Beasts of the Southern Wild

Academy Award Nominations: 4

·         Best Picture

·         Best Director (Benh Zeitlin)

·         Best Actress (Quvenzhane Wallis)

·         Best Adapted Screenplay (Lucy Alibar, Benh Zeitlin)

In a southern Louisiana community called the Bathub, cut off from the rest of the world by a levee, Hushpuppy and her father Wink fend for themselves, living off the earth and looking after one another whilst living in separate yet connected houses. Wink, though, is secretly ill and is struggling to look after Hushpuppy as she grows up, but he's trying his best to teach her everything she needs to fend for herself. As a fearsome storm approaches, Hushpuppy sees it as something broken in the universe that needs fixing, so she does what she can. However, when the storm passes and the Bathtub is flooded, the community will have to pull together to fix things before the flood water kills everything and they're forced to evacuate into the mainland...

There's a reason I like doing Best Picture nominee season. It makes me watch films I'd never usually watch like this one. I'd never even heard of this film until it was announced as a nominee in this and three other high profile categories. Last year, it made me watch Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, despite the fact I hated it. In many ways, this is a very similar film to Extremely Loud, in that it tells the story of a national American tragedy from the last few years through the eyes of a child. In Extremely Loud, Oskar lost his dad in 9/11 and went on a quest to reclaim his memory. Here, Hushpuppy and Wink live through their own Katrina-style disaster and attempt to survive. Similar films, but I liked this one more. What's the difference though? A more likeable central character. I didn't want to reach into my screen and strangle the kid just to shut him or her up.

Hushpuppy is streetwise and aware of her surroundings, and actually does positive things in her desire to make the word better. Oskar was just annoying. I liked Hushpuppy as a lead character, but I didn't like the characters she was surrounded by, especially her father. Hushpuppy seems like an innocent young girl who's forced to grow up before her time because of her surroundings, but that's not made easier by her arsehole father. He's very much the Oskar of Beasts, whilst Hushpuppy would be the Sandra Bullock of the piece. The rest of the community don't even seem very helpful either, and seem more annoying than anything else, even the teacher who seems like a bullshitter of the highest degree. Maybe it's just me, but I can't connect with the Bathtub way of living, we don't have anything close to it in the UK really so it's all just lost on me.

Quvenzhane Wallis is really good as Hushpuppy, but I can't see why she's been nominated for Best Actress. I think there's a stigma attached to lead performances by child actors. The bar seems to be put far lower for child actors, so as soon as they show any kind of emotion or ferocity, they're recognised, whereas an adult female actresses would have to put in a phenomenal performance to get recognised. Don't get me wrong, she's good, but not THAT good. She carries the film without a doubt, but I've seen far better performances from other female actresses this year. If anything, Dwight Henry was better as Wink but has gone unrecognised. He was good because I hated him, which meant he played his character of an arsehole perfectly. I can't get over the fact I hated him though, big no no. Over than that, the ensemble might have played their roles as a quirky independent community well, but my lack of Bayou knowledge prevents me from saying how good they were.

The script just seems disjointed, and deliberately so in a manner that suggests they were trying to make this film as quirky as the characters it focuses on. Benh Zeitlin seems like an odd director anyway, not looking at the raw footage until after the conclusion of the shoot (which after 5 years of learning how to make films infuriates me!!) and creating a film crew out of local people from the shooting location, which would explain why the film looks so roughly shot, but again this was probably another deliberate decision. This film doesn't look like anything I've seen before and I don't like it, it just smacks of amateur film making. Clearly, all of these things were deliberate choices in order to try and achieve the look and feel of a film made within that kind of community, but I just can't agree with it. The purist in me is raging at this film and I can't get over it.

Which leads me to my conclusion. I didn't really like this film. I appreciated the story line, but I didn't like the setting of the film, the characters used to tell the story, half of the dialogue, the way the film was written, the way it was shot and the methods the director employed to make it. This isn't a film I would have watched by choice, and I won't be watching it again any time soon. I liked it more than Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close though, but that's probably the only good thing I could say about it, and even that's not much of a compliment. Other people many have liked this, and other people will like it, but I'm not one of them.

Rating: *1/2

Beasts of the Southern Wild was released on 19th October 2012 and is no longer being shown in cinemas.

Amour

Academy Award Nominations: 5

·         Best Picture

·         Best Director (Michael Haneke)

·         Best Actress (Emmanuelle Riva)

·         Best Original Screenplay (Michael Haneke)

·         Best Foreign Language Film

Anne and Georges are retired music teachers living in Paris, while their daughter lives abroad. Life is fine for the two until Anne suffers a stroke. She undergoes surgery to fix a blocked artery but it goes wrong and Anne becomes paralysed down one side of her body. Life becomes harder as Georges struggles too adapt to taking care of Anne and Anne struggles to adapt to a life of assistance. Then, as soon as things seem to be going well, Anne suffers another stroke and becomes confined to her bed, barely able to speak. Will the love between the two keep them going despite the hardships in their way?

Michael Haneke is a film documentarian. By this, I mean he likes to create films which, rather than create drama, look in on people's lives as a natural drama unfolds. He creates a window into his characters lives for a brief period. He also has a tremendous back catalogue to fall back on. From his break out film Funny Games which has become a cult hit, every film he's made since has been better and better received. The Piano Teacher (2001) took home a couple of awards from around the world. Cache (2005) took home even more. The White Ribbon (2009) even more still and now we're at Amour, a simple story about the love between a man and his wife, and yet so complex and subtle that it has critics positively gushing at the mere mention of it, and now it becomes only the ninth foreign language film to be nominated for Best Picture. Can it live up to the hype though? Heartbreakingly, yes.

Amour is such a simple story about the love between a man and his wife despite what life throws in their way, and yet it's the subtlety of the story telling that marks this film out above all other sentimental/emotional dramas out there at the moment. There's the dialogue between the two characters that sets the scene and sets out the basics for where the characters are at that moment in time on a base level, but underneath that is the subtle looks, glances, gestures and movements all done without words that spell out so much more than a heavy handed piece of dialogue would have done. It's the same technique Haneke employed in Cache, with the visual image speaking louder than the dialogue and it had a tremendous effect on setting the tone for each scene and the film in general, and yet he re-employs it here to even greater effect because of the nature of the storyline. It's a perfect match for his style of film making, something he almost perfected in The White Ribbon because of the delicate nature of that particular story, but gets it absolutely spot on here.

That's down in no small part to the performances of the two lead roles: Jean-Louis Trintignant as Georges and Emmanuelle Riva as Anne. Around 95% of this film is purely the two of them on screen and they are an absolute delight to watch together, their on screen relationship just seems so real and genuine and pure that you become emotionally invested  in how the two get on with things and how they end up. Trintignant is great is Georges, constantly showing a stiff upper lip in the face of agony as he must watch his wife deteriorate, only occasionally slipping and letting his emotions out, much in the same way any ordinary human would be in real life. However, it's Emmanuelle Riva and her performance as Anne that's getting all the headlines and rightfully so. Her performance is pitch perfect as a woman who's first struck with partial paralysis, then deteriorates to the point of helplessness, only able to cry out "hurt" repeatedly. It's agonising to watch a formerly strong character at the beginning of the film deteriorate so rapidly and painfully over the course of the two hours, and it's something that Riva is able to pull off phenomenally.

On top of that, it's Haneke's writing and direction which have made Amour such a sensation. I would argue at this point that Haneke's trademark as a film maker is 'lingering', staying in a scene for maybe a miute or two longer than any other film maker would have in order to capture a sense of real life unfolding on the screen rather than just a snapshot of it. It captures emotion and develops thee story better than it would have done had the film been made with short takes and only small glances of Georges and Anne. It's a fantastic way of telling this story and matches the plot perfectly; in essence, all the elements of film making fall into sync with Amour.

I don't really know what to tell you, there just isn't a better dramatic film out there that I've seen in recent memory than Amour. It's heartbreaking, it's engaging, and above all else it's just simple. No fancy camera angles or heavy handed dialogue, it's all spelt out for you on the screen purely through acting and simple camera work. It'll never win Best Picture, of course, being a foreign language film, but if there was a time for it, it would be now. The Artist won with zero dialogue last year, so why not a film wining with French dialogue? This is the world we live in, where America can seemingly no longer compete with Europe, despite their very best efforts.

Rating: *****

Amour was released on 16th November 2012 and is no longer being shown in cinemas.

Zero Dark Thirty

Academy Award Nominations: 5

·         Best Picture

·         Best Actress (Jessica Chastain)

·         Best Original Screenplay (Mark Boal)

·         Best Film Editing (Dylan Tichenor, William Goldenberg)

·         Best Sound Editing

Maya, a young CIA officer, is a woman on a mission. Her career revolves around gathering intelligence in regards to the whereabouts of the world's most wanted man: Osama Bin Laden. After being relocated to Pakistan to face the search head-on, she begins to work with Dan, a fellow officer who uses less than legal techniques to force detainees to reveal information. After one Saudi detainee cracks, they learn that a man called Abu Ahmed is working as a personal courier for Bin Laden, and since Bin Laden never steps outside, he'll be the man to look for. So begins the hunt for Abu Ahmed, and ultimately Osama Bin Laden, in "the greatest manhunt in history"...

Zero Dark Thirty comes with two stigmas attached to it which make it a tricky film to judge without having seen it. The first is that this film was shrouded in secrecy for months and it was directed by Kathryn Bigelow, winner of Best Director and Best Picture for The Hurt Locker at the Oscars a few years ago, one of the best war movies I've seen to date, and starts Jessica Chastain, a woman who has come out of nowhere to become one of Hollywood's most in demand actresses, so Zero Dark Thirty has some fair amount of pedigree attached to it. On the other hand, this has been the most controversial  film of this year's Best Picture picks because of its graphic representation of torture and humiliation of Saudi detainees by American security forces. Whether or not it's fact, it's in the film, so will it distract from what's billed as the greatest manhunt in history? Thankfully, no.

This is a gritty, real life war drama, unsurprisingly in the same vein as The Hurt Locker; it's filmed in much the same way, set in similar looking places and tells a story which seems the same but is entirely different. This isn't about the front line side of the war on terror, this is about the behind the scenes work, the intelligence gathering and paperwork that leads to the front line action, or in this instance, SEAL Team 6 secretly entering Pakistan and entering a fortified compound to find and kill Osama Bin Laden. It's all shot well, and the drama builds up well over the two and a half hour run time, enough that my initial scepticism with the film was thrown out the window by the half way point and I was hooked despite knowing the outcome. Sometimes, it's more about the way something happened rather than the actual outcome, and this is most definitely on of those cases.

That's helped by centring the film around one single character: Maya, the CIA officer who leads the hunt for intelligence leading to Bin Laden's location. Jessica Chastain's performance as Maya is so pitch perfect, I can't see anyone outdoing her for Best Actress this year after she fell short for The Tree of Life last year (though at the time of writing, I've yet to see Amour, which is said to feature an extremely strong Emmanuelle Riva performance). The character is fundamentally flawed by her determination and unrelenting pursuit of Bin Laden and the Abu Ahmed lead, even when it seems like a dead end. However, she becomes extremely likeable, you want her to succeed despite her cold determination and unrelenting nature, and it's that the keeps the film together. Zero Dark Thirty is less about killing Bin Laden, and more about wanting to see Maya succeed. Otherwise, though, all the other characters seem like war movie clichés, there's no-one else who's truly notable in this film other than the fact that there are some surprising names playing roles here (like did anyone else know that Kyle Chandler, Mark Strong and Chris Pratt were in this before they saw it?) and that seems like a wasted opportunity. The only other semi-strong character is Dan, the torturer, played by Jason Clarke, but he's missing for large parts of the movie so you never get to see him deal with the repercussions of his actions, which could have made for interesting viewing.

Story wise, this is a fascinating tale of how the hunt for Bin Laden was so fruitless for so long and how many lives were lost during the hunt, and then how it all came to fruition in 2011. It's written sharply, and though there may be a few historical inaccuracies, it's still a great watch. In particular, the climax of the film where SEAL Team 6 enter the compound to find Bin Laden is brilliantly done, as it all takes place in real time. With the first person shots shot in night vision, and events happening in real time, it's as close as you or I are likely to get to being on an actual stealth mission, and it's an eye opening experience. That's not to say that the two hours previous to this isn't great, in fact it's enthralling viewing, akin to many political thrillers in the building of drama and tension, but the climax is so comparably different to the rest of the film that it's intriguing to see both halves of the war being shown on screen next to each other.

Overall, Zero Dark Thirty is a film I really liked because it showed more of a human side to the war on terror and how the process of finding Bin Laden took place. It's a great story, and Mark Boal creates one great character in which to bring this story to life, it's just a shame there aren't any more to back her up. Bigelow's style of directing doesn't change, making this almost like a companion piece to The Hurt Locker in many ways, but an entirely different film in other ways too. This isn't the best film I've seen this year, and it isn't the best war film I've seen, let alone the best war film by Kathryn Bigelow, but it's a good effort and definitely deserves to be a part of anyone's DVD collection.

Rating: ****

Zero Dark Thirty was released on 25th January 2013 and is still being shown in cinemas.

Argo

Academy Award Nominations: 7

·         Best Picture

·         Best Supporting Actor (Alan Arkin)

·         Best Adapted Screenplay (Chris Terrio)

·         Best Film Editing (William Goldenberg)

·         Best Original Score (Alexandre Desplat)

·         Best Sound Editing

·         Best Sound Mixing

Amidst the chaos of the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979, six American embassy staff manage to escape the US embassy and take refuge at the home of the Canadian ambassador. However, with Iranian guards going from home to home searching for American “spies” and the embassy captors piecing together shredded evidence which shows there are six American workers missing from their hostages, they need an escape route from Iran quickly. Enter the state department, and specifically CIA exfiltration expert Tony Mendez, who comes up with a plan: He and the six embassy staff are producers on a science fiction called Argo, and are location scouting around Iran for a foreign paradise in which to shoot. Can they pull the wool over a militant Iranian guard’s eyes?

Ben Affleck has turned from Daredevil failure into Hollywood’s hottest director. He’s yet to produce a dud: Gone Baby Gone (2007) was a police procedural with something more, becoming a study of human nature, behaviour, and moral ambiguity. The Town (2010) was a further development of his skills, producing a crime story that stands out from the rest thanks to a host of spot-on performances. Now he returns with Argo, based on the true story of the “Canadian caper” which saw six embassy workers pose as a film crew to flee revolutionary Iran. It’s a fascinating story, one that had to be taken more seriously than it seemed to create drama and tension, and I’m pleased to say Affleck has delivered with aplomb.

Argo is a tricky beast, enveloping a ludicrous plot within a hyper-serious political drama, something which could only possibly have come from real life. So while there is a real life template, there was still a fine balance that needed to be delivered, and Affleck more than delivers here. For 80% of this film, it’s a serious drama that has you gripped based on whether these innocent Americans can escape Iran in time. For the other 20% though, it’s a whimsical story about how a man from the CIA teamed up with a make-up artist and an aging producer to create the illusion of filming a Star Wars rip off in Iran and how shaky the entire plan to extract the trapped US workers was, and then that the credit to the plan had to go entirely to Canada and Tony Mendez couldn’t claim his reward for a successful mission because the entire mission was classified immediately following its conclusion, only being declassified during the Clinton administration. The question is then, why has a film about this only now come to fruition? It’s the story of how America, and in particular Hollywood, saved the day. It’s perfect fodder for award season, and I’d say Affleck is a genius for being the first one to realize its potential and capitalise on it.

That bring said, it still takes a lot of excellent performances to pull this off, and it makes me smile that the only man Affleck considered being able to pull off the leading man role was himself. This is why I like Affleck as director; no-one was giving him the roles he wanted to play, so he went out and made roles for himself. He’s given himself a stage on which to shine and he’s done so again in Argo playing Mendez, combining seriousness with an aloofness that gives his character credibility and depth. Michael Parks, John Goodman and Kerry Bishé were cast after their amazing performances in Red State and they justify Affleck’s casting, especially Bishé as Kathy Stafford, as they all deliver true to life performances. Alan Arkin is also notable as producer Lester Siegel and delivers the kind of performance that got him the Best Supporting Actor accolade for Little Miss Sunshine and has seen him nominated again amidst a strong field. One notable exception in that field though is Bryan Cranston, who since his starring role in Breaking Bad has started taking these supporting actor roles in various films and has been shining. He did so in Drive, and does so again here, arguable better than Arkin, but alas Cranston is overlooked despite a strong performance and will return to Breaking Bad with more cache.

The look of the film is sharp as well, capturing aptly the hustle and bustle of busy Iranian markets and daily life, as well as subtly observing the Americans trying to get on with their lives as the Canadian ambassador tries his best to stay calm in an increasingly intense situation. Affleck’s direction, combined with Rodrigo Prieto’s camerawork, create a classy looking thriller which doesn’t intrude in the character’s lives or interfere with the story. Simply, this is a document of the period captured superbly.

Overall, Argo is fantastic. I can’t really say more than that. I can’t find fault in it despite having gone over it countless times in my head for the last few days, it’s an engaging story with likeable characters that creates humour, drama, suspense and real emotion. The look is spot on, the music is spot on, the acting is spot on, and it’s immensely enjoyable with tremendous re-watch value. I can’t think of a more perfect film this year.

Rating: *****

Argo was released on 7th November 2012 and is no longer being shown in cinemas.

Silver Linings Playbook

Academy Award Nominations: 8

·         Best Picture

·         Best Director (David O. Russell)

·         Best Actor (Bradley Cooper)

·         Best Supporting Actor (Robert De Niro)

·         Best Actress (Jennifer Lawrence)

·         Best Supporting Actress (Jacky Weaver)

·         Best Adapted Screenplay (David O. Russell)

·         Best Film Editing (Jay Cassidy & Crispin Struthers)

Pat has just spent the last eight months in a mental institution in Baltimore after the breakdown of his marriage and subsequent bipolar diagnosis. Having been released into the care of his parents, he becomes determined to get his life back on track by starting on bipolar medication, seeing a therapist, and trying to win back his wife Nikki by reading her teaching syllabus and getting his job as a substitute teacher back at her school. However, his plans to get back on track are derailed by Tiffany, his friend’s sister in law, with whom he begins a strange friendship as they become fascinated with one another. When Tiffany reveals Pat could send letters to Nikki through her and bypass her restraining order against him, she wants something in return: A dance partner for an upcoming competition…

 

Silver Linings Playbook is the undeniable success story of this year’s award season. Not only has this film attained nominations in all four acting categories, the first film to do so since Reds in 1981, but it’s the first film since Million Dollar Baby in 2004 to achieve nominations in The Big Five (Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Screenplay). It’s a hugely impressive feat, yet you think back on all the films that have come and gone since Million Dollar Baby, surely there was one on there that could/should have done it before now? And now it’s been achieved by what seems to be a bog standard rom-com? There must be something to it. On the face of it, all the major players are there, they just need a good script behind them…. For the most part, it is, but it’s nothing spectacular.

David O. Russell has a knack for writing and directing pure life stories, opening a window into everyday life in an extraordinary situation. He did a fantastic job with The Fighter, producing some great performances from Christian Bale and Melissa Leo and creating an emotive story, so it’s a strange but not completely unjustifiable decision for him to take on board this story of two broken people trying to find their way in the world again. So what makes this more than the bog standard rom-com? Firstly, the cast. Bradley Cooper is the leading man here and delivers his best performance in anything I’ve ever seen him in, he’s given something more than one-dimensional character for once and he runs with it, possibly opening the door for future roles like this. Then there’s his co-lead, Jennifer Lawrence. Her performance in Winter’s Bone a few years ago was stellar, and she’s proven herself to be Hollywood’s next big thing with films like The Hunger Games. She’s good here, albeit flat at times and unemotive, but then that’s part of her character, so one could argue that it’s a better performance that deliberately doesn’t evoke a reaction with audiences.

As for the supporting cast, where do you begin? Robert De Niro is great as Pat’s dad, pulling off mild OCD and a gambling addiction with subtlety, no overacting or ham-fistedness here. Jacki Weaver also delivers a powerful performance as Pat’s mum, generating the most evocative reaction of all the actors on show. Even Chris Tucker is good as Pat’s friend from the mental institution; it’s an all-round great performance from the entire cast. All of this, you have to put down to David O. Russell’s adaptation of the book and creating a solid script from the material he’s given. My only problem is that this doesn’t really do anything spectacular plot wise.

As far as the story goes, there’s nothing spectacular about it. There are a few troubled characters, but it’s nothing life-threatening or truly drama-inducing like those in The Fighter. The characters seem to be more quirky than troubled and that didn’t help my enjoyment of this film. If anything, it seemed as if ‘mental health issues’ was used as a by-word for quirkiness and originality here. Pat’s problems created the drama, and Tiffany’s manifestation of her grief in losing her husband became a parallel for Pat’s problems, even the two issues are incomparable. Even though the two main characters have problems, the rom-com formula remains the same with no real inventive twists or turns which I’d expect from something from Russell. It’s a shame, but then this film isn’t about what happens, it’s more about who it happens to.

Overall, Silver Linings Playbook is unspectacular apart from a host of great performances from its ensemble cast. The plot is nothing special, and the writing and dialogue is OK at best, but Cooper, Lawrence, De Niro and Weaver make this film somewhat memorable. I had expected a little bit more given the number of plaudits it was receiving and given O. Russell’s history of quality filmmaking, but I was mildly disappointed. It’s a good watch, just not great. It’s well directed, but nothing spectacular. In short, Silver Linings Playbook is unfortunately generic, average and relies heavily on its actors to not fade into obscurity.

Rating: ***

Silver Linings Playbook was released on 21st November 2012 and is no longer being shown in cinemas.

Les Misérables

Academy Award Nominations: 8

·         Best Picture

·         Best Actor (Hugh Jackman)

·         Best Supporting Actress (Anne Hathaway)

·         Best Costume Design (Paco Delgado)

·         Best Makeup & Hairstyling (Lisa Westcott)

·         Best Original Song (Suddenly)

·         Best Production Design

·         Best Sound Mixing

In 1815 France, Jean Valjean is released from slavery after a 19 year sentence by prison officer Javert. He decides a convict's life will get him nowhere, so he breaks parole and starts a new life under a new identity. Eight years later, he is the mayor of a small town and factory owner. Fantine, one of his workers, is fired for sending her wages to her illegitimate daughter being cared for in another town. Valjean has his own problems though, as Javert returns and recognises him when he tries to save Fantine from a life of prostitution. He goes on the run, and decides to save Fantine's daughter, Cosette, on the way. Together they go on the run. Nine years later, with revolution in the air, Cosette is now a young woman, who gathers her fair share of admirers, while Valjean is an old man who refuses to reveal his and hers pasts, but can he summon the strength to take on an angry, brooding Javert one last time...?

Les Misérables is known the world round. Not as the classic Victor Hugo novel which has entertained and depressed generations of readers, but as the worldwide smash-hit musical which has graced the world's stages and entertained millions with its story of hard lives and bleak futures for everyone to laugh at, so it was only a matter of time before someone decided to bring it to the screen, much as countless other musicals have been, both successfully and dreadfully. It's a multi-faceted tale of revolution and slavery and struggle... So who better to bring it to the big screen than the man who gave the world The King's Speech two years ago, made millions upon millions of people smile at a stuttering king and won countless awards for it? So does it work? Has the transition from stage to screen been seemless? Umm... No. No it hasn't.

I'm not a big fan of musicals to begin with, but I have tried to be as objective as possible while reviewing this and to treat this like any other film. Something which was made difficult by the fact this isn't a film. It's a stage performance with bigger sets and bigger stars. I understand that this might be how the musical is, with everybody singing the dialogue instead of speaking it and creating a seemless link between songs... But this is a film. It's fine if that happens on stage, because you get a break half way through. But this is a relentless two and a half hour singsong, with dialogue between the songs being unnecessarily sung and unnecessarily performed instead of just spoken. It's just frustrating. In a film, you need a structure, with coherent dialogue, and this film lacks it entirely by simply making this a film version of the stage show. It also has too much ambiguity, not that that's a bad thing in films, but I didn't know the story going into this and I got very lost within the first half an hour because there was nothing there to explain the storyline properly, just people singing songs about how they feel instead of giving me a coherent plot to enjoy. Sorry for being a film purist, but I like my films to have a coherent plot.

That being said, I did enjoy a handful of the performances in Les Mis. Hugh Jackman is a showman, and he's in his element here, playing the lead Jean Valjean as he struggles through life. In the beginning, he's engaging and sensitive. By the end, he puts in a heartbreaking performance. Really good stuff. Anne Hathaway is also fantastic here as Fantine, you really feel for her as she becomes one of "les misérables" and struggles through life before her untimely demise. It means Hathaway is in the film for little more than half an hour, but she makes a memorable impact. Other than that, Russell Crowe isn't great, but surprisingly better than I assumed he would be. However, when you're singspeaking your words to what seem to be the same tune all the way through the film, it would be hard to mess it up as badly as, say, Pierce Brosnan in Mamma Mia? Apparently that's a bad thing? Amanda Seyfried starred as older Cosette, which makes it a shame that she has an annoying singing voice, yet she's going to be able to put "starred in the two biggest film musicals of all time" on her IMDB page, very strange. Isabelle Allen is far better as the young Cosette. Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter are mildly entertaining as the evil Thénardiers as well.

The film itself looks great. The sets are lavish and extravagant, the costumes are detailed and authentic, and the soundtrack is tried and tested on an audience of millions so the actors know which beats to hit and where the greatest amount of emotion will be evoked. The camera work is interesting as well, a lot of handheld camera and Dutch tilts, but I actually liked it and personally, I would have liked to have seen Tom Hooper nominated for best director for this, as I think there's more stylistic flourishes and expression on display here than there was in The King's Speech. The cinematography is brave too, getting extremely up close and personal with the French Revolution. It's clear that they put all of the thought into the look of the film rather than the substance, they've literally transplanted the stage script and score onto the big screen so you're not getting anything new in that regard, other than the Hollywood A-listers singing them. That aspect just seems lazy to me, it's as if they've forgotten they had a fantastic source novel to work from, add dialogue from, add element of the story from to help with the transition, instead of solely relying on the stage musical.

Overall, it seems as if Les Mis presents a lost opportunity. They could have written a fantastic script with the music from the stage show worked into a well-scripted dialogue-centric script. Instead, they picked up the play and threw it onto the big screen and it just doesn't work. It cheats the audience too, as they don't get anything new from the film that they wouldn't have gotten from the stage show. This was an opportunity to present Les Mis to a whole new audience, but instead they aimed squarely at the audience they already have and will have, given its successes on Broadway and the West End. The main cast are good, the ensemble know their lines well from having been on stage with it, and the mise-en-scene was as good as any Hollywood production. Before going into this, I'd never seen Les Misérables on stage. After sitting through this, I feel like I don't need to, nor would I ever want to.

Rating: **

Les Misérables was released on 11th January 2013 and is still being shown in cinemas.

Django Unchained

Academy Award Nominations: 5

·         Best Picture

·         Best Supporting Actor (Christoph Waltz)

·         Best Original Screenplay (Quentin Tarantino)

·         Best Cinematography (Robert Richardson)

·         Best Sound Editing

In the Deep South of America, before the Civil War and before the slaves were freed by President Lincoln, Django has just been sold away from his wife, Broomhilda, to the Speck brothers. However, Dr King Schultz is interested in acquiring Django for his own purposes; giving to him his freedom and getting Django to help him track down bounties in his role as a bounty hunter. After Schultz and Django spend the winter together, tracking bounties, Schultz agrees to help Django find his wife and reunite the pair when the snow melts. Their hunt leads them to Candyland, a plantation where Broomhilda is being kept as a slave of Calvin Candie, a charismatic but ruthless slave owner with a passion for ‘mandingo fighting’, slaves trained to fight to the death for entertainment purposes. Under the guise of mandingo fighter buyers, Django and Schultz devise a plan to enter Candyland and free Broomhilda once and for all…

Quentin Tarantino. The mere mention of his name evokes the strongest, most polarising reactions from film scholars, academics and fans alike. Most people know what to expect now from a Tarantino film. Plenty of over the top violence, plenty of stylish dialogue which make all of his characters sound like they’ve worked in a video store ala Tarantino, and plenty of historical inaccuracies in order to tell the story he wants to tell the way he wants to tell it, all played out through a number of recurring actors and actresses who act to constantly inspire Tarantino and help to bring out the best in one another. He’s had his muses in the past; Michael Madsen inspired him to create some memorable characters, Uma Thurman helped him create characters and films that’ll stick in the minds of many, but in his latest muse, he may have found the person who’s bringing out the absolute best in him, and he’s delivering some unbelievable roles to this man: Christoph Waltz.

Inglourious Basterds lived or died on whether Tarantino could find the right man to play Hans Landa, and he found him in Christoph Waltz. However, Django Unchained gave Tarantino a new, more exciting challenge. Now he had his new muse, he could write a role specifically tailored for him, and boy does he deliver with Dr King Schlutz. Fantastic storytelling for once played out through some superb dialogue and another fantastic Waltz performance. And it’s not just Waltz who shines here. It seems Waltz’s influence is rubbing off on Tarantino’s writing process, however, as he gifts fantastic roles for and coaxes some excellent performances out of Leonardo Di Caprio as Calvin Candie and Samuel L. Jackson having more than a cameo role for the first time in a Tarantino film since Jackie Brown playing Stephen, Calvin’s staunchly loyal if slightly decrepit house slave. They’re two great and one phenomenal supporting performance, so one would assume that Django, Jamie Foxx, our leading man, would have the best role of them all? Umm, not so much…

If anything, the character Django is here to play two roles. One, to bring the film in line with a history of Django films which Tarantino is aiming to pay homage to and recreate the style of, and two, to bring together all of the other fantastic roles he’s written. It just seems that Django is the generic Tarantino cool black guy, there’s nothing exceptional about the character like there is in Schultz, Candie, and Stephen. He’s a strong leading man, and you certainly can’t help but his impact washed out by those other three supporting characters. It’s a shame, but that’s just how it is. In all fairness, when Django is on his own or when he’s with Stephen who he has great chemistry with, Jamie Foxx is allowed to shine and is captivating, but he becomes a supporting character to Schultz and Candie here, and often a support to the cameos by Jonah Hill (Did YOU know he was in this film?) and Tarantino himself.

Tarantino seems to have altered his usual visual style with Django as well as he attempts to make the spaghetti western he tried and failed to make with Kill Bill Volume 2. There are no overhead tracking shots at play here, instead a number of pull zooms in the style of old school spaghetti westerns or the low budget Django films of old. The gore is more over the top here than usual as well, as any gunshot is followed up by what seems to be a balloon full of blood bursting into the air, and people getting blown away beyond reality. It’s over the top but it fits the style of what he’s trying to achieve and so it works in a strange way. The film also looks great and keeps up a good pace, which was a worry of mine given this would be the first Tarantino film since the untimely passing of Sally Menke, Tarantino’s usual editor, but Fred Raskin steps up from assistant to lead editor and makes Django look fantastic.

Overall, Django is extremely entertaining if a little misguided in whose story Tarantino is trying to tell. The visual style is refreshingly different for him and the dialogue has never sounded better coming from the mouths of Christoph Waltz, Samuel L. Jackson and Leonardo Di Caprio. It’s not a usual Tarantino effort, but at the same time it is, it’s a strange hybrid of new, old and old which he pulls off with aplomb. There’s a worry that this three hour film contains a few scenes that could have been cut out, maybe the first hour could have been shorter, but ultimately it helps to build up his lead characters so it’s easily justifiable. Will this win Best Picture? No, because it’s a Tarantino film. Should it? Based on what I’ve seen, then yes, yes it absolutely should. My love and hate for Tarantino comes and goes with every release of his. Django may have just swung my love for his work permanently to the good side.

Rating: *****

Django Unchained was released on 18th January 2013 and is still being shown in cinemas.