Ratatouille

Daughter and I go see Ratatouille. We’re at the Savoy which certainly isn’t Broadway; this is fidget central and the venue for the 'who can make the most noise with a carton of popcorn competition'. The two girls next to me, both well into their teens, easily out do the five year olds with their eating habits. Far messier than Doggo and Daughter put together. When one of the girls stands up at the end of the film the two rows in front of her are almost swept away in an avalanche of popcorn crumbs.


The film itself is your everyday tale of boy meets rat, becomes world-renowned chef, as you do. The boy, Linguini, inherits the restaurant of the famous Gusteau, whose motto was ‘anyone can cook’ but the boy can't. Luckily for him the rat can.


The boy/rat combination impresses everyone, especially the kitchen's sole female chef, the scary knife wielding Colette, who whisks him away on her motorcycle. Fair enough, you're not going to resist a leather clad leggy French babe astride a motorcycle now are you but this doesn't impress the rat and it nearly all goes pear shaped. Particularly when Peter O'Toole shows up as the restaurant critic from the Grim Eater but the rat and his friends save the day and impress him with the rat’s signature dish of, yep you guessed it, Ratatouille. Although I wouldn't have been terribly impressed if they'd made we wait as long for the food as they did the critic.


The film is entertaining but spoilt by the usual American moralising, don’t steal, don’t do that, don’t do this etc. That apart the film is occasionally funny, occasionally clever, and anything that sees a character voiced by Jamie Oliver getting bound, gagged, and chucked in a storeroom, must have something going for it.

Eastern Promises

Tonight we see David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises which was shot exclusively in London. A pregnant 14-year old Russian girl arrives in A&E, haemorrhaging badly and with needle marks on her arms. The girl dies but the baby survives, Nurse Anna (Naomi Watts) is left holding the baby along with the girl's diary, which contains some very sensitive information, and a business card for a Russian restaurant. Anna attempts to have the diary translated in order to identify the girl's family. Watts, my second babe on a motorcycle in the space of just a few hours, and in a nice pair of boots, also goes to the restaurant but in doing so, she becomes embroiled in the dark world of the Russian Mafia, who want the diary back.



Viggo Mortensen, who plays Nikolai, the 'driver' to the mob, is outstanding. Nikolai is seemingly the cool, calculating part of the 'family' compared with the blundering son Kirill.


Cronenberg's mixes in his usual dollop of violence and treats us to two cut throats and an eye gouging, that oddly left most of the cinema in raptures of laughter. Mortensen performs the fight screen that leads to the eye gouging in a steam bath completely nude.

An excellent film with a good twist at the end.

Fälscher, Die (The Counterfeiters)

Tonight we see is called Fälscher, Die or The Counterfeiters, a German film. It's a true story based on a book by Adolf Burger, who is one of the members of the counterfeiting team and is featured in the film.
Salomon is a master criminal, a counterfeiter, and a Jew, living the life of Riley in 1930's Berlin, until he finally gets busted by the German police. He is imprisoned and sent to the Mauthausen concentration camp. Having been to Mauthausen, I can vouch that the film was actually filmed there. The place is exactly how I remember it. He manages to secure a few privileges for himself by showing off his skills as an artist. When he is transferred to Sachsenhausen, (also been there, sorry to name drop) he is reunited with the detective who arrested him, who is now in the SS. He is put to work supervising a team of artists, forgers and printers, who have been assembled to produce counterfeit pounds and dollars to undermine the enemy's economies. If they fail, they will almost certainly be put to death but if they succeed the result could well be the same, as once the currencies have been reproduced, they will be surplus to requirements.



Only one man, Berger, seems to see the wider picture. He struggles with his conscience, concerned that while they are keeping themselves alive they are condemning others to death as they aid the German war effort.



The entire film was gripping from the start. It cleverly portrays concentration camp life without resorting to the usual horrific scenes, which have been done so many times before. Instead, it is all shown from the angle of the privileged lifestyle enjoyed by the counterfeiters. Excellent camera-work, excellent acting. Totally engaging. Thoroughly recommend it.

Control

'Control' is a biopic of Ian Curtis, the lead singer of Joy Division. It is made by Anton Corbijn, the man who photographed and worked with the band. So presumably the project was very personal to him. It was also presumably very personal to his widow Deborah, as the film is based on her biography of her husband, 'Touching From a Distance'. The fact that it is all through his wife's eyes is quite thought provoking in itself. Deborah Curtis, who is played by Samantha Morton, is also involved in the production of the film, which Corbijn shot entirely in black and white, which seems very appropriate. Ian Curtis never really sang in colour, the band were all about dark brooding guitars and deep, doom-laden lyrics.
I was only 13 when he died and I didn't discover Joy Division until a few years later via the early New Order stiff. It is also true that the band were never that popular until his death made them so.

The film starts with Curtis still at school and takes us through to his death in 1980 at the age of only 23. Surprisingly he comes across as quite a likeable chap, more so than I ever though he was. He worked in the social security office and did a great job finding work for people with disabilities.

The film shows his struggle with epilepsy for which doctors give him a cocktail of pills to take, from which he suffers from the side effects. The doctors don't come out of it very well but then again he never went back to get his dosage reviewed. They also tell him to have early nights and stay off the booze, which is a tad difficult when you're trying to be a rock star.

The film also details his disastrous personal life. He married his childhood sweetheart way too soon, and then compounded his error by adding a child into the mix, again way too soon. You can't do the whole touring thing where the girls are throwing themselves at you, with a wife and kids back home. Consequently he gets off with a Belgian reporter and he's not strong enough to choose between the two women.



Curtis quickly reaches a point where juggling his home life, love life and life on the road is too much for him. Add into this his illness and the fact that he couldn't cope with the pressures brought on by the band starting to become popular; it all becomes an accident waiting to happen. Unfortunately we all know how's its going to end and it's partly a case of waiting for that to happen. The people around him don't seem to realise how bad his growing sense of despair is. When the band record the song 'Isolation', no one seems to notice that the lyrics are effectively his suicide note.



A matter of days before the bank were due to leave on their first ever tour of the USA, Curtis hanged himself from a rope in his kitchen.

The film is excellent, another great British film that deserves all the praise it will hopefully get. Sam Riley deserves enormous credit for mimicking Curtis. He has his singing style down to a tee, hunched over the mic one moment, dancing badly the next, epileptic fit the next. Also credit to all the other actors who played the band members. Although the portrayal of Peter Hook doesn't do him any favours. They also played all the songs, there's no miming to the originals here. Riley's performances of tracks like 'She's lost control', 'Transmission' and of course 'Isolation' are all excellent.

The choice of music can perhaps be a bit cliché at times. For instance the use of 'Love will tear us apart' when his marriage is falling apart and I suppose it was always going to end with 'Atmosphere' accompanying his death.

There are plenty of other great performances in the film, motor-mouth manager Rob Gretton has some of the best lines and the late Tony Wilson is also played well.

An excellent film and an excellent night, oh and we win the rugby too but a warning, if someone you love starts singing lines such as,

'In the shadowplay, acting out your own death, knowing no more'.

Be worried.