Last King Of Scotland

Tonight a night with Idi Amin and James McAvoy aka The Last King of Scotland.


It's a good film, although a little improbable. Yet again the plot catches me out, I'm not good with plots as you may have gathered, as I keep expecting Gillian Anderson to reappear as his love interest but she doesn't.

The ending is rather good. There is something rather beautiful about seeing Mr McAvoy strung up by his nipples, serves him right for the soppy ending in Starter For Ten. I turn to L to point that out but she has her eyes closed, hands over her face and her head buried in the seat. How women can take the cringe worthy mushy bits but not the gore I'll never know. All in all a nice romantic night out.

Volver

We actually watched this over three nights on DVD, which perhaps shows we weren't terribly enthusiastic about it..

Penelope Cruz plays Raimunda, who, finds herself husbandless, thanks to her own daughter. He came on to her and she stabbed him. Little is made of the attempted rape or the subsequent murder, by mother or Daughter; they just shrug their shoulders 'oh well' and get on with life. This sets the tone for the film as other things happen, everyone's dirty washing falls out of the cupboard and the plot gets weirder and more convoluted. Raimunda's sister, Sole thinks she's seeing the ghost of their dead mother, and... well there's just too much to go into.



I suppose it's a kind of film noir but it’s also like a soap opera, I can't really see why it got all the plaudits. It’s well shot, well made, Penelope Cruz is passable but hardly sensational. I suppose compared with her previous efforts she's a revelation but she still has to mime when she's asked to perform a flamenco number.

It all left me cold. It's a story about women sticking together with an almost all female cast. It's a film for girls but then I don't think L was that fussed by it either. Volver means 'to return'. Hmmm, not in this case.

Stranger Than Fiction

'Stranger Than Fiction' is about a novelist (Emma Thompson) struggling to complete her latest book. As the finale to her book she is trying to find a way to kill off her main character, a chap called Harold Crick. The thing is he exists in real life and can hear her words being narrated to him. So he tries to find a way to change her ending and so save his life. It's all a little too far fetched for me and, I think, rather silly but L and Daughter seem to like it.