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

Summer in February - 25th March 2014

We round off March with a dramatic love story set in the early 1900's, but will it be a winter of discontent or a;

Summer in February

The film is based on the true story of the Newlyn School of artists that  flourished at the beginning of the 20th Century, focusing on the fairly wild and bohemian Lamorna Group, which included Alfred Munnings and Laura and Harold Knight. Munnings; an anti-Modernist painter, (now regarded as one of Britain's most sought-after artists, apparently), formed one side of a complex love triangle, along with aspiring artist Florence Carter-Wood and Gilbert Evans, the land agent in charge of the Lamorna Valley estate. It's a moving tale played out against the backdrop of the Cornish coast, in the years leading up to The Great War.

Well, that's what you are lead to believe if you read the DVD cover and various synopses. In reality Summer in February turns out to be a rather bleak story, with a very thin plot, yes that plot is based on the real lives of these artists, but there's no real spark to the story. And akin to a lot of art, there is more than a modicum of pretentiousness about the film, just because an artist is classed as bohemian, gifted and fiery does not make them fascinating, if anything it makes them loathsome, tedious and pretentious. And this is what we find with one of the central characters; A.J. Munnings, although he is played extremely well by Dominic Cooper, who displays perfectly the intense and impulsive characteristics of the artist, his demeanor, attitude and outlook within the piece are tiresome and somewhat banal.

Onto some plus points, Emily Browning is a delight to watch as Florence Carter-Wood, although the full frontal nudity scene was a tad gratuitous in the grandest scheme of things, pretty none-the-less. However, Florence is also a fairly mundane character, with a penchant for the melodramatic. She is torn between Munnings and Gilbert Evans played by Dan Stevens, he of Downton Abbey fame, in a tricky love triangle. Dan Stevens plays the part very well, but he is no different really to the affable character he plays in Downton Abbey and we only highlight him as a plus point, due to the fact that in one scene he does actually make you sit up and watch, but it was only the one scene.

Other positives are the scenery and music, both very important parts of any film, it's just that the Cornish coast is more pleasing to the eye in Summer in February than most of the acting. Also, just because you like period dramas does not mean that all period dramas are good. Highlighted as a "must see" for Downton Abbey fans, Summer in February is a let down. It doesn't have half the appeal of Downton and just because Dan Stevens appears in both, does not make it good.

From a Tuesday Night is Film Night perspective it's a disappointment and therefore a short blog. If you want more opinions check out the Amazon reviews, just wish we had paid more attention to them before clicking on "Add to Basket"!

TNiFN Rating 36%

IMDB Link

Easy A - 18th March 2014

And here we are again, this week we are sitting down to view our 195th film! Not long now until the 200th, we'll have to have a Tuesday Night is Film Night anniversary party!

This week's film is back to the comedy, albeit with a romantic teen movie slant, but will it be top marks or bottom of the class for;

Easy A

We saw this one on the TV schedules and added it to the planner just a couple of days ago, so we only knew it's content from the brief synopsis on the EPG. However, we were pleasantly surprised.

Firstly lets take the obligatory spin around the cast. Easy A focuses on Olive Penderghast played by the absolutely lovely Emma Stone, you may know her from such films as; The House Bunny and Friends With Benefits. Olive's best friend is Rhiannon (Aly Michalka) who helps to start the story. Along the way Olive is aided and abetted by her parents; Rosemary and Dill Penderghast; Patricia Clarkson (Friends With Benefits and Lars and the Real Girl) and Stanley Tucci (The Lovely Bones and The Terminal) respectively, who manage to act everybody else off the screen and we enjoy some absolute fantastic interplay between Penderghast family.

Olive also, as you will see, has a number of male contemporaries, possible too numerous to list  here but please avail yourselves of the IMDB link below to get a full listing.

Lisa Kudrow also makes an appearance and although not a real favourite here at TNiFN Towers, we were delighted by her contribution and how funny she was playing the slightly wayward School Guidance Counsellor.

Right, enough of who was in it, what was it all about? Well, it follows the basic premise of how a lie, led to a small favour, which led to a big rumour which then perpetuated and snowballed into a huge heap of trouble for young Olive. It starts when Olive lies to her best friend Rhiannon to get out of a camping trip with Rhiannon and her parents. Olive says she has a date for the weekend. However, come Monday Rhiannon wants all the dirt about Olive's so called date and not content with just saying the date went well, Olive embellishes the story so much she admits to losing her virginity. Which of course is just not true, she actually spent the weekend painting her dog's toe nails as well as some other mundanities, but the damage is done, the lie hath been spoken.

So Olive has made her bed and she must lie on it, or not as the case maybe. Of course being in a High School the gossip spreads like wild fire or to use Olive's words; "The Accelerated Velocity of Terminological Inexactitude".

And at this point let us pause for a moment and consider the dialogue in the film, it is sublime, the writing and the narration is brilliant. Hats off to writer Bert V. Royal, some of the lines are just superlative, as mentioned previously the interplay with Olive and her parents is without doubt some very fine work, but also consider the story, it's fairly rudimentary in its content but it delivers a massive hook to pull you in. Fine work indeed.

Back to the plot, so after the lie comes the favour; gay friend of Olive; Brandon is privy to Olive's fabrication and he wants to play on Olive's notoriety to assist himself with the homophobic issues he is suffering at school. If Olive lie's about a "liaison" with Brandon, then Brandon will lose the gay tag and the subsequent beatings. Olive considers this and declines, until Brandon pours his heart out to her and all of a sudden the initial deceit turns into a double whammy of fiction and Olive's reputation takes a sleazy turn.

And there we have it Olive continues to perpetuate the myth and starts taking bribes and gratuities for not sleeping with other boys at the school, but just lying that she did. She clearly enjoyed helping boost the boys egos and the infamy it bought her and this roller coaster ride continued with Olive pretty much not sleeping with most of her peers, if you see what we mean, but as with all good things or in this case lies; it has to come to an end.

The last part of the film regales us with the reversal of Olive's deceit and how she unravels things so that she can return to a modicum of normality. How the story handles this is really pretty good and there is some fine work from Emma Stone as Olive, extrapolating her misdemeanors and turning the story around. Of course, we shall not be spoiling the plot by going through the minutiae detail here, needless to say; watch it and find out, you will not be disappointed.

If we were to point out some negatives, it would only be that the brilliant dialogue in the first half of the film tends to tail off in the second half and although it is still entertaining, some of the killer lines were not so evident. Also the ending could be accused of being a tad cheesy, but as this is eluded to in the narrative we will let them off.

Easy A is the kind of film we like here at TNiFN Towers, it's a feelgood film, it's funny, it's touching and it ends happily for most.

A good one.

TNiFN Rating 83%

IMDB Link

The Vow - 11th March 2014

Tuesday Night is Film Night is here yet again. Doesn't the time fly? It only seems like a week ago when we were watching the last film. Oh. It was a week ago.

Moving on. This week it's feet up and eyes front for;

The Vow

Let's turn things around this week and start at the end of the film. At the start of the end credits, it states that The Vow was based on a true story. Now we didn't know this, so this adds an extra layer of realism to the story, which we have now spoiled by telling you! Whoops.

So The Vow is essentially a dramatic love story which starts with Leo and Paige meeting up and falling in love, which leads to their wedding where they exchange their own set of vows. (Nods to the title). Leo is played ridiculously well by Channing Tatum, ably assisted by the cute and delightfully talented actress; Rachel McAdams as Paige.

The scene setting and layout of the story is dealt with quickly and succinctly, which gave the filmmakers plenty of time to work on the real thread of this touching narrative, which is when Leo and Paige's happy life together is torn asunder when they are involved in a serious and well presented (nice special effects) car accident, which leaves Paige in an induced coma to aid recovery of her neurological trauma. When she comes round, she finds she has lost her recent memory, therefore the last four happy years mean nothing to Paige, but everything to Leo.

The Vow takes this scenario and plays with it and we see from all sides, not just Paige and Leo's, but through family and friends, how this devastating loss affects everybody. Friends are supportive to Leo, but alien to Paige, whereas this juxtaposes with Paige's old friends (prior to Leo) who are fresh in her mind, but alien to Leo. And it is this duality that feeds on through the story, where Paige is seemingly happier in a past life, whilst Leo is trying to bring her back to the current one.

Layered on top of this, we see how family and old friends can be helpful, caring, but also devious and we transpose from a simplex view of old and new, to uncovering what went on in Paige's past that made her turn away from her old friends and family. So the story steers you away from the stereotypical and formulaic standard of the romantic feelgood movie, to something with a bit more gravitas and follows this through to the end. Ideally, at the end things should be back to normal and all happy-ever-after. This is not necessarily the case with The Vow. Some may consider this as a let down, but in reality it's a breath of fresh air to get the unexpected in a film. That's not to say that the film ends badly, on the contrary the film ends well, just not perhaps what you would necessarily expect. Enough said, there's to be no spoilers here.

As for the other cast we should make note of the solid performance by Sam Neill playing Bill Thornton;  Paige's father, a perfect casting for this role, a strong forceful character, but with a dark secret. Alongside Neill we have Jessica Lange as Paige's mother; Rita, again another strong character, but with her own story to tell. Scott Speedman played Jeremy, an ex boyfriend from Paige's past, which ends up as her present, due to the memory loss, if you see what we mean? Jeremy was one of those characters that you love to hate and would want to punch squarely on the nose. Speedman displayed that trait so well and the animosity towards him grew. Luckily Leo does indeed punch him in the face, so all's well that ends well in that regard.

Overall The Vow is a great story and the film did not disappoint portraying it. The tension and emotion build, growing and growing, pulling you into the story and because you didn't know which way it would take you, it keeps you gripped right up until the end.

Nice film and so the scores will be somewhere between good and very good on the old TNiFN rate-ometer.

TNiFN Rating 80%

IMDB Link

Made in Dagenham - 4th March 2014

This week Tuesday Night is Film Night takes in a film from 2010, which transports us back to 1968, as we discover what was;

Made in Dagenham

We think that this will be an easy blog tonight, there are some films that you just know should be good and Made in Dagenham is certainly one of those. And of course a good film makes for an easy blog.

Set in the late swinging sixties, when hair was big and skirts were mini. Made in Dagenham dramatises the real life struggle made by the 187 female machinists based at the Ford car factory in Dagenham, after they are downgraded by the Ford management as non-skilled workers. Backed in part by the male workforce but shunned by some of their union representatives the women don their hot-pants and give their male union conveners the cold shoulder and take their fight to the picket line and beyond.

Based upon historic events, Made in Dagenham charts this struggle with realism, pathos, good humour and turns the three week strike into a gripping, often funny, but equally as often; sad drama. We at TNiFN are often accused of being too positive about even the most atrocious films, however Made in Dagenham is far from atrocious and in fact there is nothing to be negative at. Let us run down the list of superlatives now, dissecting the film into various parts.

The acting is without question totally and utterly sublime. Of note are; the leading lady (if the militant members will excuse that feminist classification), Rita O'Grady played superbly by Sally Hawkins. Somehow Hawkins manages to convey with realism, tenderness and compassion this somewhat meek, mild mannered machinist, whilst she is hoisted by her strong beliefs; that what the male dominated society believes are privileges, are actually rights for women. And she carries this fight on, supported by her colleagues.

Ably assisting Rita (amongst others) are; Sandra, Connie and Albert, played by Jaime Winstone, Geraldine James and Bob Hoskins respectively. Jaime Winstone wears a pair of hot pants extremely well! Geraldine James is magnificent, but we would expect nothing less. Bob Hoskins is not one of the girls, but he is a union member who fully supports the strike action. We haven't seen much of Bob Hoskins here at TNiFN but we were mightily impressed by his performance here. Superb.

Other actors of note are; the late great Roger Lloyd-Pack who plays Connie's husband George. Lloyd-Pack shines through as the tortured war veteran, who plays a real pivotal role in this story. Miranda Richardson is also a beacon of talent as the fiery redhead; Barbara Castle, knocking John Sessions' Harold Wilson into second place in the race for the best portrayal of a politician. Also the supporting cast all play their part and fill in the gaps with such aplomb, it was a joy to watch.

As the film is set in the sixties, it is clearly necessary to portray that era and Nigel Cole (director) has clearly made this a priority, as the wardrobe, lighting, music, scenery and general feel transports you back to this era, so that you are immersed in the culture of the period. In tandem to this you can really sense what is was like to have to deal with the constant industrial action that suffused the sociopolitical arena back then, often forcing the bread winners to the breadline.

Interweaving through the story, there are smaller, minor threads, not all based on reality, that provide several alternate views and juxtapositions to the main plot, this is a very clever use of supplementary narratives, as instead of just following a linear story, you are forced to focus and refocus on events as you see contradictory views that offer up alternative frames of reference to consider.

All in all Made in Dagenham is just a great film. It seems to have everything; a decent believable story (OK, it's based on real events, so we cannot get away from the believable part!) It's tense, but funny. It's hard hitting, but entertaining. It portrays a downbeat society, but with uplifting results.

It is definitely one for the "view again" list. Plus it is going to be turned into a musical! Apparently. Not sure about that. We'll stick to the film.

TNiFN Rating 91%

IMDB Link