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Archive for the ‘Judi Dench’ Category

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

15 Mar

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel — directed by John Madden. Screwball Comedy. 82 minutes Color 2015

★★★★★

The Story: The lively young owner of a hotel in India wants to expand his operation and get married at the same time and also continue to adore and serve and praise his elderly clientele and also….

~

What are doing sitting here reading this! You should jump up at once and grab your family and friends or just yourself and go see this inspiriting comedy of mismanagement.

It is fueled by the effervescent and insatiably charming Dev Patel, who performed the same services for us at the First Best Exotic Marigold Hotel a season or so back. He gambols through the piece like a gazelle. What an actor! What a silver-footed turn-on-a-dime comedian! What a sunburst of delight! I’m going to see it again.

So to save myself time in order to rush to do that, and to save you time too, I shall shorten this review by saying only that, like the first, the second film is a tonic!

Patel operates in the foreground of the fidelities, infidelities, careers, and Brittle British exchanges of a witty script fortified by the playing of Maggie Smith as a lower caste Scottish accountant, Bill Nighy as a duffer of frail memory who must fill his purse with lectures of tourist sites whose details escape him, Judi Dench who adores him from afar and then nearer and nearer, Diana Hardcastle as the bewitching straying wife of Ronald Pickup.

Celia Imre is the lascivious lady wooed by two maharajas, David Strathairn is the deciding executive of the deal, Tina Desai is the delicious almost forgotten bride-to-be, Shazad Larif is the stiff competition. Richard Gere, with his low class accent and high class wardrobe, is the dupe who dupes the dopes.

It all ends as comedy always should with a wedding and a dance.

All this in the flaming color of India!

Hasten my dears. You can’t do better for a comedy just now.

And when you come back, tell me you adore me!

 
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Posted in ACTING STYLE: INTERNATIONAL REALISTIC, Bill Nighy, David Strathairn, Dev Patel, Filmed in India, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Richard Gere, SCREWBALL COMEDY

 

Nine

22 Oct

Nine – Directed by Rob Marshall. Soundstage Musical. 2009 COlor 118 minutes.

★★★★

The Story: A film director puts off everyone as his film goes into production, but he can’t admit he has no script.

~

Daniel Day-Lewis stars in this musical in which one cannot say he dances any more than a monkey might, for his strong body is put to musical acrobatic uses, and perhaps he has two left feet. The dancing and the singing are left up to the cherishable skills of Marion Cotillard, Penèlope Cruz, Fergie, Kate Hudson, Judi Dench, Nicole Kidman, and Sophia Loren. Who could ask for anything more?

Not I. The dances are super-duper and the songs are fun. Judi Dench is a musical comedy singer from way back, and does a wicked Follies Bergère number with a mile long boa. Fergie in a wilderness of hair that somewhat unnecessarily masks her interesting face reviews her philosophy of Italian love in a wild song and dance. Kate Hudson plays an American reporter who does a big witty number about Italian Cinema.

For the musical is about the block Day-Lewis has in writing his next musical. All the women pose delays, distractions, denials. And in the end Nicole Kidman writes his new film off because he cannot show anyone a script. He is impotent. She sings goodbye to him.

What starts with Penèlope Cruz performing a hot comic turn as his mistress winds up with Sophia Loren singing him a lullaby to reform – no two actresses have resembled one another in film history more than these.

One would not question the execution of this material. One might question the strength of the source of this material. For it devolves from Fellini’s 8 1/2, which is about a similar predicament for a director. It starred Marcello Mastroianni. Mastroianni is an interior sort of actor, the kind that doesn’t move much, and the story of impotence is too navel-gazing to move me much either. Both seem weak. And Day-Lewis is cast in and plays the part along the lines of Mastroianni also. His opening scene where he lies to the press is his funniest, and it also displays his Italian accent and manner ruthlessly.

No, it is neither he nor the story that carry the film, but the women, their exuberance, their talent, and the dances in which the choreographer has put them to use.

I liked it. I didn’t think I would. But I like it. Because I liked these women, their sauciness, their independence, their smart take, their beauty, their agility, their out-front-ness, and the talent in each of them whose bigness warrants their being up there before me. They gave me their all and I took it for the plenty it was worth.

 
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Posted in ACTING STYLE: HOLLYWOOD CRISP, ACTING STYLE: INTERNATIONAL REALISTIC, ACTING STYLE: MUSICAL COMEDY MANNERED, Backstage Musical, Judi Dench, Kate Hudson, Marion Cotillard, Nicole Kidman: SCREEN GODDESS, Penelope Cruz, Singing & Dancng Musical, Sophia Loren: SCREEN GODDESS

 

Skyfall

15 Dec

Skyfall – directed by Sam Mendes. Action/Adventure/Spy. James Bond XXIII must protect the home office, M16, which is under attack by one of its own. 143 minutes Color 2012.
★★★★
Yes, the 23rd James Bond Movie, and over what forgotten cliff did the others drop? Here Bond is again in the person of the sour-faced Daniel Craig, whom I have a very difficult time looking at, or paying attention to, since my ineradicable loyalty is to Sean Connery’s Bond, with his insouciance, humor, easy virility, mischievousness, and lookable looks, none of which qualities does Craig possesses to any degree. He doesn’t even have a hairy chest.

In fact he seems to have no variety of expression whatsoever, nor any particular physical presence that would make him outstanding, save a fine figure, which he has to strip down to reveal to my bored gaze – and action/adventure films are not played in the nude.

This leaves us not with an actor but a role. That is to say, a cutout figure who can gesture through the complexities of the material – material which then has an extra burden placed upon it, since, without a human hero, it can only exist in and of itself and not in relation to the leading actor playing a part in it. A film with this load to carry can turn heavy pretty fast, and it must move with a grace and wit all its own.

This it succeeds in doing, at least at the start, when we are treated to a spectacular opening motorcycle chase. But the problem then arises as to how to best that sequence in the finale. This the film fails to do, for its closing is heavy and witless and long.

But as the film goes along it is saved by various added ingredients that offer brisk entertainment until they exhaust themselves, and the film has to bring on a different freak to delude us into being entertained. Lacking a smart story or vivid leading actor, we are given [a] exotic settings, [b] new characters late in the day [c] the stalling effect of slow, skilled seductions. The film therefore takes us to various settings in Southeast Asia, Macau and Singapore. It brings on Javier Barden late in the day and Albert Finney even later. And it treats us to delicious females in the persons of the talented Naomie Harris, who will continue in the series, and Bérénice Mariohoe a ravishing Cambodian beauty as the Madame Unmentionable Sin who leads Bond to his nemesis. What a dish, what a debut!

These are saving graces, as is the principal savior, Roger Deakins who filmed it so beautifully you are given the relishing impression of never in your life having seen a picture so glorious to look at.

The main problem is the story because it presents as the focal character to be saved from danger an actor so completely unsympathetic, miscast, and technically unqualified that we wish, rather than ending with it, the film had begun with her death – and that is the dreadful Judi Dench. All she can bring to the part is dour righteousness. It’s her default position as an actor, and it stinks. She is mercifully slain and replaced, as M, head of the British Secret Service, by Ralph Fiennes, who may bring some imagination to this role and some wit to XXIV of the series. I didn’t believe in that dagger for a minute, did you?

 
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Posted in ACTING STYLE: ENGLISH REALISTIC, ACTION ADVENTURE, Albert Finney, Daniel Craig, Javier Bardem: ACTING GOD, Judi Dench, Ralph Fiennes, SPY SUSPENSE

 

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

12 Jun

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel – directed by John Madden. Comedy/Drama. A group of retirees seek economic comfort at a Jaipur hotel, which they find also to be a retiree. 124 minutes Color 2012.

★★★★★

If by some merry chance you should be gulled into seeing this piece, relax then and wander for a time with this bunch of expatriates and be one of them, for in each of us at some time and place is each of the characters we find before us here, and are just as we would be should we find ourselves here. We first of all are the impecuniously retired. We are also the one so fearful of going out of doors in Jaipur India that we miss the fun of the color and assault of the stench and the poverty and the endless wealth and variety of life. Then we are also the one who betrayed a love long ago. We are no less the one who must cling to her safety blanket of familiar foods, never daring to nibble a dainty. We are the racially prejudiced. We are the brash strider venturing forth into the escape of a world both opposite to his own and also unavoidable. The mad and kindly proprietor of this old hotel is a young man who has just inherited it, and his enthusiasm is as boundless as his promises and equally unfulfillable. Never was a film so perfectly, so justly filmed and edited. Never was one so fortunately cast. The balance of the scenes is exquisite as played off against one another for length, tone, plot, and color. Tom Wilkinson plays the lover in search of his once lost love. My favorite, Maggie Smith, who is the most physical actor of her generation, plays the lower-class foodie, and gives to us, once again, that rare gift of an actor, embodiment. Richard Nighy is the fellow who ventures out into the wilds of the city. Which brings us to Judi Dench. I have always thought that to act opposite Judi Dench would be to act opposite a rock. I don’t like her. There is no give in her. Instead an adamantine quality in her chooses the moment for “sympathy,” as by a schoolmarm’s ferule.  She is an actress of advanced calculations, always an instant ahead of the moment. She’s mean. She irritates me. Usually. For this is not one of those times. Here she is given to play the part of a woman entirely opposite to all that, one naive to the world, a woman whose dead husband took care of everything, with the exception of providing for her in the event of his death. She plays it freshly. She appeals. All of them do, but the one who really appeals most is the young actor playing the delirious proprietor of the hotel. What a wonderful voice and face and energy. What a sense of humor. What a darling guy. He is Dev Patel of fond memory of Slumdog Millionaire. And the movie is directed by John Madden of fond memory of Shakespeare In Love. So you see. Whatever age you are, you cannot go wrong with this movie, for whatever age you are you too are a retiree from something, waking up in a new place and, just like our friends here, just like a newborn baby, comically disoriented. Catch it at once.

 

 
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Posted in ACTING STYLE: ENGLISH REALISTIC, Bill Nighy, COMEDY/DRAMA, Dev Patel, DIRECTED BY: John Madden, FAMILY FILM, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, Includes Some Gay Characters, Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Penelope Wilton, Tom Wilkinson

 

My Week With Marilyn

27 Nov

My Week With Marilyn – Directed by Simon Curtis. Romantic Drama. A young gofer on his first job in film is taken by, in more ways than one, the movie star. 99 minutes Color

* * * * *

The elevator was being held. I waited. There was no one in it but me. I waited. Then they came in. The door closed. I wanted to and did not want to stare. She had the complexion of a marshmallow. She looked tall. She wore ski pants and a patterned, heavy, Nordic wool sweater up to her neck. She was gorgeous. She said to Arthur Miller, “In my pictures I don’t chase men; I get chased,” to seal his backing for script changes she was wearing these clothes and these heels and this make-up and bringing this husband along to insist on. They got off on the floor of Kaye Brown their agent at MCA, where I was a mailroom clerk. I rode up to my own floor, realizing that this woman had the mind of a cash register. She was no fool; she knew her business; she knew exactly what she was doing. She did not even sound like the powder-puff she played to such renown. The film she was talking about was Let’s Make Love, her penultimate effort. This side of MM is not particularly on display in My Week With Marilyn, but Kenneth Branagh, in a brilliant turn as Laurence Olivier, says the same thing – that she knows exactly what she is doing – so don’t be taken in by her help-me act, and don’t excuse the infuriatingly non professional behavior she evinces, and always evinced, as a film actor. Not long after the elevator, I was writing a column for Look Magazine and had to take pictures to Celeste Holm’s apartment for approval. She had acted with Monroe and had just seen The Misfits at The Roxy, a huge picture palace in New York. “You could shoot moose in there,” she said, meaning no one was going to it. “And she can’t act.” But Olivier also says she’s a greater film actor than he is, that next to her in the screen he looks dead. And Judi Dench, marvelous in the marvelous part of Dame Sybil Thorndike, says that Monroe can act in films better than anyone else in the movie, including herself. It’s instinctual. Celeste Holm didn’t know it, but she meant the same thing. For Marilyn Monroe could be on the screen in such a way that you could look at no one else while she was there. And it wasn’t an acting trick. Or rather it was an acting trick, but one from real life, as she generated that molested 12 year-old wanting more and not wanting more, and thus surviving. When I was in Korea she came, and the men who saw her returned to base surprised to be not in lust with her but respectful and fond of her. “You never heard such applause in your life!” she said to her husband. “Oh yes I have,” said Joe DiMaggio. All of this is present in this delightful film about her relations with a 23-year-old 3rd assistant director beautifully played here by Eddie Redmayne. But none of it would work were not MM played by Michele Williams, who captures Monroe’s glee, her wit, her kindness, her cruelty, her sense of fun, her fear and nervousness, her sexual game, her physical appearance, and her inner emanation – that almost childlike glow she imparted which so allured and charmed and melted us all, and still does. Monroe, like Angelina Jolie, was a power beauty. You watch her in order to be petrified into a statue of Venus with no arms to protect yourself. Williams conveys this perfectly and perfectly embodies the sadness that lies on the other side of such a deification. In all other respects the film is first class, and so are the actors, charming in their roles: Zoë Wannamaker, Derek Jacobi, Michael Kitchen, Dougray Scott. You come out of it knowing Monroe as you never knew her before, and she’s well worth knowing, as a young man in his first job understood, either making The Prince And The Showgirl with her for just one week or going up an elevator with her for just one minute.

 
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Posted in ACTING STYLE: INTERNATIONAL REALISTIC, BIO-PIC, Derek Jacobi, Judi Dench, Michael Kitchen, Michelle Williams, ROMANTIC DRAMA

 

J. Edgar

26 Nov

J. Edgar – Directed by Clint Eastwood. Biodrama. The personal and official doings of the unstoppable force of the founder of the FBI. 137 minutes Color 2011.

* * * *

The music which Eastwood composes and chooses himself is beautiful, as usual. And the sets (Bumstead’s demise has not diminished this in Eastwood’s work) are first class. The camerawork keeps things dark, for most of the story takes place in interiors, but when the period is the 1920s and earlier what we are shown does not look like those eras but like a film trying to make us believe we are in them. The story moves back and forth in time, quickly, which is not a problem, but there is only a pictorial, not a thematic connection between a racetrack now and a racetrack then, which is why some audience members have found this editing baffling. From the start, every one of Eastwood’s films has been revolutionary in subject matter. But every one has endured a narrative failing of some kind. In each film is a flaw which derails the development of the main character in relation to the material. Here the problem lies in a bifurcation which on the one hand tells the story of a man who sacrifices his personal life for his career, and on the other is the story of a man who comes to the end of his imaginative power long before he comes to the end of his willingness to leave office, and so like Quaddafi and many another, becomes paranoid, vicious, and a liar. Leonardo Di Caprio plays J. Edgar Hoover. And this poses a deeper problem. Hoover was a fascinating careerist, but there is nothing particularly interesting about J. Edgar Hoover himself; he is not an attractive person – physically, intellectually, or spiritually. He was a dogged professional whose ideas and accomplishments ran out with World War II. After that he became the usual martinet, with all the usual and very dangerous failings and bents. Di Caprio is also not a very attractive person. He is not someone who, like Edward G. Robinson, can just be himself and enchant us. That is why he is not a true leading man. He is, however, a brilliant character lead, and if you wish to see him at his best see Total Eclipse, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Celebrity, and Blood Diamond, and leave the rest alone. My hunch is that Di Caprio is essentially introverted, and great only in characters who are not introverted, but are rather characters of high volatility, and Hoover was not that. For J. Edgar he certainly has worked on a vocal pattern, but that pattern just keeps him trudging through the doxology of the role, “I intend to save America from its direst enemies!” The story tells us that J. Edgar Hoover turned out, like Quaddafi, to be an assassin, but in Hoover’s case an assassin of reputations. All meant to bolster his own. But De Caprio is too close in tenor to Hoover himself to make him interesting. His relations with his right arm Clyde Tolson were probably not sexual, for two reasons, one being that Hoover was not a particularly sexual person, he was a monk of work, and the other being that in those days it would have been far too dangerous to his reputation and to that of the FBI had that ever taken place and been found out, which it certainly would have been, for it was just the sort of evidence Hoover collected to use against others. The redoubtable Judi Dench plays his mother who knows the truth and warns him. I don’t know why she is cast; she’s very good, but Lady Hoover is what we get. I don’t believe, as in Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil, that Eastwood or his screenwriter or Di Caprio understand the first thing about the pulls and refrains of homosexual attraction. Here we have a story which might, like Brokeback Mountain, have moved us. But it doesn’t. The man who is supposed to be dying before our eyes is already dead from the start.

 
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Posted in ACTING STYLE: AMERICAN REALISTIC, BIO-PIC, Directed by Clint Eastwood, GOVERNMENT AGENCY ENFORCEMENT DRAMAa, Judi Dench, Leonardo Di Caprio, Naomi Watts, PERSONAL DRAMA

 

Jane Eyre

01 May

Jane Eyre – Directed by Cary Fukunaga. Gothic Melodrama. A governess is duped by the lord of the manor. 120 minutes Color 2011.

* * * *

All the nighttime interiors are filmed like de la Tour: candles both glamorize and mortify the faces. Outdoors the sun never seems to shine. And this captures the lugubrious inner climate of Victorian fiction, with the doom of death, which we find in Dickens, in Tennyson, and here, where a wedding is the next best thing to a funeral, the first being the white prelude to the black childbirth demise of the second. All this the director has realized. And so has the costumer Michael O’Connor, and so has everyone on the technical side, with one exception, the casting director. For it is perfectly clear in the novel and it is perfectly clear in the screenplay that Jane and Rochester are homely people, yet they have been cast with handsome people. ‘Do you find me handsome?” asks Rochester at one point, and when Jane says “No,” we must suppose that she is, for the first time, lying, or that she is as blind as Rochester will one day become. The novel has the great advantage over films of this story in that we never see these two. But films of this story lie to us over and over, in version after version. Joan Fontaine, even in her wan drab stage was pretty, and Orson Welles was infernally magnificent. Without their being homely, the entire story is baffling nonsense, for the entire story is that of honesty cutting through all levels of fine and proper appearance: of wealth, of religion, of position, of gender, of face, of figure, of sexuality and even of physical deformity, since Rochester ends up blind. As it is, all you’re left with in this version is that you have got to be blind to get married. I prefer Rebecca, which is its most famous duplicate. Or I prefer the 1998 Masterpiece Theatre television version. This one is a movie; it’s too short. This one leaves out how much Jane enjoyed running the school she founded; it even leaves out that Rochester’s ward is infuriating and is actually his illegitimate child. It leaves out how come Jane starts out as a girl of high temperament and becomes a teenager of no temperament whatsoever. The 1998 TV version also has at least an unusual looking Jane. This one, however, has Judi Dench, quite fine as Mrs Fairfax the housekeeper, and it has the great Sally Hawkins as the wicked witch Mrs Reed, and it has our own Billy Elliot, Jamie Bell, as St. John. In the TV version the characters are more fully rounded, St. John, for instance, because the material is a big Victorian novel, and two hours cannot compass the long vital surgery it performs, the first layer of which is the meaning and meaninglessness of the want of beauty in its principals.

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Posted in ACTING STYLE: ENGLISH REALISTIC, Filmed in England, GOTHIC ROMANCE, Jamie Bell, Judi Dench, MELODRAMA, Sally Hawkins, VICTORIAN PERIOD

 
 
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