Sherlock Holmes - 29th April 2014

Here we go then with film number 201 and this week we have some nostalgic drama with the 2009 Robert Downey Jr. film;

Sherlock Holmes

Where to start with this film? Well to cheat slightly let's plagiarise the synopsis from IMDB, just to be brief and to the point;

"After finally catching serial killer and occult sorcerer Lord Blackwood, legendary sleuth Sherlock Holmes and his assistant Dr. Watson can close yet another successful case. But when Blackwood mysteriously returns from the grave and resumes his killing spree, Holmes must take up the hunt once again. Contending with his partner's new fiancée and the dimwitted head of Scotland Yard, the dauntless detective must unravel the clues that will lead him into a twisted web of murder, deceit, and black magic and the deadly embrace of temptress Irene Adler."

Apologies for nicking the synopsis, but the important points to consider, we believe, is the way that the legendary characters are bought to the big screen with this 2009 Guy Ritchie movie. Yes, of course the story is important, there's not much film without a plot, but it is fairly well known that the story is going to be centred around Holmes facing certain adversaries, so we can gloss over that for the moment.

It is obvious that when retelling a story or classic characters are portrayed in a film, that comparisons will be drawn. We will always compare the different versions; is Basil Rathbone superior to Benedict Cumberbatch? Does Jeremy Brett capture the character better than Robert Downey Jr.? There's no right or wrong answer, it's purely a matter of taste. How Downey Jr. compares to Conan Doyle's original Holmes is not for us to debate here, this is down to the fact that nobody at TNiFN Towers has actually read the books! Although they have been sat on the book shelves gathering dust for many a year.

Anyway, to the film. Guy Ritchie directs this 128 minute movie, which regales us with the plot as shown above. Robert Downey Jr. puts in  a marvelous display as the cunning detective genius that is Sherlock Holmes, ably assisted by Jude Law as Dr. Watson. The Law and Downey Jr. pairing are quite splendid as Holmes and Watson. They clearly bounce off of each other as the dependable duo. Watson down to earth and always ready to defend Holmes when his off the wall methodology leads him into a tight corner. The other major players from the original stories are also in evidence; Inspector Lestrade who is described as a "sallow, rat-faced and dark-eyed fellow" in the original Conan-Doyle book; A Study in Scarlet, is played superbly by Eddie Marsan. Irene Adler, who first appeared in the short story "A Scandal in Bohemia" is portrayed here by the ever-so lovely Rachel McAdams, (The Notebook and The Vow).

What really hits the mark also with this adaptation is the way that the filmmakers have recreated in all it's glory, Victorian London complete with Tower Bridge still under construction. The special effects are fantastic and compliment the live action superbly. Guy Ritchie adopts several styles to portray the action, by which we mean, for instance; there is some good use of slow motion sections with narration where Holmes describes how he will get out of a tricky situation before proceeding to do so in real-time. Also there are some good use of flashbacks along with some innovative camera work to totally immerse the viewer in the action.

All in all the first outing for Robert Downey Jr. as the astute mental logician Holmes is top notch. He ticks all the boxes as the master of deduction and the close characters around him ably support him perfectly. There's a lot of action and a lot of information set before you, so you need to keep your wits about you not to miss some salient information, but it keeps you enthralled and watching right until the end.

Looking forward to watching the next installment, which will be coming to TNiFN Towers in the coming weeks.

As to the scoring, well it is not a romantic comedy, so the female contingent will mark it down for that. Also, it didn't keep everyone enthralled judging by the heavy eyes and gently snores emanating from some certain parties in front of the screen! However, Sherlock Holmes comes out fairly well with;

TNiFN Rating 73%

IMDB Link

The Big Wedding - 22nd April 2014

Welcome back to Tuesday Night is Film Night. This week we check out a film from 2013, but will the bells be ringing as we watch; 

The Big Wedding

We should just point out at this juncture that this movie is the 200th TNiFN film! Happy anniversary to us!

Back to the blog.

With an all star cast and a quirky storyline this comedy has all the makings of being a fun movie. Robert De Niro, Diane Keaton and Susan Sarandon head up the cast list in this 2013 comedy where Don (De Niro) and Ellie (Keaton) are a divorced couple. Don is now living with Bebe (Sarandon). Don and Ellie have two children; Lyla and Jared, plus an adopted son Alejandro, played by Katherine Heigl (27 Dresses), Topher Grace and Ben Barnes respectively.

With it so far? It gets worse.

Alejandro is marrying Missy (Amanda Seyfried), however Alejandro's natural, Colombian mother is a devout Catholic and will be attending the wedding and as such would be aghast to know that Alejandro's adopted parents are divorced, a huge sin apparently.

So there's only one thing for it, apart from tell truth obviously and that is to lie and assume that Don and Ellie are still married. Clearly this subterfuge will help smooth the waters between Alejandro, his natural mother and the Pope, but clearly Bebe has her nose put out of joint, even though Ellie was (and still is, to a point) her best friend.

Still maintaining a grip on the plot?

It is an overtly complicated film, in as such the multiplicity of layers can take awhile to untangle at first, but once the characters and relationships have been established, things become clearer, but that's when it starts to unravel again and all sorts of chaos ensues, whilst trying to maintain the facade to save face in front of the Catholics.

The comedy is low key and subtle in places and laugh out loud in others, but not overly comedic. The stand out cast member for us was De Niro, he plays the somewhat louche Don very well and he has a natural talent for swearing in the right manner to make it totally believable. Robin Williams also makes an appearance as the priest who is to officiate at the wedding and although his scenes are few, he maintains a high standard and fits perfectly into the role.

Overall the film was mediocre, the comedy and sentiment were not outstanding and although the plot was farcical, the writing didn't fully capitalise on this and we were left wanting more. The multi-faceted, interleaved threads were confusing at first, but relevant to the whole story, but perhaps this overly complicated the story and the comedy suffered as a result.

In summation, it's a nice little film, running in at 89 minutes, but just not enough conviction to make it a better than "good" film.

TNiFN Rating  67%

IMDB Link

Walk the Line - 15th April 2014

Tuesday Night is Film Night is back again and tonight we are cashing in on a musical biopic, as we see if we can;

Walk The Line

So here we are watching a musical biopic of Johnny Cash, but does the fact that we are not fans of Johnny Cash or know many of his songs, apart from the obvious ones and we're not knowledgeable about his past matter?

Of course not.

Walk The Line stands out as a musical biopic that needs no history, no knowledge and no prejudice regarding your taste in music at all. In fact Walk The Line seems to be more of a love story that a biographical critique of the life of the aforementioned Mr Cash. It's his love of music and moreover his love for June Carter that are the main threads here.

Joaquin Phoenix pulls out all the stops playing the somewhat troubled John R. (Johnny) Cash, whilst Reece Witherspoon plays Country singing sensation; June Carter. Both actors are superb playing their requisite roles, it must be really hard to act as a singer and sing as well. It is a fact that Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon performed all of the songs themselves, without being dubbed. They also learned to play their instruments from scratch, which makes their respective performances just phenomenal.

As for the story, director James Mangold follows the life of Johhny Cash from the early days up to the late 1960's. Cash's life followed that of most artists in the Sixties with their sex, drink and drugs, along with the rock and roll. Phoenix really hits the spot when portraying the drug addled Cash, ad-libbing, apparently a lot of the scenes and doing so to great effect.

Reece Witherspoon is also a sheer delight to watch, she pulls off the cutesy Southern drawl of June Carter with her speaking and singing voice with a great deal of attention to the delivery. Mind you Joaquin Phoenix also manages to capture the subtle nuances of Cash's voice as well as his mannerisms.

If you're a fan of biographical musical movies then Walk The Line should be on your list of films to watch. As we alluded to a few short paragraphs ago, you do not need to be a fan of Johnny Cash to appreciate this biography of his life and music, it stands up on it's own as a tale of hard work, fame, success, failure and redemption, as all good biopic's should be.

Witherspoon and Phoenix are ably supported by solid supplementary cast, although the Elvis is a tad 'dodgy', apologies to Tyler Hilton, the actor who played Elvis, but he didn't hit the spot as the wannabee king of rock and roll, but that's the only really negative point in the whole film. Walk The Line is a decent movie, following the standard rock and roll story, but portraying it with a level of accuracy rarely seen in films of this type, but also showing the depth of the characters and the interactions of the main players with a high degree of seriousness, empathy and realism.

A delight to watch.

The scoring from TNiFN Towers doesn't necessarily reflect too well on the film, as certain members of the judging panel do not appreciate the film as much as others, but it still scores quite highly scoring;

TNiFN Rating 78%

Until next time, which will be our 199th film!

IMDB Link

I Give It a Year - 8th April 2014

Tuesday Night is Film Night rolls out another romantic comedy tonight and why not? This time we'll see what boxes are ticked as we watch;

I Give It a Year

From the pen of Dan Mazer and under his direction too, I Give It a Year is an English romantic comedy from 2013 with a pretty decent cast list, more of them later, but before you start shouting "same old, same old", you can throw away the rule book on this one as Dan Mazer does an amazing job! (Really must try to avoid so much alliteration in these blogs!)

Quick synopsis on the story; we follow newly weds Nat and Josh as they enter into their first year of marriage, the only problem is although they start off happy, their differences rise to the fore and their friends are not convinced the wedded bliss will last, so much so........ and there we get the title.

That's really all you need to know about the story, apart from each member of the couple develops or redevelops feelings for another person, thus making this a four handed relationship. So in reality the film starts with the normal ending; the wedding and we start to see the relationship deteriorate, but let us not put a downer on proceedings oh no, because what this film loses in the downward spiral of the romance, is a rise in absolute, laugh out loud, rolling in the aisles, comedy. There are just too many comedic moments too mention and it's not just the dialogue, there are the subtleties too, like the background jokes, the layered moments where a foreground line is supplemented by background joke. It is certainly a film that you will want to watch again, only if to see all the jokes you missed first time around.

Onto the cast, the lead characters; Nat and Josh are played by Rose Byrne and Rafe Spall respectively. You may recall Rose Byrne from such films as; Bridesmaids and Knowing, while Rafe Spall has been in films like Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. Byrne and Spall play their characters extremely well, bringing with them varying degrees of pathos and / or lunacy dependent on what the script calls for. However what they also do, is provide a conduit for the supporting cast to play off. Of note are; Stephen Merchant as the hapless, gormless and tactless friend and best-man to Josh. Some superb, often cringeworthy, but always immaculately delivered lines from Mr. Merchant, very reminiscent of Darren Lamb from Extras. Also, the absolutely wonderful, can't praise her enough, fantastically talented, (is that enough superlatives?) Olivia Colman is utterly brilliant as the utterly useless, but hilarious marriage councillor. The scenes with Colman are absolute gems and incredibly funny, a credit to the writing skills of Dan Mazer and the acting skills of Olivia Colman.

Other characters / actors of note are; Minnie Driver who plays the straight talking Naomi, whose interchanges with her husband; Hugh (Jason Flemyng) are sublime to watch and again extremely funny. There are parts too for the lovely Jane Asher (Nat's mother) and the "showing his age" Nigel Planer (playing Josh's dad). Both of these characters have some exquisite moments, although you will have to wait until the very end credits for Jane Asher's most brilliant line, but is is worth the wait.

So there you pretty much have it, a brilliant story which reverses the formulaic romantic comedy approach, whilst still providing sufficient romance for the film to hold onto that romantic genre moniker, while on the other hand the comedy part of the rom-com coupling is more than well looked after with the Dan Mazer script, we literally laughed our way through the film with all of the really eye wateringly funny moments that were so brilliantly delivered. Checking on Mazer's previous form, we can see he was partly responsible for a lot of the writing and producing of the Sacha Baron Cohen films, Bruno, Borat etc. so clearly an eye and a pen for extremely funny comedy.

I Give It a Year will unequivocally be on the "Must See Again" list of films, if only to laugh once more at what we have previously seen, whilst trying to spot all the jokes we missed first time around.

TNiFN Rating 91%

IMDB Link

About a Boy - 1st April 2014

Tuesday Night is Film Night runs headlong into April, but there's no fooling us as we relax and discover what it is;

About a Boy

Based on the best selling novel by Nick Hornby, About a Boy traces the strange relationship between the single, handsome but ever-so shallow Will Freeman (Hugh Grant) and the shy, secluded and very awkward twelve year old Marcus Brewer (Nicholas Hoult). They come together after playboy Will discovers the wonders of single mums. After dating several single mothers he chances upon Suzie. Suzie happens to be friends with Fiona Brewer (Toni Collette), Marcus's tree hugging, veggie loving, hippy mum. As a result Will meets Marcus.

With it so far?

Fiona is an almost constant depressive, hence the instability of young Marcus and his penchant for singing aloud in class for no apparent reason. It transpires after another bout of depression, that Fiona attempts to take her own life, but luckily she is found in time by Suzie, Will and Marcus. Will helps out in the crisis but as a result Marcus becomes attached to Will and see's him as a friend, although Will is not so sure that he needs a twelve year old boy coming around to his house everyday to watch Countdown.

And so this friendship builds, young Marcus with an adult outlook on life and adult Will, with an adolescent view on things, clearly they can help each other out here.

So there is the premise behind the story, simple yet effective, but it so much more than this, layered on top of this idea is the interweaving stories of the characters on the periphery of the main thread. Hugh Grant, love him or loathe him is superb as Will and the way that he provides the narration over the top adds another layer to the plot as he can provide the back story to events as they unfold. Ally this with a superb supporting cast and you have the makings of a modern day classic. It fits nicely into the same genre as Love Actually and Four Weddings and a Funeral, in the fact that it is a melancholic romantic comedy drama, but it also has that spark that those other films have too. The innocence portrayal of Marcus by Nicholas Hoult is fantastic and although Hugh Grant yet again plays Hugh Grant, no real actor could really have filled those shoes. Grant portrays the immature and self-centred Will to perfection.

If we were to have some negative points, then the part where Will joins a single parent group merely to pick up single mothers seemed a little cringe-worthy and a tad far fetched. And the Kidz Rock concert at the end had the inevitable result when Marcus got up to sing, the copious amounts of cheese in that scene did make you squirm a bit. However, the way the writers played the relationship between Will and Marcus's mum; Fiona was really well thought through, in many other films the diverse characters in a relationship would converge at the end for a warm hearted finale, but this is not the case in About a Boy, in fact "Miss Granola Suicide" (this is what Will sarcastically calls Fiona in part of the narration), does not find Will attractive. Which is such a breath of fresh air, to have a storyline steer clear of the formulaic and actually follow it's head and not it's heart.

About a Boy is a really gratifying, heart warming film, the kind we like here at TNiFN Towers. Is the film better than the book, or is the book better than the film? Good question, we'll read the book and let you know.

On to the all important scores, About a Boy hit the spot with tonight's judges and scores;

TNiFN Rating 82%

IMDB Link