Review: Film

Contagion dir Steven Soderbergh, Kate Winslet, Marion Cottiliard, Jude Law, Lawrence Fishbourne, Matt Damon

Pacey. Fear spreads. And disease from bats to pigs to humans is a step away from global contagion. The film is built up using several strands and begins with an edgy summation from the major capitals of the world as the air-borne disease affects entire blocks of the human population from Hong Kong, the States to London. The science is plausibly presented via high-tech scanners, computer programmes and lab monkeys. While the main drama involves the race for an antidote and vaccine as Mitch Emhoff, Matt Damon, cares for his teenage daughter after losing his wife and son.  Predictably across the board we see the range of human response from panic and desperation to altruism and simple acts of kindness. If there is a fault it is that director Stephen Soderburgh is spoilt for starry choice as to how to tie up successfully all the strands from his A-List cast. Some of the stories seem to be either heavily edited, the 'Stockholm' angle involving Marion Cottiliard is a case in point, or to just peter out. Yet the film's overall pace is good, as it tracks retrospectively the movements of Beth Emhoff, Gweneth Paltrow, revealing in the final frames, in 'quick time' how she contracts the disease. Contagion is Soderbergh's cinematic investigation into cause and affect, big time; part thriller, part disaster movie......enjoyable in spite of its limitation......

Review: Theatre

Importance of Being Earnest Oscar Wilde, dir Stephen Unwin, Jane Asher, Rose, Kingston

Elegant. Framed by a black-lacquered picture frame, embossed with gold, all the sharpness of Wilde’s observations, wit and period detail is beautifully captured in this elegant production. The epigrams are delivered in a fresh, fast-paced form as new coinage and as natural as a new spring day; and the well-loved set-pieces, the bunburying, the muffin-eating, the tea-party between Gwendolen and Cicely, and the final production of the handbag itself are deliciously and lovingly executed. With a strong ensemble cast and direction, in which clarity is uppermost, the pairings between Jack and Algy, Gwendolen and Cicely, Dr Chasible and Miss Prism, with a sharply delineated Lane and Merriman as the butlers who see everything but say nothing, not even for ‘ready money’, are uniformly superb. Proceedings are presided over by Lady Bracknell which sees Jane Asher on fine, winning form. She is wiry, formidable but with a natural grace borne from the divine right to lead……....

Review: Theatre

Importance of Being Earnest Oscar Wilde, dir Stephen Unwin, Jane Asher, Rose, Kingston

Elegant. Framed by a black-lacquered picture frame, embossed with gold, all the sharpness of Wilde’s observations, wit and period detail is beautifully captured in this elegant production. The epigrams are delivered in a fresh, fast-paced form as new coinage and as natural as a new spring day; and the well-loved set-pieces, the bunburying, the muffin-eating, the tea-party between Gwendolen and Cicely, and the final production of the handbag itself are deliciously and lovingly executed. With a strong ensemble cast and direction, in which clarity is uppermost, the pairings between Jack and Algy, Gwendolen and Cicely, Dr Chasible and Miss Prism, with a sharply delineated Lane and Merriman as the butlers who see everything but say nothing, not even for ‘ready money’, are uniformly superb. Proceedings are presided over by Lady Bracknell which sees Jan Asher on fine, winning form. She is wiry, formidable but with a natural grace borne from the divine right to lead……Hugely enjoyable......

Review: Theatre

Saved Edward Bond, Lyric, Hammersmith, dir Sean Holmes, Morgan Watkins

Compelling. The sterile backdrop to Mary and Fred’s front room is unrelenting as it moves up and down like the slamming of steel shutters, cutting episode by episode. It’s claustrophobic, deliberately so, yet you are always aware of space. We watch the disintegration of Len and Pam, sort of girlfriend and boyfriend, as they become like Mary and Fred, Pam’s parents. Always fighting, tearing chunks out of each other, the characters are like chickens, so absorbed in pecking each other that they fail to realise that they themselves are being eaten. The play’s outer world is the gang, seen at its most devastating in the stoning of the baby, and made more horrific by the absence of sound. We are left to fill in the blanks ourselves. Bond’s vision is bleak but the message is clear if you strip away hope, decency, respect then sooner or later the group turns in on itself. The play has a ‘play for today’ feel. The accents caricatured belonging to a by-gone time. Its action truncated, episodic, so that the whole experience becomes a forensic exercise. Yet the production is compelling throughout. Written in 1965, and revived after the abolition of the Lord Chamberlain’s censure in 1967, today it seems sadly prophetic set against the recent riots and looting…. 

Review: Film

Midnight in Paris dir Woody Allen, Rachel Mc Adams, Owen Wilson, Kathy Bates, Michael Sheen

Beautiful. Clever, full of romance and witty invention. Americans in Paris, some fall in love others remain on stony ground, as screenwriter, Gil, realises the shortcomings in his relationship with his fiancée, through a magical, midnight spree into Paris in the roaring twenties. Here he meets American ex-pats F Scott Fitzgerald, Zelda, Hemingway, and is critiqued by Gertrude Stein, Picasso, Dali. The film is a take on nostalgia, art, existentialism and sees Allen in brilliant, dazzling form. Owen Wilson as Gil is Allen monque, complete with voice rhythms, indecision, stooped-shuffle and the characteristic throwaway, dead-pan lines that slice pastrami. It’s beautifully shot, with some sparkling recreations, including a spell in la belle epoque, the Moulin Rouge where the champagne just flows and flows…….yet while nostalgia is centre stage it has bite.....live for now as the black and cream Bugati pulls up and the chimes strike midnight........

Review: Theatre

Great Expectations Neil Bartlett, Watermill Theatre, dir Paul Hart 

Larks! An encounter on the Kent Marshes changes Pip’s life and fortunes. His great expectations take him to London where he learns to be a gentleman; where he loves the cold-hearted Estella from afar;  and where he wrestles with his growing priggishness in regards to kind-hearted Joe. Great Expectations is a classic Dickens story. It has everything. It naturally translates to a theatrical setting and Neil Bartlett’s adaptation is robust. The company do well under the direction of Paul Hart, Associate Director of Propeller, with some inventive business to create internal worlds, sounds, which make this a very expressionistic re-telling of the story. The difficulty is that you admire the skill rather than engage with the action, and Pip, Edward Hancock, is too casual to really convince…..Nonetheless, a must for Dickens’ fans……. 

Review: Film

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy director Tomas Alfredson, writer John le Carre, J Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Benedict Cumberbach, John Hurt, Tom Hardy, Mark Strong

A-cut-above. 70s’ London; tit for tat; spy for spy. Period detail is meticulously adhered to, and in tonal colour, run-down London is a lot like Moscow. There is a washed-out mood, tired, a between-states view point before the fall of the Berlin wall………So George Smiley adjusts his specs, comes out of semi-retirement, to catch a mole at the heart of a spy-ring. Potentially there are five suspects. Yet this is not a game of elimination, the film is far more subtle than that, but the clues are there from the beginning. The performances are terrific throughout, particularly Gary Oldman, with comparisons to  Sir Alec Guinness inevitable. His Smiley is tired, done-over. There are no dramatic outbursts just a slow, forward progress as he crosses and re-crosses an a-moral hinterland, and picks through the debris of a broken marriage.  The support cast are also fine, each keyed in to the film’s particular dystopian style and mood. The Christmas party complete with Lenin father Christmas mask, Russian anthem and a cameo appearance by John le Carre, is the only moment of irony, which intercuts the action. The direction is sharp and the music an eclectic mix of cool jazz……..  

Review: Film

The Debt dir John Madden, Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson, Jessica Chastain

Classy. 3 Mossad agents set out to capture and bring to justice the Surgeon of Birkenau. The action is set in 1966 and the present, dipping between the two periods. East Berlin in the 60s is grim, grey and sinister; the present day is sunshine, LA beaches and comfortable posterity. Yet the debt of the title is manifold: justice, guilt, history and the real casualty, truth. Jessica Chastain and Helen Mirren play Rachel Singer; Sam Worthington and Ciaran Hinds play David Perretz; while Maron Csokas and Tom Wilkinson play Stefan Gold. The younger trio fair better than the old guard but then the story spins on the 60s set up and dominates the film. So that by the time we are emotionally connected in the present day the drama rushes towards its dramatic conclusion, through sleight of hand envelope shifting and the wave goodbye. Yet Jesper Christensen is chilling as Dieter Vogel. He exploits each with the precision of the surgeon’s knife. Pacey, earlier direction; skilful editing, particularly in the opening and closing sequences, with stunning music by Thomas Newman, give this 2007 remake of Assaf Bernstein’s Israeli film, a classy edge……