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Review: Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, American Gangster, After the Wedding, Clubland, Death at a Funeral, Alien vs. Predator- Requiem, Elsa & Fred and Lust, Caution

By Cinema, Conflict of Interest and Reviews

Sweeney Todd poster2008 is shap­ing up to be a year of great films about people being beastly to each oth­er and the first cab off the rank is Tim Burton’s majest­ic adapt­a­tion of Sondheim’s broad­way opera Sweeney Todd. Based on the true-ish story of the Victorian barber who murders his cus­tom­ers to provide fresh meat for his girlfriend’s pies, Sweeney Todd is pos­it­ively Shakespearian in scale – meaty, sav­age, sin­is­ter and poignant.
Johnny Depp plays the tal­en­ted scissor-man who returns to London 15 years after he was trans­por­ted to the colon­ies by crooked Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman) who had desires on his pretty wife. Consumed with a pas­sion for revenge Todd goes back to work above the shop selling London’s worst pies, made by the redoubt­able Mrs Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter). There, more by acci­dent than design, they dis­cov­er that his skills with a razor might be prof­it­able in more ways than one.

Sondheim’s music and lyr­ics are as good as any oth­er writ­ing for the stage in the last cen­tury and the film ver­sion hon­ours that tal­ent uncon­di­tion­ally. When young Toby (Ed Sanders) sings “Not While I’m Around” (prob­ably the most beau­ti­ful song ever writ­ten) to Mrs Lovett you can see the look in her eyes that shows he has just sealed his own fate, the tem­per­at­ure in the theatre seemed to drop a few degrees. Not just any­one can pull that off.

American Gangster poster

The best of the rest at the moment is Ridley Scott’s American Gangster, a pacy and obser­v­ant look at the life of Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington), Harlem’s most notori­ous and suc­cess­ful drug deal­er of the 1970s. Russell Crowe plays Richie Roberts, the only hon­est cop in New York. It’s an inter­est­ing story well told by three cha­ris­mat­ic film personalities.

After the Wedding poster

After the Wedding is a lovely, layered drama from Denmark star­ring the watch­able Mads Mikkelsen (Casino Royale) as an aid work­er at an Indian orphan­age who is summoned back to Copenhagen by a mys­ter­i­ous bil­lion­aire (Rolf Lassgård). Lassgård wants to donate enough money to save the pro­gramme – mil­lions of dol­lars – but there are strings attached. Those strings turn out to be less nefar­i­ous than they seem at first but the choice that Mikkelsen’s Jacob has to make is still a heart-breaking one. Totally recommended.

Clubland poster

Totally un-recommended is the Australian comedy-drama Clubland about an unusu­al show­biz fam­ily led by dom­in­eer­ing moth­er Brenda Blethyn. Asinine in con­cep­tion and hor­rible in exe­cu­tion, it struggles to get one good per­form­ance out the entire cast put together.

Death at a Funeral posterDeath at a Funeral isn’t much bet­ter, although a couple of per­form­ances (Peter Dinklage and a doughy Matthew McFadyen) rise above the cheap and nasty script. The funer­al is for McFadyen’s fath­er and vari­ous friends and fam­ily mem­bers have assembled to form a quor­um of English ste­reo­types. Standard farce ele­ments like mis­taken iden­tity and acci­dent­al drug-taking are shoe-horned togeth­er with the help of some poo jokes.

Alien vs. Predator: Requiem poster

Alien vs. Predator: Requiem man­aged to dis­ap­pear from my memory about as soon as I left the theatre with my ears still ringing from the noise. An Alien pod being trans­por­ted across the galaxy crash lands in Colorado and starts lay­ing eggs – cause that’s just how they roll. A creature from the Predator home-world tries to clean up the mess and a whole bunch of ran­dom cit­izens get caught in the middle. All the sig­na­ture moments from the ori­gin­al Alien (the chest-bursting, the almost-kissing a whim­per­ing young woman) are repeated often, to dimin­ish­ing effect and, I know I some­times see cine­mat­ic racism every­where, is it really neces­sary for both malevol­ent extra-terrestrial races to look like big black men with dreadlocks?

Elsa & Fred poster

There’s a fact­ory in China, I’m sure, stamp­ing out films like Elsa & Fred on a weekly basis, mak­ing subtle cul­tur­al and gen­er­a­tion­al changes where neces­sary but pre­serving the for­mula like it’s Coca Cola. And fair enough as these films will always sell: un-challenging, easy to decipher, vaguely life-affirming. Elsa (China Zorrilla) is a batty old woman in a Madrid apart­ment block. Fred (Manuel Alexandre) is the quiet wid­ower who moves in oppos­ite. She decides to point him back the dir­ec­tion of life and he tries to make her dreams come true before it is too late.

Lust, Caution poster

Finally, Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution is an extremely well-made but over­long erot­ic thrill­er set in Japanese-occupied China dur­ing WWII. Stunning new­comer Wei Tang plays Wong Chia Chi, per­suaded in a moment of youth­ful, pat­ri­ot­ic weak­ness to join a stu­dent res­ist­ance group. She is sent under­cov­er to try and woo the mys­ter­i­ous Mr Yee (Tony Leung) who is a seni­or offi­cial col­lab­or­at­ing with the Japanese occu­pa­tion forces. Unfortunately, for them both he is inter­ested but a chal­len­ging mark and it is sev­er­al years before she can get close enough to him (and believe me she gets very close) for the res­ist­ance to strike. Ang Lee is the poet of the stolen glance and he is in very good form – I just wish it hadn’t taken quite so long to get going.

Printed in Wellington’s Capital Times on Wednesday 23 January, 2008.

Nature of Conflict: After the Wedding is dis­trib­uted in NZ and Australia by Arkles Entertainment who I do some work for; Clubland is dis­trib­uted in Australia and NZ by Palace whose NZ activ­it­ies are looked after by the excel­lent Richard Dalton, who is a good mate.

At present Reading Cinemas are not offer­ing press passes to the Capital Times. This means that their exclus­ive releases (such as Cloverfield) will go un-reviewed unless I can work some­thing out with them or the dis­trib­ut­or. Maybe I’ll just down­load them …

Tuesday Allsorts #1

By Asides, Cinema, Football, Music, The Net and Theatre

David Beckham 27 Feb 2006Why is this man smil­ing? “Er, Victoria, a pigeon’s just crapped on my shoulder.”
Presenting the first of my weekly (weakly?) lists of stuff I’ve stumbled across via the web over the last sev­en days.

Firstly, it is unlikely that I will be pur­chas­ing the new red England away top des­pite my being a prime can­did­ate (I bought the 2002 revers­able ver­sion and still wear the blue side). Even though it is un homage to the clas­sic 1966 World Cup win­ning shirt it’s still too busy for me. What is it with the little white “thing” on the right shoulder and the Umbro logo is as wide and prom­in­ent as the three lions? And they have per­severed with the tiny gold star which made the last shirt seem like it belonged to the People’s Republic of China. Anyway, on to the inter­est­ing stuff:

  • The Guardian talks to Underworld, Ray Davies, Pete Shelley, Richard X, Johnny Marr, Nick Hodgson, Rhymefest, Peter Hook, Tony Hicks, Gary Numan, Ron Mael and KT Tunstall about how some of their sig­na­ture tunes came to be:

The drum pat­tern was ripped off from a Donna Summer B‑side. We’d fin­ished the drum pat­tern and we were really happy, then Steve acci­dent­ally kicked out the drum machine lead so we had to start from scratch and it was nev­er as good.” (Peter Hook from New Order talk­ing about “Blue Monday”)

Not only is there a pre­ma­ture gear change after the second chor­us, but towards the end of the song there are a fur­ther two in a row. They’re so ill-advised that you can hear the nervous­ness in his waver­ing voice as he tries to res­ist each time. All it achieves, though, is the effect of everything going hor­ribly out of tune. I’m not abso­lutely cer­tain that the word “caco­phon­ic” exists, but that’s the most apt way to sum up this atrocity.”

255. Casting a black Desdemona along­side a black Othello is kind of miss­ing the point a bit.
256. The Montague clan are not ali­ens. No, really, they’re not.
257. No mat­ter how much homo­erot­ic sub­text has been built up over the course of the play, I will not end Richard II by hav­ing Henry pull Richard’s dead body out of a pool of water, hav­ing him pro­ceed to lie on top of it, and then roll, the one over the oth­er, all over the stage in com­plete silence until the cur­tain comes to hide them from the audi­ence’s bleed­ing eyes.

  • Finally, not only has someone in a fea­ture film got my name, he’s the title char­ac­ter – and this is a film with Bruce Willis and Ben Kingsley! Some people are used to shar­ing the same name as char­ac­ters on screen (I know an Anderson and a Harper who must be sick of it) but will be a new exper­i­ence for me.