Enough Said!!!!

Enough Said.

Romantic comedy's tend to target the younger teenage age range to mid/ late twenty's but they never cover any other ages. Well, Enough Said switches things up and is a romantic comedy for the older generation, in particular here people who have had children, divorced and are not really looking for love.

Showing the lives of Eva (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) a divorcee masseuse who travels around to massage various clients she lives a normal life with her teenage daughter Chloe (Tavi Gevinson) with who she doesn't particularly get along with and isn't looking for love. Albert (James Gandolfini) is also a divorcee video archiver who lives on his own and has regular visits from his teenage daughter Ellen (Tracey Fairaway). 

Both of them aren't really looking for love and don't really see a reason to, as Eva attends a party with her close friend Sarah (Toni Collette) a chance meeting happens and she is introduced to Albert. As the two give each other a sly dig saying their is no-one around they find hot at the party the two leave the party and go their seperate ways. Soon enough the two start meeting up for dates and start to get along really well and they start a kind of unofficial relationship. 

Carrying on with her job Eva contacts a client she met a the party Marianne (Catherine Keener) who is a new age kind of person who earns her living writing poetry. As the two become friends and go out for meals Marianne can talk about nothing else but her ex husband with whom she had a daughter and explain in detail all his faults and misgivings. As Eva gets more close to Albert and strikes up a great friendship with Marianne she soon enough finds out that Albert is Mariannes ex husband, then she starts to see Albert differently but how differently?

I have to say I found this film very heart warming as it touches upon the more older spectrum of 50+ single divorcees and what they go through with relationships. Gandolfini and Julia Louis-Dreyfus are great as Albert and Eva as they both portray two totally different people but who are going through the same situations. The little in jokes really make you feel they know each other well, Albert's dodgy nasal whistle and how he can't whisper and Eva's compulsion to knit all the time. It shows that these are things older viewers can relate to and it makes you warm towards the characters. Bringing in their children also adds another dimension and how older parents tackle the "sex" talk and the kids going off to college it's current.

Throughout the film they never say that they're boyfriend and girlfriend, they are mature adults and never need to use that social tag. Introduced as "my good friend...." it keeps it current again as they are older adults and don't need that social tag. A truly heart warming, funny, life affirming film that has you smiling throughout.

9/10.

Captain Phillips!!!!

Captain Phillips.

Whenever a film about true life events comes to the big screen I often wonder if it will work, will the true story be told, will it be engaging and most importantly will they choose the right actors for the film. Luckily director Paul Greengrass has pulled it off perfectly and produced a film that sticks to the main story narrative, is thrilling to watch and has a perfect cast. 

Telling the story of the Somali pirates highjack of the freight ship the Maersk Alabama in 2009 it shows how Captain Richard Phillips (Tom Hanks) handled the situation on board his ship and the actions he took to save his crew and the ship. The film starts showing the backstory and family life in which Phillips has with his wife and how he is on edge seeing news reports of Somali pirates in the area which he is about to sail through. 

Fast forward to on the ship and you see the hijacking as an almost coincidence moment in which Phillips gets the crew of the ship to do a possible hijacking security run through as to if it was to happen. During this test this is when Phillips sees two small boats heading towards his ship and decides to take evasive action. As the first capture attempt fails with the pirates boats engine cutting out the whole crew is on edge and they know they'll come back eventually somehow. 

As the single Somali boat heads towards the ship Phillips takes decisive action and puts the water hoses on hopefully to sink their vessel and ward of the pirates but to no avail. Their ladder is fixed onto the side of the ship and their heading for Phillips and his fellow officers, Muse (Barkhad Abdi) threatens Phillips and announces "look at me, look at me, I'm the Captain now".

As the film progresses you see the relationship between the Somali's and the relationship between Phillips and the pirate leader Muse who has conflicting thoughts of his own. Showing how Phillips was to be taken hostage by the pirates and kept on board of the escape pod boat the film is kind of split into two. Again the relationships between the pirates and Phillips is shown and how at times they compromise, work together and also sympathise with each other at times, it's a nice little dynamic on screen. 

For a film with the storyline that you would think is quite simple and boring Greengrass has made is look and sound intense and thrilling and have you hooked all the way through. The conflicting personalities all thrown together in a life boat allows each character that time to come through even if it is in a confined space. Like I said the film feels like it was split in two and almost juxtapose each other. The first half being quite fast paced, wide open spaces and an almost cat and mouse game and then the second half being a slowed down tight intense, confined space edge of your seat thriller. 

Setting the film on a real freighter was a perfect decision to make, making the film with green screen just wouldn't have given that size scope to the film and would have hindered the film. Working on real waters gives that almost your really there feeling and transports you to the heart of the film.

Hanks is perfect in the role and the scene which hit me hardest was right near the end with Phillips having a bandanna over his eyes he just screams out and writhes like he has been shot. The sheer emotion and talent of acting from Hanks is just incredible, to when Phillips is checked over for injuries Hanks stays in character and shows the startling effects a traumatising ordeal can be mentally on someone. Credit has to go to the Somali pirates which I understand this was their first film and were normal people picked for the roles, Abdi is impressive portraying the drug addicted and emotionally conflicted Muse. 

A seriously impressive film that I think has topped any of Greengrasses Bourne films as this has everything. No doubt come awards season and I can see Captain Phillips being nominated for quite a few awards. Best film, best director, best lead actor, best cinematography and best supporting actor all accolades I could easily place this film into. 

10/10.

The Fifth Estate!!!!

The Fifth Estate.

A film that struck a chord with me that I looked forward to seeing was this one, the main reason being that I am a Journalism graduate, how this happened I will never know. So being a person who has done a Journalism degree, got the batman cape and the piece of paper it obviously sounded like an interesting idea for a film. 

Starting with some fast moving news images you see how the information can be broadcast around the world from phones to laptops to TV screens. it's a clever little fast paced montage of how images, text and video can be accessed around the world by everyone on the planet. The film of course follows the story of Julian Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch) as he starts up his website WikiLeaks in order to leak important information to the public for them to see the truth and corruption that is happening everyday in politics. As Assange works in various countries to take down powerful leaders he arrives at a conference to be met by Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Daniel Bruhl) who is an activist and wants to help Assange with his website. 

As the film progresses more and more information is leaked, a most famous video that shows US military forces gunning down civilians and reuters journalists was to be leaked and hit people hard. With Assange working with the newspaper the Guardian and in particular the editor Alan Rusbridger (Peter Capaldi) they were to work out a deal. As the Guardian redacts some of the thousand documents that Assange has they were to publish pages of this information for Assange to pubish the un-redacted information. 

You see on screen the relationship between Assange and Berg slowly fall to pieces and both of them fighting for what they see is the best decision to make for the information they have. Seeing not only this but part of Assange's up bringing and what he had done to become the person he is today. Obviously we all know what the end result would be and what was to happen to Assange who is now holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy and fighting extradition. 

Cumberbatch plays Assange spookily well and he really does act and have Assange's mannerisms down to a tee. Having Assange e-mail him the day they were to start filming to say that he shouldn't do the film must have been hard but a story that needed to be told. Bruhl is ok but not as strong a character and force as Cumberbatch, both work well together on screen and portray and very tense and fraught relationship between Berg and Assange. 

In my own honest opinion when it comes down to leaking documents I see it that if documents were to leak, change a government and help people for the better then why not. Certainly information that could topple corrupt governments and change a countrys history for the better surely the documents should be leaked and read by all to see. It's when peoples lives are at risk that you have to take into account your own moral stand point and question your own ethics as to whether documents should be leaked. 

Back to the film and I have to say it is a good little thriller film that entertains, informs and lets you decide your own point of view on WikiLeaks. If your after something more meaty and full of information then I suggest you look elsewhere as this film is mainly just basic information and is here to entertain and not really inform much.

7/10

How I Live Now!!!!

How I Live Now.

One thing that was close to happening in the UK in the early 1960's was the Cuban Missile crisis where the UK was at panic stations and under threat from all out nuclear war. With the United States finally agreeing to a un-heard kept quiet arrangement with Cuba the threat of Nuclear War was to be stopped dead in its tracks. 

This is where the premise of How I Live Now comes in. A young girl Daisy (Saoirse Ronan) is flown from her home in the United States to spend a summer in the UK with her cousins Edward (George MacKay), Isaac (Tom Holland) and Piper (Harley Bird). As the three are left to fend for themselves in the countryside while Daisy's Aunt Penn (Anna Chancellor) travels back and forth to London as she works for the government the four get along well. Daisy soon starts to become attracted to Edward as he shows her that she doesn't need to be so uptight and nerurotic all the time, finally giving in the two soon become a couple and enjoy each others company. 

As a bomb goes off in London the whole of the UK is now into lockdown, with a US consulate arriving to give Daisy a flight back to the US she has to decide what to do. Staying with her cousins they are soon rounded up by the Army and are sent to different locations within the UK. Edward shouts to Daisy to travel back to the house if they have the chance as he will meet them there and they can be together again as a family. Situations change for the girls and for the boys, being attacked and nearly held hostage, staring death in the face and learning to love what you have in life now they go through alot of motions. 

For a film that has the underlying theme of a Nuclear bomb going off in the UK it shows how the government would have reacted to this and how to protect their own residents. It is of course a typical boy meets girl, get seperated, vow to find each other, bad things happen, find each other and live happily ever after type of film which I didn't expect. Ronan as Daisy is the main impressive force in the film and you see her character change and learn to be a better person over the course of the quite short film. The on screen love story between Ronan and MacKay could be seen as happening for real on screen as the two outside of the film are now dating. 

For a film about a Nuclear threat I found it too bland and not enough information was given out, who attacked the UK, what happened to change the situation in the end, what was the resolve and what happened to the mother/aunty. Obviously it wasn't to go into too much detail as it would baffle and confuse a much younger generation in which this film is mainly aimed at. A nice film that lacks that information based history that I wanted to get from the film but praise to Ronan again showing she is a strong actor and on the verge of great things. 

7/10.