Precious

‘Precious’ is based on a book called ‘Push’ by Sapphire.

It's 1987 in Harlem and we are introduced to a 16-year old black girl by the name of Claireece ‘Precious’ Jones (Gabourey Sidibe). She is seriously obese, illiterate and lacking a whole host of social skills. We are told this is because, in the sorry little apartment that she calls home, she is being monstrously mistreated.



Her mother, Mary (Mo'Nique), is an unhinged and unstable woman, who is unemployed, probably unemployable, and subsists on welfare payments. She treats Precious as her own personal slave and thanks her for this by telling her how stupid and worthless she is. This doesn’t exactly do much for the girl’s self esteem, which is already on the floor. For them both, life consists of watching TV, eating crap food, the odd arguments, a spot of physical abuse dished out by the mother, the occasional visit from the welfare officer and oh, did I mention TV. During the brief visits from the welfare officer normality is attempted at and deceiving the welfare proves to be terribly easy.



Precious’s only ‘escape’ is to fantasize about a better life but to her that seems to be simply becoming a pop star. She sees herself in this role, being the centre of attention, desired by gorgeous men and cheered by her adoring public as she walks the red carpet. Yes her utmost aspiration is to rise to the level of ‘I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here’... but then don’t most people these days.

Oh and when she looks in the mirror, she’s no longer fat, or even black for that matter, but an attractive slim white blonde. I’m surprised there hasn’t been a complaint about that...

The story gets darker because it emerges that her mother’s boyfriend, Precious’s father, has been raping Precious since the age of three and seemingly her mother simply held his coat and trousers for him whilst he got on with it. This is despite the fact her boyfriend's sexual preference for her daughter makes her viciously jealous. Both of Precious and of the child that this union ends up producing. Then Precious finds herself expelled from high school when she falls pregnant by him for a second time.

In a way Precious attempts to fight back against her situation and despite resistance from her mother, who simply wants her to join her on the welfare, she moves to an alternative school called ‘Each One Teach One’ where dropouts go to get their GED (General Educational Development).

Her new teacher, the improbably named Blu Rain (Paula Patton), proves inspirational and Precious starts to read and write. Her classmates too, whilst far from perfect themselves; have enough empathy to become supportive friends.



When she returns to the apartment with her second child, her mother intentionally drops him and then sets about Precious. Precious takes her baby and flees but falls down the stairs. She is followed down them by the TV that her deranged Mother hurls after her. It misses her, just. She never goes back.

A few days later at the halfway house where she is now staying, her mother turns up to pass on the cheery news that her boyfriend/Precious’s father/father of her children has died of AIDS. Precious finds out that she herself is HIV positive but her baby isn't.

She has one final showdown with her mother, in the office of her oddly familiar social worker Mrs Weiss. OMG, I though she looked familiar, it’s Mariah Carey. Where her mother attempts to explain her actions. As Mariah looks on in disgust, Precious leaves with her children and tells her mother that she will never see her again.



There's no happy ending. As her teacher points out, if she really wants to better herself, she'll have to put her kids up for adoption and that’s not going to happen. So probably Precious will simply end up being reabsorbed back into the welfare state.

It’s an ok film, bordering on good even. Depressing enough and it's very well performed. Mo'Nique's performance is particularly harrowing and there are other notable performances. Even from Mariah Carey, I knew she must be good at something, and Lenny Kravitz who pops up as a male nurse.

However it all smacks rather too much of it being the awards season. It plays the sympathy card rather too often and perhaps even attempts to make you feel responsible for Precious's life. It also packs as many social issues and stereotypes as it can think of into its two and a bit hours. Now let me see... physical abusive, sexual abuse, incest, teenage pregnancy, HIV, illiteracy, bad parenting, ethnic groups, welfare dependents... and it’s all played to shock but in the end social work and education save the day, maybe.

Nine

Now I'm no fan of musicals you know and personally I think if you’re going to do one, it belongs on the stage and not in the cinema. So Rob Marshall’s film adaptation of the Broadway show ‘Nine’ was not really on my radar but it was clearly on my girlfriend’s. So being the dutiful partner... here we are.

Daniel Day Lewis unpacks an impressive Italian accent and becomes Guido Contini, the man who can’t say no. He can’t say no to his producer and especially he can’t say no to his women. His producer expects his new movie to start shooting in ten days but there’s one big problem, there’s no script. Just like an A Level student with an English essay due to be handed in, Guido hasn’t written it yet, he’s not even started it and with the cast already assembled he’s going to have a problem winging it.



The title, 'Nine', is the number of films Guido has directed. Although the original film that the play was based on was Fellini’s '8½'. The half is because he co-directed some films, but obviously this is too complicated for American audiences, hence the rounding up.

Or... ‘nine’ might just be the number of women he's sleeping with, which is, to be honest, most of the cast. Among which are his neglected wife Luisa (the rather lovely Marion Cotillard), his mistress Carla (Penelope Cruz) and his star actress Claudia (Nicole Kidman, cast as an actress).



Guido, now pretty much a burnt out creative force turns to his women for inspiration. They gleefully spring to his aid in their underwear and stockings, and sing to him. This seems to cause Day Lewis to hang his head and look shameful, miserable, desperate, depressed or whatever and to chain smoke, and to be honest doing it all rather well. It seems to dawn on Guido that not only is his film career stuffed but he has epic women problems as well.

That’s about it as regards plot... then there's the music. Ah. Doesn’t a musical live or die by its songs? Ah. It’s a long, slow death, then. As I didn’t see anyone tapping their foot or humming along to any of the songs, either during or on the way out, I assume the rest of the cinema agreed with me. This for a musical must be a very bad sign. Usually for a week after seeing a musical you have the songs stuck in your head, no matter how irritating and whether you want them there or not. Eventually you have to hardwire yourself into something decent on your ipod and remove them by force. No chance of that here. Even my partner hasn't asked me to download any of the numbers for her... Oh you know Dear, that one, the one that didn’t sound quite as samey as all the others, the one Kate Hudson mumbled her way through... nope, she’s not asked. Did I mention Kate Hudson’s in it? Must have blotted it from my mind, she pops up as fashion journalist and sings of course.



In fact musically, it’s all very democratic because everybody gets to sing, which is not necessarily wise... and get this, they even let Judi Dench, who pops up as his costume designer and friend, Lilli. Judi Dench? Why? Actually she's not terrible and she does seems to really enjoy herself, like she’s stormed the karaoke down your local after several litres of ill advised WKD but seriously, why?

They do get a proper singer in, in the shape of Fergie... no not that Fergie. Stacy not Sarah, her of the Black Eyed Peas. Not sure why on this one either, they don’t let her do anything else, speak or anything complicated and she gets to play a prostitute, I think. Sophia Loren on the other hand gets to play a dead person, Guido’s mother, reincarnated for a chat and yes you guessed it, one last song from beyond the grave.

Somehow they've half built a stage set for the film with no script. This serves to make it look even more like it should have stayed as a play. In fact, it might have worked on stage... or it might not but I'm no fan of musicals anyway, did I mention that. So it's all a bit of a slog where I found myself thinking, I've not had enough to drink. As you may gather, the film didn't do anything for me. Perhaps the whole point is that the film is clever and ironic and actually mirrors Guido’s plot, the one he hasn’t written.

As I said Day Lewis does ok, he’s good even, but the star is undoubtedly Marion Cotillard but then these two are the only characters that are given any kind of depth to work with. Cotillard carries what little plot there is, knowing that her husband is cheating on her but still appearing to be in command of the situation. Her husband needs her, and she knows it. As for the rest... Judi Dench does what Judi Dench does, apart from the singing... Cruz is.., well Cruz.



Everyone tells me that Penelope Cruz is sexy, so I assume she must be, but save for one film I saw her in, I can't abide her or her acting. Sorry, that's not very objective. So having Penelope Cruz's scantily clad crotch waved in my face didn't lift the standard of things too much to be honest.

Then there’s Nicole Kidman... but moving on.

My partner liked it and it did have some beautiful visuals, if you like that sort of thing but I'm no fan of musicals.

Favourite Films Of 2009

My favourite ten films of the past year.

10. Marley And Me (April)



I hate films about dogs, they're all designed to make grown men cry and this was no exception.

Read My Review

9. Fish Tank (September)



Excellent gritty drama set on an Essex housing estate.

Read My Review

8. A Serious Man (December)



Shock horror. The Coen's only at number 8. Well I'm still not sure I understood this film at all, but I'm sure it must have been good.

Read My Review

7. The Damned United (March)



An inaccurate history lesson but still probably the best film about football ever made.

Read My Review

6. The Reader (January)



Not as good as it should have been and Kate Winslet isn't as as good as she thinks she is but still a intriguing tale.

Read My Review

5. OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies (January)



This James Bond parody was one of many films that I was dragged to this year. Loved it.

Read My Review

4. Slumdog Millionaire (January)



Feel good movie of the year apparently, bloody depressing if you ask me.

Read My Review

3. The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button (February)



Brad Pitt again impresses as he lives life in reverse but still experiences all life's usual ups and downs.

Read My Review

2. Let The Right One In (April)



A great film that leaves you both repulsed and fascinated at the same time.

Read My Review

1. Inglorius Basterds (August)



Tarantino does the war, as only Tarantino can.

Read My Review

Humpday

‘Humpday’ is about a guy called Ben (Mark Duplass), who has settled down into what he describes as the ‘white picket fence’ lifestyle of marriage with his attractive young wife Anna (Alycia Delmore). Perhaps the only ingredient they are missing is a child but they’re working on that.

What they probably didn’t need was for Ben’s old college buddy Andrew (Joshua Leonard) to show up, out of the blue, on their doorstep in the middle of the night. Andrew has been away travelling, he sees himself as a bit of a ‘Kerouac’, and consequently it's been a long time since they’ve seen each other. They immediately drop back into a ‘two lads together’ type situation.

The following night, Andrew ends up at a party thrown by a girl he just happened to meet and he invites Ben over to join him. After drinking too much alcohol and smoking too much dope, they end up agreeing to make a short film for ‘HumpFest’, the local amateur pornography festival. Their idea is to produce something truly unique, a film of two straight guys having gay sex and they propose to star in it themselves. The idea being that it would not be gay, it would be beyond gay and it would not porn, it would be art...

Ben gets home to find that his night has gotten in the way of the baby making process much to Anna’s frustration. His next problem is how he’s going to square his new acting career with her. This is the best part of the film, as Ben spectacularly fails to tell Anna his plans and then Andrew spills the beans because he assumes Ben has told her. Problem is from here, the film goes downhill.

In the cold light of day, both Andrew and Ben regret what they have agreed to but neither will back down. Both feel they have something to prove. Ben that he’s not as ‘white picket fence’ as Andrew thinks he is and Andrew that perhaps he’s no ‘Kerouac’.

The ‘porn shoot’ in a hotel room is long and drawn out, we spend half an hour or so with the guys in that room, when a few minutes would have done because in the end, they don’t go through with it. They quickly realise their idea is going nowhere, the audience has already realised this fact but the director just didn’t seem to want to give it up and milked it for all it was worth. You end up just willing it all to end.



The film comes to a believable conclusion but takes an inordinate amount of time getting there. It’s also immensely unsatisfying when it ends there. I for one would have liked to have seen Anna’s reaction to what they did or rather didn’t do, and would she have believed them?

A Serious Man

We don’t go on the park this morning because despite some heavy rain dog training this afternoon is on. At which MD is hopeless, although in his defence I suppose he has had a few weeks off and also he gets into a fight, which in his defence, I would say wasn’t really his fault. I’m always sticking up for that dog.

Meanwhile L is out running and cycling. I’ve done a bit of maintenance on her bike for her, swapping her back to bog standard flat pedals and reassembled her bike computer for her, putting back the parts I had stolen to fix mine. When she gets back after an hour’s cycle she tells me she’s done a grand total of 0.38km. Ah, she likes to take it steady but not that steady. I think I may have reassembled it wrong.

Later we’re at the cinema only to find that our membership cards have expired. So we have to fork out on renewal fees. The upside is our first two films are free, so tonight’s is a freebie and what a weird one it is. Then again it is the new Coen Brothers’ film, so what did we expect.

‘A Serious Man’ is clearly a dig at the lives and faith of a Jewish community in late 1960s America but of course if you don't know a whole lot about the Jewish faith then you could be stumbling from the off.

Just to make sure you are stumbling from the off, the film opens with a possibly irrelevant, possibly not, prologue set a century or two earlier and spoken all in subtitled Yiddish. In it a woman stabs an old man because she thinks he's a dybbuk, that’s a dead person possessed by an evil spirit. She’s wrong because the old man starts to bleed before getting up and wandering off into the snow outside. Does this action perhaps lead to a curse being bestowed up on someone? There’s no way of knowing for sure.

Could this someone be Larry Gopnik, a physics professor who is the main focus of this story? Larry is hoping for a life long tenure from his University but things are slowly starting to go wrong for him. Not least of which is an anonymous letter writer trying to derail the tenure.

On top of this his family life in comfortable suburbia is rocked when his wife informs him that their marriage is over and she wants to marry someone else. This someone else is, inexplicably, Sy Ableman, supposedly a pillar stone of the local community but in reality a patronizing old git. Meanwhile his kids are proving to be even more of a handful than kids are supposed to be. His son likes to dabble in marijuana and is consequently in debt to the school bully, is running up debts on an account with a record club at his Father’s unwilling expense whilst generally being more concerned about the poor reception on the TV than his studies.



Then there’s Larry’s daughter, who is saving up for a nose job with money straight out of Larry’s wallet and spending the rest of her time washing her hair, that is when she can get in the bathroom. Larry brother is occupying the bathroom, when he’s not sleeping on the coach, bringing to the family his medical, social and gambling problems. Larry is incredibly hopeless in the face of all this adversity and his wife soon banishes both him and his brother to the Jolly Roger Motel.

At least this gets him away from his goy (non-Jew) neighbour who is encroaching on Larry’s garden with his building plans but not from the Korean student who is pushing envelopes of cash onto Larry to persuade him to upgrade the F he gave him, while simultaneously threatening to sue him for defamation...

Now let’s just stop right there shall we. If you’ve broken cinema rules and not turned your phone off, then perhaps you ought to fire up Google right now. Google ‘Schrödinger's cat’, which is something we see Larry teaching to his physics students. Do it now, rather than afterwards like I had to.

Schrödinger's rather unpleasant, and hopefully theoretical, experiment consists of a live cat, a vial of Hydrogen Cyanide and a small amount of radioactive substance all together in the same box. If even a single atom of the radioactive substance decays, a relay mechanism will break the vial with a hammer and the cat will die. The point of it all is that no one can know what is happening in the box without looking inside it. Therefore according to the laws of quantum physics, the cat must be assumed to be in a superposition of states, e.g. both dead and alive at the same time. It is only when someone opens the box that they can find out the condition of the cat.



The F grade student and his father have grasped the theory of Schrödinger's cat, if not the maths of it, which is why he got an F. Like the cat, their bribe is seemingly alive and dead at the same time until Larry decides what action he is going to take. This film is possibly far too deep for its own good.



So, Larry, along with us (the audience), is slowly going out of his mind, particularly as a mathematician he’s used to things adding up, and he goes off to consult with the local Rabbis to find out just what he’s done to upset Hashem (God).

A junior rabbi tells him 'things aren’t so bad' and cites the car park as proof of the wonders of God. Larry isn’t impressed.

A more experienced rabbi rambles on for ages about a dentist who desperately tried to find the meaning of the Hebrew words 'Help Me’ that he found engraved on the inside of a goy patient's teeth but he finds no meaning. Larry isn’t impressed. Perhaps the rabbi is telling Larry he’s better off not worrying about it, sometimes there are no reasons for things that happen in life. Perhaps the Coen brothers are telling us we’re better off not worrying about trying to find meaning in this film.

The only person in the film who threatens to come up any answers is the lawyer enlisted to solve the problems Larry is having with his neighbours encroachment but the lawyer drops down dead just as he’s about to deliver up his findings.

The most senior rabbi of all, Rabbi Marshak, won't even see Larry. He’s seemingly too busy listening to a transistor radio confiscated from Danny, Larry’s son. This, after Danny’s Bar Mitzvah to which Danny turns up stoned, is returned to him by Rabbi Marshak.

So the story rambles and roams all over the place and goes nowhere and everywhere. This isn't unusual in a Coen's film but usually the journey to nowhere is a bit more exceptional than this or perhaps you just needed to be Jewish. It has the usual dark comedy laughs but it’s certainly not hilarious. It all makes for a very strange and challenging film.

Folk in the know say the film is a retelling of the book of Job from the Hebrew Bible, in which God and Satan bet on whether Job will remain faithful as Satan makes life as uncomfortable for Job as he can. Apparently the three consultations, even the whirlwind that comes at the end, it’s all in there. Yep, this film is definitely far too deep for its own good.

So does Larry remain faithful? Well so far he has, unlike Sy Ableman who was attempting to take another man’s wife. Suddenly God seems to get even with Sy and he dies in a road accident, coincidentally the same road accident that Larry is involved in, but he escapes unhurt.

Finally Larry cracks. He gives into temptation with the Jewish woman next door who sunbathes nude and invites Larry to ‘take advantage of the new freedoms’. Then he rubs out the Korean’s F grade... and the cat is dead. Then it just ends, in Coens style, with a ‘come see me’ call from his Doctor and a whirlwind approaching his Son’s school.



This is probably one of those films that grow on you. In fact the more L and I discuss it and the more I Google it, the more I like it but basically it helps if you know a bit about quantum physics, a lot about the Hebrew bible and oh, perhaps a bit of familiarity with the music of Jefferson Airplane.

Katalin Varga

‘Katalin Varga’ is set in ‘upbeat’ Transylvania, Romania.

Katalin lives in a remote Transylvanian village with her husband and her son. However her husband has found out her big secret and throws her out. So Katalin, together with her 10-year-old, take to the road on a horse drawn cart.



She decides to track down a chap called Gergely, a man who was an accessory when she was raped 10 years ago. A rape that produced her Son. She extracts out of him where she might find her actual assailant before she bludgeons him to death with a rock.

When she finds the man, Antal, but both he and his wife are very friendly towards her. They take both her and her son in. We find out that they have been unable to produce children of their own but they don’t know which of them is at fault. Katalin has a pretty good idea.



She recounts her whole story to them when she is taken on a boat trip by the couple, although she omits names. Katalin has clearly come to kill Antal but things take a twist when his wife works it out. Then to complicate matters further, Katalin herself is being pursued by the brother of the first man she killed, in an act of counter revenge.



It’s a dark movie, in terms of mood as well as subject matter and quite brutal too when the violence comes but it was also at times difficult to follow and to fully understand people motives. This was a shame because the story had potential. I mean, why wait for 10 years if it was all so important to her. Why come to kill them, wouldn’t some other form of retribution had been better? Throughout the film I never felt like I was rooting for her. The film ends with two more deaths, neither of which particularly added up to me, but still, not bad though and it certainly scores points for being gloomy.

Fish Tank

‘Fish Tank’ is one of those ‘kitchen sink’ dramas, a bit like the ones Shane Meadows or Mike Leigh like to make, complete with hand-held camera work. This one is set somewhere on the urban wasteland of a housing estate in Essex and is rather good, if you like the sort of gritty drama where everyone and everything is on a downward spiral.



Fifteen-year-old Mia (played with aplomb by a total newcomer Katie Jarvis) has been kicked out of school, we don’t know precisely why but we guess Mia is no good. This is drummed into us early on, in a blur of scenes around the estate. She’s your typical stroppy teenager but with added anger and extra lip. She’s a bit of a loner and seems to be purely biding her time until her mother packs her off into care. She spends her days drinking and practising dance moves in the empty flat upstairs, a flat that she’s broken into. She scowls at the other kids in the street, she thinks she’s better than them, both at life and at dancing. But is she?



The mother (Kierston Wareing), like her Daughter, often has a bottle in her hand. She has clearly failed Mia and herself, consequently there doesn’t seem to be much love between them and certainly no sign of any parenting. At times she seems less mature than her Daughter, as she trowels on the make-up, dons the bleach blonde look and goes in search of conquests down the local pub.

One such conquest, an Irish bit of charm called Connor (Michael Fassbender), wander out of her mother’s bedroom into their kitchen one morning and crosses swords with Mia. Mia puts the barriers up but there’s an immediate, if uneasy, magnetism between them, which is clearly going to lead to one thing. Like a lot of the film, you are unsurprised at what happens but all the same gripped by the journey there.



The film makes you wait for each outcome and tension builds every time Mia and Connor are on screen together. Mia visits him at work, asks his advice when she gets an audition at a dubious local club and spies on him in action in her mother’s bedroom. We don’t know where Mia’s father is in all this. Is Connor perhaps a similar ‘father figure’ that she couldn't help but be drawn to? Things are not always explained, this is not an A to B plot film.

Then one night all three of them are the worse for the alcohol and, with the mother conveniently crashed out, the inevitable happens. After which it all blows up and he returns to his real family. Yep, he has a wife and Daughter elsewhere. Mia follows him and what follows is an uneasy kidnap scene as she absconds with and nearly drowns (accidentally) his young daughter.



The film is fleshed out with a sub-plot about a local gipsy (Harry Treadaway) and his white horse, with whom Mia eventually runs off into the sunset. That’s the lad, not the horse. Although she tried that as well. Then there's her sister, the equally neglected, Tyler, who provides some light entertainment with some great lines.

I assume the title, ‘Fish Tank’, implies that we are looking in at their lives but it could equally apply to Mia, being on the inside, looking out, and longing for something different.

The characterisation is terrific, believable, and the acting equally so. The film is always interesting and edgy with it. Katie Jarvis turns in an excellent performances but all the cast are excellent.