Tag: Roger Allam

Now, I am not trying to be sexist here. But let’s think about The Lady In The Van. Is it creepy? Maybe a bit. I imagine a cat lady, even though if you live in a van, you probably don’t want cats in there as well. That’d be poopy.

But if this was titled The Man In The Van, most likely it would be some sort of scary horror film. Lady is intriguing. What is she doing in the van? Man is sketchy. What is he doing in the van? He should stop it immediately regardless!

I guess I should be thankful this is about a lady. Early year horror films are janky, but dramas early in the year might not be.

Overall, this babble is brought to you by: Genders. Men are scary, yo.

How British in this movie you may be asking? Well…

Miss Shepherd (Maggie Smith) is just a really old lady, and she needs help. Sure, she lives in a van, but she is self employed selling pencils and notes on the street. Not a beggar, no sir. People wouldn’t take too kindly to that. This is 1970’s England, and it is perfect! She parks her van in a nice suburb area. Where the people are relatively well off and in that range where they will help her out and let her use the water closet, to make themselves feel like they are doing good in the world. And Alan Bennett (Alex Jennings) just moved in.

Alan is a writer of plays and, of course, mildly successful. He has finally moved away from his Mam (Gwen Taylor), who might need to be put in a home herself soon. He is our narrator as well, and he describes that he has two halves. The one who writes, and the one who lives. Sure enough, he befriends this lady in the van, who has lived an apparently long and complicated life. He already writes a lot about old ladies, thanks to inspiration from his Mam, and he has to figure out if he wants to write about Miss Shepherd as well, or just experience her like a normal person would.

Miss Shepherd is also very secretive about parts of her life. She hates it when anyone plays music and will rant wildly if it occurs. She is being blackmailed by a cop (Jim Broadbent) for maybe killing a person. Yeah, that is important.

Guess how long this old lady stays on the street/ in his driveway? Guess! Over a decade, that is the only hint I will give.

We have a lot of neighbors who are in the story, played by Frances de la Tour, Roger Allam, and Deborah Findlay. There were also quite a bit of cameos. People who I thought were way too famous to be in this movie for one line or one small scene and never seen again. They include Dominic Cooper, Sam Spruell, James Corden, and Russell Tovey.

And this is the lady sneaking out from behind her van.

It turns out all the people who had small cameos in this movie were there for a reason. And no, it wasn’t because James Corden is a douchebag who only gets 1 line in British films and doesn’t deserve a Late Night talk show program. The director, Nicholas Hytner, also directed The History Boys about 9 years ago. It was his last film and all of these random famous people cameos came from that film. The more you know!

Also, this movie is technically a 2015 film, despite getting released in America so late. So it was up for all the fancy awards and it was nominated for…one golden globe! It was also nominated for some British awards, as expected, given it has Maggie Smith in it, who is basically the British Meryl Streep. They love nominating these ladies.

Speaking of Smith, she was fantastic in this role. I have never seen her so old or decrepit. I was getting worried about Smith herself, given how pale and old she looked. Thankfully I remembered that make up departments in a movie were a thing and she doesn’t actually look like she is one step away from death. But damn do they pull it off in this movie. She is funny and naggy and cantankerous. Everything you’d hope for in a movie old lady, but not in someone you actually know.

The rest of the movie leaves something to be desired. Jennings plays an incredibly closeted British man well, but as a narrator and co-lead he is never really exciting enough. He is basically playing the audience half the time, just watching things happen around him, due to his timidness (or Britishness, really). The split personality thing was confusing for the most part, never really enjoyed how they had that play out. It was made weirder at the ending when they tried to explain it a bit more in the conclusion, too. The many other characters give an occasional smile, but don’t do a lot outside of show up once in awhile to be nosy.

Overall, you can probably watch this for Smith as she gives a wonderful eccentric performance. But this is not something you would want to watch ever again.

2 out of 4.

Ian McKellen and Michael Fassbander have an interesting thing in common. Fassbender has played two different roles that McKellen has more famously played before him. They were both Magneto and they were both Macbeth.

This is all technically irrelevant, since Fassbender has never played Sherlock Holmes. But Benedict Cumberbatch has played him! And they are basically the same person.

This is a bad intro, in that I am now going to hope that Ian McKellen will play a second role that Cumberbatch had famously played before him. We can’t see McKellen as an older Alan Turing, unfortunately. That’d be preferable. Honestly, most of Cumberbatch’s roles are not super famous, so we might have to wait for McKellen to play a very old Julian Assange. I assume time travel will be involved to get this done.

Either way, that nonsense aside, I think Mr. Holmes is the first time anyone has looked at the Holmes character, super old and near death. The only one attempting to give a closer look into the man behind the myths, the man without a Watson.

They meant a literal closer look of course.

Sherlock Holmes (McKellen) is now very old, in his 90s, and living far away from Baker Street. Watson had finally left him after getting married, leaving Sherlock to continue work on his own. But something happened that caused him to retire from detective-ing altogether. He instead wanted to move to the coast, in a nice house alone, to become a beekeeper and read books all day long.

He isn’t alone though. No, he is too old to be alone. He has a housekeeper (Laura Linney) and her son (Milo Parker) living with them to take care of the day to day needs. And of course he has regular doctor (Roger Allam) visits for his ever declining health. Did you know he is losing his memory? He can’t remember simple things, such as the names of people he used to interact with or even just interacted with. He even forgot the boys name at one point!

Thanks to his failing memory, he has to do things before it goes away. Like stalling, with plot of him going to Japan to meet basically a stranger (Hiroyuki Sanada) to eat a flower to help with his memory. And finally reading all those damn books that Watson wrote about him, turning him into a caricature of his actual self. He sets off to write one of the famous mysteries down in his own words, one without all the pomp and circumstances, because he himself can’t remember how it ended, just that it was important. All the while passing on some wisdom to the boy in his home and hopefully stop being such a smart asshole to everyone he meets.

Also featuring Hattie Morahan and Patrick Kennedy.

I assume he is actually telling the kid about his inherent X-gene and how to exploit others.

If anything, Mr. Holmes gets points for trying something different with a character who has had dozens of film and TV iterations. We don’t even have a Watson in this film! No Watson at all! It is just one guy losing his mind. I can always appreciate it when they take an established work or character and give it a completely new flavor.

That being said, despite its originality the story ended up being a weak point. There were two stories being told through flashbacks while Holmes is hanging out in his cottage trying to remember them. The Alzheimer based plot allowed for things to take their time and force the stories to pace themselves out. It just felt lazy though watching it. It is not interesting to watch someone slowly remember events, especially if the events aren’t life threatening in any way. Memento was about a guy slowly remembering events, and it was a well done crime thriller. This one the stakes were no where near as high, so it made me wonder what the point was.

The good news is that it was for the most part well acted. Everyone played their parts well, even though it felt like McKellen was literally dying in front of the camera as the movie went on. Playing an old and enfeebled person will not get you on the cover of any magazines. It was also a gorgeous movie with its set pieces, costumes and cinematography. It just also featured a mostly forgettable story with only a bit of the wit I have come to know and love from a made up detective character.

2 out of 4.

Hooray! Another fifty reviews later, I am ready to introduce my next Milstone Review: number 1150 for my website!

Holy crap. If I thought 1050 was a shitty milestone, 1150 has to be way worse. But hey, fun reviews are fun.

Today I decided to look at Speed Racer, which I didn’t see when it came out six years ago due to all the hate I heard about it. I didn’t have the means or willpower to watch every movie six years ago, so I let the internet decide for me.

I also never really watched the Speed Racer cartoon growing up. I knew of the references, and by golly, I knew how to make fun of the anime style when it came up in conversations, but that is all I had going for me. So in a way, this is probably good, as I won’t have anything to compare it to.

I really only know one thing about the movie: COLOR!

This is the level of celebration I demand for hitting milestone 1150.

America is all about speed. Hot, nasty, bad-ass speed.

So it is pretty obvious that Speed Racer (Emile Hirsch) would grow up wanting to race. Also because of his name. Also because of the family business. The dad Pops (John Goodman) runs a small auto shop to make race cars, and his older brother, Rex Racer (Scott Porter) is a professional racer!

He also has a mom (Susan Sarandon) and a younger brother Spritle (Paulie Litt) and the Chim Chim the monkey.

This is a clear example where nurture trumps nature.

The unfortunate thing is that Rex decided to leave home and join another company and not support his family anymore. And soon after, despite being one of the best, he started being a really dirty player, causing other players to get pushed off the tracks and maybe even…cheating! But then he died in a crash before charges could be pushed on him, bringing dishonor to the racer family.

Well, speed? Speed wants to win that honor. And boy howdy, can he fly. He almost beats his brother’s record on a local track, but holds off at the end to honor his brother. He knows he wasn’t a cheater. Now he is getting job offers, but he knows he wants to stay with his family and race on his own terms.

Where will you be when the Speed [Racer] kicks in?

Enter Mr. Royalton (Roger Allam)! Owner of a super large mega corporation, he has more money than there exists more or less, and he also likes to sponsor racers. His ideas are simple. Keep what works working, team chemistry, pit crews, whatever. He just wants to help out, help train and give lots of money.

Well, it turns out that Speed, after thinking about it, would rather stay with his family. He doesn’t want to hurt them like they were hurt before. He wants to do it the right way. On his own, with his Pops.

Mr. Royalton doesn’t like being turned down. Not by some punk asshat with the last name of Racer. The racing leagues in this world have been controlled by corporate interests for many decades now. Every race is fixed. Every race. Even that one. And that one. Speed doesn’t believe it, won’t believe it. Royalton tells Speed he will have his car crashed on the next race, and family sued for infringement. False claims, but bad news travels fast, so his families business will be in ruins.

They might have to eat the fatty with the monkey to get by.

Well shit, what is a Speed to do? Try to take down the mega-corporations? Sure!

Inspector Detector (Benno Furmann), head of the corporate crimes division. Racer Taejo Togokahn (Rain) has evidence to bring down Royalton, but needs help racing in a team event soon. He has enlisted the mysterious Racer X (Matthew Fox) also unassigned, and they need a third. If they can help them win, they can get out of Royalton’s hold and he’d help put a stop to the shenanigans.

Speed decides to not tell his family about it either. Just his girlfriend, Trixie (Christina Ricci), so she can be the entire pit crew and help them out with helicopter support.

Yeah. That’s the reason to bring her. Sure.

The multi nation race takes several days, so of course his family finds out and shows up for support. Which is great, because people are now getting sent to literally just kill him off the tracks, in his hotel room, elsewhere, they just want him dead. But now Speed has people to protect him! Hell, even Sparky (Kick Gurry) is there, the main pit crew guy who works for his dad, and the guy that has taken me this long to find a place to casually fit his mention in this review.

Needless to say, the good guys don’t get stabbed or shot, and the three win the race! Now they can take down the Royalton Corp!

Hah, just fucking kidding you there too. Taejo was just playing them too. Now that his corp won this big race, their stock is super high, and that is all they cared about. They didn’t have illegal information on Royalton. Suck it, Speed and X!

This of course pisses Speed off and he even takes it out on X who he thinks is his brother in disguise. Nope, just that guy from Lost. Shit.

“We’ve got to go back!…to the finish line! Because that’s how races work!”

Thankfully not everyone in the Togokahn family/corporation is a complete dick. Taejo’s sister Horuko (Nan Yu) steals the invitation to the Grand Prix from her brother and gives it to Speed. With it, can still enter the best of the best races. If he takes first, he will ruin Royalton financially and prove that they can beat the system where racing is supposedly fixed. It would be sweet if they could also some how prove that Royalton cheats. But let’s not get too crazy.

Somehow his family is able to make a new car from scratch in about 32 hours before the race, and Speed is then able to go and drive! Yay!

Well, lot of people come at him, he avoids a lot of them. Royalton cheats, he is able to break free from the cheat and also expose the cheat to the public at the same time.

Speed wins the race, and everyone goes home happy or to jail sad. Wooo, EAT IT CORPORATIONS!

But between all that plot was about five minutes straight of color and color on color.

Did Speed Racer GoGoGo? Maybe, in a way.

The CGI style was very hectic and it everything was constantly changing or talking. Characters flying across the screen, many transistions, and many many colors.

I am glad I watched it in Blu-Ray, but I wish there was a good 3D component as well to go with it. I feel like everything would have popped. It would have been like 135 minutes on LCD, I have been told.

A bit surprised by the complicatedness of the plot and the time they dedicate to setting up events in this film, given its PG nature. It seems like it would be very hard for kids to follow. Mostly because it was hard for myself to follow.

In terms of entertainment purposes, the biggest problem might be the large and complicated plot. It seems like the movie is trying to be two things, a big entertaining race spectacle that is colorful and full of wonder, and a corporate serious drama film. What I am left with is a long movie that goes to lengths to include both sides and I get a bit of a confusing mess. It isn’t that it is hard to keep up with, but in its already unique and eye popping style, it is easy to feel overwhelmed.

Also better acting could have helped.

I don’t know if this is the movie Speed Racer fans deserved, but it is probably the film they needed right now. It is overall okay, but one I would rather watch 90 minutes of instead of 135 minutes.

But they did announce that Speed Racer would appear in Fast & Furious 7, so that should be fun shenanigan wise.

2 out of 4.

I have never really enjoyed stories about children and the Holocaust, mostly because I was flooded with them as required reading in middle school. The Diary of Anne Frank, Night, Number the Stars, and a whole lot more. Every single one of them just felt like the same story over and over again, with minor details changed. Repetition only bores me.

But The Book Thief is something different AND something new. The book came out within the last 10 years, and it is about a little German girl going through this experience, not someone sent to a concentration camp. It is a completely new point of view, with some other notable differences as well.

They hide someone below, not above. Brilliant!

You know, like the story being narrated by Death (Roger Allam). Yep, that is new!

But our main character is little Liesel (Sophie Nelisse). Her mother is giving her up for adoption for some reason, and en route, her brother dies mid trip. It is the late 1930s, she is around 12, and she is already used to death.

Her new mother, Rosa (Emily Watson), and father, Hans (Geoffrey Rush) take her on, for reasons not really ever touched on. Maybe they can’t have kids of their own? No idea.

Either way, with a new home, she has the same old problems. Hans realizes she can’t read and takes an interest in her education. Once she learns to read, she can’t stop. Not even when the Nazi party marches into town and holds a book burning event for…some reason. She likes books so much that she saves one from the pyre when no one is looking. That little thief.

Her life gets turned even more upside down when Max (Ben Schnetzer) comes knocking. Max is a Jewish man looking for a place to hide, coming to collect on a promise made by Hans during the first World War. Can Liesel keep a secret, and can she keep a low enough profile to make sure no one starts to suspect their ruse? Will she ever give in to the temptations of her very Aryan friend, Rudy (Nico Liersch)? Will the Nazis win the war? No. No they won’t.

Like. Really, really, really Aryan.

Well, it turns out just because something is new and different, it doesn’t mean it will be amazing.

One of my movie pet peeves happens when a film is set outside of America. When this happens, there are two routes movie makers can go with. They can either do the entire movie in the native language, and give us subtitles, or they can just do it in English. I always assume that when it is in English, they are obviously speaking their native language (in this case German), but we can fully understand the German.

But I hate it when they decide to do a bit of both. Usually this is English with some native language words thrown in to go for “Authenticity,” when really it just confuses my ear drums. The Book Thief goes this route, but also one step further. They have entire conversations and scenes in German with subtitles, before switching back to English which is the majority language of the movie. And honestly, it makes absolutely no sense why they keep switching to German. It is a bad directing move. To make matters worse, sometimes words are written in German, and sometimes English. No continuity whatsoever.

The Book Thief is a movie where the acting is pretty great from everyone involved, but it fails to tell a useful story. About 4/5 of the way into the film, I realized that I have no idea what this movie wanted to be about, the messages it wanted to convey, or where it wanted to go. There was some conflict, but outside of the “World War II” idea, there wasn’t a main conflict for the characters in the film to really overcome. It literally was just a story of a girl over a few years during World War II, and that was it. All of the potential major plotlines ended relatively quickly after they were brought up.

So the film lacks direction. As you could tell from the plot outline, a lot of the details seem to be missing. Throw on confusing speech patterns for the characters, and you got a lackluster film.

I feel like this could have been a great story, and it probably was in the book form, but the movie really failed to deliver. With such great acting, I am disappointed the story felt so flat.  If I read the book, the movie might have been a lot better, but I shouldn’t have to read a novel first to enjoy a movie.

 

1 out of 4.