on him as a pawn in …

Continue Reading... ]]> Film, Cinema 2009-05-20T23:57:00+00:00 Shrunk for the big screen http://carlgardner.co.uk/reviews/comments/shrunk_for_the_big_screen/ http://carlgardner.co.uk/reviews/comments/shrunk_for_the_big_screen/#When:21:16:00Z State of Play, directed by Kevin Macdonald

©Universal Pictures

A political researcher falls under a subway train – was she pushed? And when her boss, Congressman Stephen Collins (Ben Affleck), cries in public at the news of her death, the secret of their affair comes out. Was Collins the heartless exploiter of this young woman? Or was she killed by corporate interests threatened by Collins and his committee's investigations into their murky world? His friend, reporter Cal McAffrey (Russell Crowe) and blogger Della Frye (Rachel McAdams) hunt for the truth in a paranoid …

Continue Reading... ]]> Film, Cinema 2009-05-06T21:16:00+00:00 Blokes messing about in the future http://carlgardner.co.uk/reviews/comments/blokes_messing_about_in_the_future/ http://carlgardner.co.uk/reviews/comments/blokes_messing_about_in_the_future/#When:14:59:00Z Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel, directed by Gareth Carrivick

©BBC Films

This is a reasonably fun, slight film, a sort of Shaun of the Dead meets Back to the Future. Ray, Pete and Toby are typical hopeless Britblokes with rubbish jobs; in fact things are so bad that at least two of them are obsessed with science fiction. But on a trip to the pub life suddenly becomes much more exciting as Ray meets Cassie, a woman from the future, on his way back from the bar and Pete, emerging from the gents, …

Continue Reading... ]]> Film, Cinema 2009-04-29T14:59:00+00:00 Belle époque bitching and the dodgy narrator http://carlgardner.co.uk/reviews/comments/belle_epoque_bitching_and_the_dodgy_narrator/ http://carlgardner.co.uk/reviews/comments/belle_epoque_bitching_and_the_dodgy_narrator/#When:13:33:00Z Chéri, directed by Stephen Frears

©Bill Kenwright Films

Many will be attracted to this period drama, directed by Stephen Frears - who was responsible for Dangerous Liaisons - and starring Michelle Pfeiffer; but they'll be disappointed, because it doesn't justify the comparison. Set in Paris in 1906, Chéri is the story of Léa, a courtesan who's made an independent fortune from affairs with rich men, and who takes under her wing (so to speak) the son of one of her old colleagues, Mme. Peloux (Kathy Bates). Fred is a feckless, vain, sensitive boy of …

Continue Reading... ]]> Film, Cinema 2009-04-27T13:33:00+00:00 Sit down for ninety minutes; decide he was right http://carlgardner.co.uk/reviews/comments/sit_down_for_ninety_minutes_then_decide_he_was_right/ http://carlgardner.co.uk/reviews/comments/sit_down_for_ninety_minutes_then_decide_he_was_right/#When:08:09:01Z The Damned United directed by Tom Hooper

photo courtesy of Grenville Charles, grenvillecharles.co.uk

A good film, this - a hugely entertaining and likeable translation to the screen of David Peace's novel The Damned Utd. Michael Sheen impresses again in the role of a real character, this time the brilliant soccer manager Brian Clough, a simply amazing personality football couldn't handle but whose league championships with Derby and European Cups with Nottingham Forest, both of them unfashionable clubs raised from lower divisions by Clough, speak for themselves. The Damned United focuses on …

Continue Reading... ]]> Books, Fiction, Film, Cinema 2009-04-01T08:09:01+00:00 American Emotional http://carlgardner.co.uk/reviews/comments/american_emotional/ http://carlgardner.co.uk/reviews/comments/american_emotional/#When:13:39:01Z Fireflies in the Garden, directed by Dennis Lee

©Senator International

This is a flawed attempt at the great American family drama. Michael, a wrider living in New York, loses his mother in a car accident just before a family reunion in the sticks: meeting his aunt Jane and her children and reliving the memories of his troubled childhood helps him reconcile with those around him. Unsurprisingly for a film about a wrider coming home and about to publish a semi-autobiographical novel, Dennis Lee's screenplay is itself semi-autobiographical – and very, very emotional. If …

Continue Reading... ]]> Film, Cinema 2009-03-31T13:39:01+00:00 Stake this film’s misogynist heart! http://carlgardner.co.uk/reviews/comments/stake_this_films_misogynist_heart/ http://carlgardner.co.uk/reviews/comments/stake_this_films_misogynist_heart/#When:15:22:00Z Lesbian Vampire Killers, directed by Phil Claydon

© Momentum Pictures

It's trying to be Withnail and I meets Shaun of the Dead. But really it's just yet another lad comedy about two useless buddies, in this case Jimmy (Mathew Horne) and Fletch (James Corden). As usual, one gets fired from a rubbish job involving a silly costume, while the other has trouble with an on-off girlfriend; so they holiday in a cursed village where, with some “hot babes”, they're besieged by pouting lesbian vampires until a Van Helsing-type vicar (Paul McGann, in a role …

Continue Reading... ]]> Film, Cinema 2009-03-16T15:22:00+00:00 Faith and truth http://carlgardner.co.uk/reviews/comments/faith_and_truth/ http://carlgardner.co.uk/reviews/comments/faith_and_truth/#When:13:25:00Z Doubt, directed by John Patrick Shanley

Photo: Andrew Schwartz/Miramax

I don't always go to films recommended by my mother - but she was right to tell me to see this. Sister Aloysius is principal of a Catholic school in the Bronx in 1964, just as Catholicism is trying to adapt to the modern world at Vatican II. Sister Aloysius has no time for modernity, though, or for sixties touchy-feeliness. She is feared by children and nuns alike, and likes it that way. But she has a problem: the young, relaxed and tactile Father …

Continue Reading... ]]> Film, Cinema 2009-03-02T13:25:00+00:00