Tag Archives: Laura Dern

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 204 – Little Women (2019)

 

José has been brushing up, recently rewatching the 1933, 1959 and 1994 adaptations of Louisa May Alcott’s novel. Mike has neither seen any adaptations nor read the book, coming to the story entirely fresh. And so we get to grips with Greta Gerwig’s wonderful, open-hearted, energetic version of Little Women.

José finds much to contrast between the versions, picking up in particular on the unusual dimensionality given to the male supporting characters here, whose roles have previously been thankless. Timothée Chalamet and Chris Cooper particularly impress, the former capturing Laurie’s playful, generous spirit; the latter touchingly evoking Mr. Laurence’s grief. Less successful is Meryl Streep’s Aunt March, who slightly too mechanically reaches for the laughs for which she’s designed.

The girls, though, are a triumph of energetic wildness, ambitions and realism. The scenes they share in their childhood home are well observed, wisely mixing all-American sentimentality you might expect with a disarming sororal combativeness you might not. If there’s a bum note amongst them it’s Emma Watson as Meg, who Mike argues never truly embodies the roles she plays, but Saoirse Ronan is miraculously transparent as Jo, and Florence Pugh gives Jo a burning, vital sense of frustration and fury at always being second best to her sisters. Their relationships make the film the success it is, and, Mike suggests, even when the film begins to wrap their stories up in some fairly convenient ways, so fond are we of them that it’s hard not to be swept along.

Greta Gerwig has achieved magical things with Little Women, and you miss it at your peril.

The podcast can be listened to in the players above or on iTunes.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 137 – Cold Pursuit

Remaking his own film, Hans Petter Moland brings us a revenge thriller, starring – who else? – Liam Neeson as a model citizen turned remorseless killer on the trail of those responsible for his son’s murder. Sounds like typical Neeson fare, but Cold Pursuit leaps between dramatic and blackly comic tones with verve, and offers something much more interesting and original than you’re likely to expect.

We find lots to like in it, including its magnificent lighting and compositions, interesting and welcome inclusion of a group of Native American characters, as well as a commentary on their relationship to the very whitest America there is (the film being set in a Colorado ski town), and some surprisingly tender moments between adults and children, and people in love.

We highly recommend it, it’s a huge amount of fun!

The podcast can be listened to in the players above or on iTunes.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

Eavesdropping at the Movies 26 – Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi

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I loved looking at it. I loved the action. I loved the world it created. I loved Laura Dern and Benicio del Toro in it. Adam Driver is filmed as a Byronic hero, anguishingly romantic and at his sexiest. It’s my favourite film in the series, including Star Wars V — The Empire Strikes Back (1980). Mike felt differently. Matt Moore, also a bit lukewarmish about the film as a whole, joins us for this discussion and points to how the film focusses on female characters and interestingly alters the focus of the series.

We discuss how the film represents a shift from an aristocratic focus on blood and destiny to a more democratic purview on social change everyone, of whatever class, race or ethnicity can engage in. Mike came out of the film gleefully playing with a light-sabre only to sit down and slash through what he saw as the film’s weaker points, though he also points out how he believes Rian Johnson is the right director for the film and how, in spite of its faults, it truly does feel like a Star Wars film. Lots of spoilers.

The podcast can be listened to in the player above or at this link

 

Matt Moore, José Arroyo and  Michael Glass of Writing About Film

 

Recorded on 17th December 2017.

Certain Women (Kelly Reichardt, USA, 2017)

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I want to write on this great film in the greater length it deserves. But for now, in the absence of time and to encourage as many people as possible to see it: Kelly Reichardt is the great poet of contemporary American cinema. The West, the poor, marginalised or oppressed; a loneliness and ache lived against wonders of nature are some of her themes. Here, three interlinked stories of four women in Montana, framed through windows, or from outside the windshields of their cars, always near but always separated by something, at a distance, some trying to help, some trying to cheat, some oblivious to the passions they incite; all doing their best in difficult and often lonely circumstances. From the beginning, when you see Laura Dern framed in a circular mirror on the edge of the frame whilst the back of her adulterous lover occupies a larger portion of the rest, their looking at each other fractured for us through peeks at mirrors, the compositions are superbly expressive.  Certain Women is so beautiful, visually and narratively, and the actors so superb: it will be a long time before I forget the image of Lily Gladstone’s beautiful face, stars in her eyes as she gazes longingly at Kristen Stewart. What a great film.

 

José Arroyo

The Fault in Our Stars (Josh Boone, USA, 2014)

The Fault in Our Stars
The Fault in Our Stars is not as retchingly bad as I expected it to be. Beautiful young people do die of cancer of course; and not before they LOVE and suffer tremblingly to an exquisite soundtrack full of the very saddest songs. However, Wilhelm Defoe appears as the emotionally closed-off, selfish artist who listens to Swedish rap and represents everything that’s horrible, which is to to go such lengths to avoid pain that one ends up not feeling at all. He hasn’t quite lost his Green Goblin attitude and is great fun to watch. Shailene Woodley is brave yet vulnerable, all through a constant trickle of tears. Luckily she also manages to be spiky enough to avoid being cloying; it’s a difficult part and she’s wonderful in it. Laura Dern and Sam Trammell are perfect parents and thus annoying but much less so than they could have been. My eyes did well up a little and I did find it manipulative but that’s what goes to one of these movies for – to cry; which is not to say that the filmmakers couldn’t have earned those tears more honestly and more imaginatively. What I liked best was the witty visualizing and pacing of the text and e-mail messages – a delight. As for the rest … Seeing it as a treatise on the true meaning of life will result in inevitable disappointment. However, as emotion porn for the stony-hearted, it offers its share of interest and pleasures. Going to see this type of movie does require a ‘love-means-never-to-have-to-say-you’re-sorry’ attitude. I didn’t love it. But I’m not sorry I saw it either.

José Arroyo