Eleanor Reviews

  *** DVD Release As Ann lays dying, she remembers the wedding weekend of her best friend, Lila, and the passionate love affair she experienced with another wedding guest, Harris. So, maybe I’m just a massive cynic when it comes to all this lovey stuff, but the main premise of this story is that two people, after only spending one weekend together in their entire lives, believe the other to be their soul mate. I’m sorry, I know this is fiction, but the fact that Ann is still pining over this one man years and years after is a little obsessive, but maybe it is not the man she longs for, but the time when she was happiest and had the whole world at her feet. The younger Ann (played by Claire Danes) is to be the bridesmaid to Lila (Mamie Gummer), whose little brother, Buddy (Hugh Dancy) she is also best friends with. At the wedding, Harris (Patrick Wilson) makes an appearance and everything spirals out of control, and the lives of the four young people are changed forever

*** Available for internet streaming/No evidence of DVD release This documentary focuses on the suicides that occurred in 2004, specifically those who jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Filmed over the period of a year in 2004, ‘The Bridge’ focuses on the stories of those who committed suicide by interviewing those they are survived by, as well as showing the harrowing footage of the individuals pacing the Bridge, before jumping into the water. Yes, there are actual clips of people committing suicide in this documentary, some seen up close and others from afar. The documentary focuses on the confusion of those left behind, from parents, to siblings and friends, and those who were in the area at the time. We hear briefly about how each individual came to be in the space that caused them to end their lives, with lots of frank discussion on the effects mental illness and substance abuse. Most distressing are the interviews with parents of those who were me

  *** Picking up where the last film left off, ‘DoS’ follows the journey of the homeless dwarves and their quest to regain their homeland, and their adventures through Mirkwood and Lake Town. I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed. Unlike the rest of the world, I rather enjoyed ‘An Unexpected Journey’ despite its problems, but with ‘DoS’ Jackson really takes the biscuit. To start with, the narrative is all over the place: the meeting with Beorn is over in the first ten minutes of the film; Bilbo only features as a central character at the beginning and the end (if indeed, there is a beginning and an end); and too much time is spent on aspects that Jackson has completely fabricated. By now everyone will know that there is a completely new female elf, Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly), added to the story, who has the most contrived ‘romance’ with dwarf Kili (Aidan Turner) which goes on forever and is completely cringe-worthy. Legolas (Orlando Bloom) also makes an appearance when the

  **** DVD Release When Jerry Lundegaard lands in financial troubles, he hires two hit-men to kidnap his wife in the hope that her father will pay the ransom. However, everything soon spirals out of control and, with the body-count rising, heavily-pregnant police chief Marge Gunderson steps into the ring. This is quite an odd little film. For starters, there is no exposition about the lives of the main characters – we only know them from what they do in the film as there is not ‘background’ information on them.   This gives the suggestion that we are just looking in on a tiny snapshot of their lives. Subsequently, all of the characters seem quite distant from us as the viewer, but this doesn’t impinge on the film as you only really begin to notice at the end. The overall tone is extremely dark, and whilst there are some moments of black-humour (one such moment involves a wood-chipper), the film is mostly gory and a disturbing study into what man will do for money. Stev

**** DVD Release Yes, it’s true – until last night I hadn’t seen ‘Love Actually’ all the way to the finish. So, with it being the festive season all over again, I thought I’d put down my two pennies worth. In the weeks running up to Christmas, we meet and explore the relationships of various different couples. Packed to the gunnels with A-list British actors, the film draws upon that most frustrating, enduring and all-consuming of human emotions: love. With so many different narrative threads, some stories are inevitably stronger than others. The story of Colin Frissell (Kris Marshall) and his quest to achieve an American girlfriend is in quite poor taste, and the Colin Firth thread suffers from under development and the conclusion is so completely over-the-top it verges on cringe-worthy. However, the other stories are endearing. Liam Neeson is excellent as a grieving widower struggling to connect with his stepson (an adorable Thomas Sangster) – it is such a relief to

** DVD Release When I went to collect this film from the DVD library at my university for my film course, the librarian asked if I had been ‘warned’ about it. I responded with ‘Warned?’ to which he replied: ‘Yes, it’s a bit… Err…’              So, before I’d even started I was a little unsure what to expect, but I’d heard that Robert Bresson was a good director, so I gave it ago. Michel has been released from prison after being arrested for thievery, only to find himself in a downward spiral of further petty crimes after the death of his mother. Basically, it’s just really boring. Not a great deal happens for the majority of the film – we see Michel (Martin Lasalle) pickpocketing people on the Metro, and then learning some new tricks, and then pickpocketing people at a train station… and that’s about it. Also, the lack of personal security in this film is deeply alarming – people seem to have no awareness about their possessions, and Michel himself lacks a lock on his

  **** In the not too-distant past, disgraced journalist Martin Sixsmith took the risk of writing a ‘human interest’ story about an elderly woman, Philomena Lee, whose child had been taken from her half a century before, when she had been living in a convent. From the poster and trailer, and having never heard the story before, I assumed this would be a cheerful story. I was wrong… this film packs some enormous emotion wallops and is perhaps one of the most heart-wrenching experiences I’ve had in the cinema this year – you have been warned! Of course, there are moments of humour as the two main characters, played by Jude Dench and Steven Coogan, get to know one another, but overall this is pretty grim. Dench is, obviously, excellent as the thoroughly wronged Philomena, who has not abandoned her faith despite what the Church inflicted upon her. Coogan plays the ‘straight’ and world-weary character of Sixsmith very well, and the pair seem to have a genuine repertoire which

**** DVD Release When young postman Jules makes a bootleg recording of his favourite opera singer, he has no idea of the dangerous world he is about to enter. Set in Paris, Diva depicts two intertwining stories involving cassette tapes, dotted with a variety of complex characters. It is hard to discuss Diva without giving too much away because it is a thriller and has a few twists along the way. Firstly, then, we shall tackle the appearance of the film; all the colours are very vivid, particularly blue which is used throughout the movie and seems to depict high art. The director, Beineix, started out in advertising and that is very evident here – there are lots of elongated shots of elaborate objects with emotive music placed over the top, making them kinds of ‘designer’ pieces that the audience will desire. The interior set-pieces are also interesting – we see inside several different flats, a lighthouse and one industrial space wherein the character Gorodish demonstr

  ***** Available for internet streaming/Cannot find evidence of DVD release In this excellent documentary, Jennifer Siebel Newsom delves into the world of the American media and the portrayal of women in this format. As a new mother, she wants to discover if the world has changed in its depiction of the female from when she was a young woman and suffered sexual abuse and an eating disorder. What she finds is laid bare in this documentary, and it is far from comforting. Newsom uses interviews from both men and women who are either in positions of power or play a role in the media, as well as academics. In between these very interesting interviews are deeply troubling statistics showing the truly dismal situation in the United States. There are also interviews with high school students, who openly dismiss media and its effect on young women – one girl comments on how her friends used to go to the bathroom between lessons to apply ’10 pounds of make-up [when] you’re at

**** After the events of Avengers Assemble , Thor and Loki return to Asgard, where Loki is flung into prison for his crimes against humanity, and Thor goes about restoring peace to the Nine Realms. On Earth, Jane Foster stumbles across an ancient weapon called the Aether, which reawakens the Dark Elf, Malekith, who had been defeated thousands of years before. With the Convergence of the Worlds fast approaching, Thor must reunite with Loki to save the Nine Realms… The first thing to say is that this film is utterly ridiculous from start to finish, and if you are unable to accept the comic book side of it then you are unlikely to enjoy some of the more preposterous plot points. One of the rather clever ways in which new director Alan Taylor combats the ludicrous nature of the film is to have it laugh at itself – at no point does the film take itself seriously, and it has multiple joke moments to ease the extremely far-fetched plot. And the jokes themselves are indeed funny an

** DVD Release Watanabe has been working in the council for the majority of his working life, without ever making anything of consequence happen. Upon discovering that he has months to live, he sets about trying to find a way ‘to live’ properly. It is a question often pondered by man: if you were told you would die soon, what would you do? In the case of Ikiru , our protagonist, he decides to take to the streets with an anonymous novelist, spend time with a young female colleague and finally to build a child’s playground in a bomb crater. For much of the film, the camera hovers on the face of Watanabe (Takashi Shimura) as he stares into the abyss and, indeed, I found myself starring into the abyss myself as the film goes on and on forever! As the film progresses, Watanabe becomes more and more incapable of completing sentences and the few words that he does utter are spoken so inhumanly slowly that, if it weren’t for the subtitles, you could easily forget what he was rep

**** Based on a novel of the same name, Ender’s Game is the story of Ender Wiggin, an exceptional young man given the daunting task of defeating an alien race which nearly destroyed Earth fifty years previously. One of the main features of Ender’s Game is the use of child soldiers to battle the enemy, a debate illustrated excellently by Asa Butterfield, who plays the eponymous Ender. In some sequences, he seems as powerful as any adult, and then in other scenes he appears to us so physically underdeveloped that you cannot help but wince at the task set before him. The use of children in combat creates rifts between Colonel Graff (Harrison Ford) and Major Anderson (Viola Davies), but the morality of using young people is not provided to us in a black and white way – we are shown both sides of the argument throughout, and the implications of such a strategy are not shoved down the throats of the viewer. Butterfield plays Ender as an ultimately angry and confused young man, bu

*** DVD Release Essentially a murder mystery, Rashômon is the story of a brutal crime and the aftermath as told from differing points of view. A priest and woodcutter are hiding in the ruined gate of Rashômon when an anonymous man appears from the deluge and questions them about the court case they appeared at that morning. Through a series of flash backs, the film shows the differing stories of the same event until some kind of truth is understood. The story has elements of An Inspector Calls , with an unknown man asking questions about the murder and disclosing uncomfortable truths about human nature along the way. As a study into human psychology, it is a quite interesting film but the repetitive nature of the flash backs to the murder scene become quite wearing and the wronged woman’s hysterical nature is very grating (there is only so much high-pitch wailing that I can stand). Also, like An Inspector Calls , the ‘moral’ of human nature is played in quite a heavy-ha

  ** DVD Release Fifteen years after the atomic bomb obliterated Hiroshima, a young actress visits the city and embarks on a short term love affair with a native man. Over the course of twenty four hours, the pair explore the city and one another. The film begins with an image of two bodies entwined in a sexual embrace, although we cannot see their faces. Inbetween these erotic images, the film adopts a documentary-style narrative, with a female voice describing Hiroshima today. We see scenes of a museum with relics from August 6 th 1945, as well as montages of people with radiation poisoning and children born incredibly deformed. This opening twenty or so minutes is the most interesting, if very morbid, part of the film which soon deteriorates into the a truly bizarre and cringe-inducing romance between two unnamed characters. The female character (Emmanuelle Riva) is in Hiroshima to film an ‘international peace film’ when she meets her lover (Eiji Odaka) and they en

  **** Based on the stage play of the same name, Sunshine on Leith follows the lives of two young soldiers recently home from Afghanistan. The film follows their trials and tribulations as they settle back into civilian life in Scotland, with added musical numbers based on the songs of The Proclaimers . Yes, this is a musical but it isn’t afraid to shy away from the bittersweet nature of life. The opening sequence features our two heroes in the back of a tank in Afghanistan, instantly drawing us into a world of dread. As the camera pans along the line of young faces, they begin to sing ‘Sky Takes the Soul’ in an especially moving rendition. This sets the tone for the rest of the film and an overall premise – that everyone has scars but happiness can be found if you look for it. This being a film about three separate, yet also intertwining, relationships there are the usual ups and downs but the charm of the film takes you along with it. The characters are believable in t

  **** DVD Release In the Wild West, a stagecoach sets out with a group of strangers aboard. What should have been a routine journey turns into a race against time as the group are tracked by Geronimo and the Apaches. In these conditions, the strangers soon come to know each other. The premise of the film is a simple one, and is essentially a character study of each of the strangers. On board are two outcasts in the shape Dallas and an alcoholic doctor, Boone, alongside a gambler, a whisky salesman, a sick woman, a bank manager and the two drivers. John Wayne appears a short way through as Ringo Kid, a man who has escaped from jail but is now on his way back to town to face his sentence. To start with, none of the passengers really know each other, but as the film progresses they become embroiled in each other’s lives and ultimately set out to protect one another. With so many characters, some are obviously overlooked more than others – for example, I would’ve liked to

**** DVD Release/Currently available on BBC iPlayer In 1960s Los Angeles, Professor George Falconer mourns the death of his long term partner. Over the course of a single day, we follow his movements and visit his past through flashbacks. At the start of the film, George (Colin Firth) tells us that ‘today will be different’ and this is because today is the day that he plans to commit suicide. It has been nearly a year since his partner, Jim (Matthew Goode) died in a tragic car accident and George has still not recovered – his world is a largely grey place, punctuated every now and again with happiness and passing encounters. To represent this, the film depicts George’s life in grey-scale, whilst the happier moments are shown in colour. The colour in these moments is often heavily saturated so they look as strange as the sections shown in grey, such as the scene where George meets a male prostitute in the car park. As a narrative devise, this works very well and is remini

  **** DVD Release/Currently available on BBC iPlayer In the early 1980s, a group of working class boys are singled out by their headmaster as being potential Oxbridge candidates. Newcomer Mr Irwin is assigned to educate them in the ways of the university selection system whilst old favourite Hector continues to inspire them in his eccentric way. This is the original cast that performed Alan Bennett’s West End play, and Bennett is back again here to write the screenplay. As a translation from stage to screen it works very well as it still retains the intimacy you get when someone is performing in the same room as you. All the actors, who have obviously worked together before, have undeniable chemistry and the banter they have with their various teachers and each other is wholly believable and utterly charming. All the boys get enough screen time for the audience to become acquainted with them individually, although some characters do get more attention than others such. S

  **** The premise of Ron Howard’s latest film is very simple – it tracks the course of two drivers, James Hunt and Niki Lauda, through the world of 1970s Formula 1, reaching its peak in the 1976 competition. One of the major credits of the film is making the audience care about two rather unlikeable characters. James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) is the epitome of a play-boy, and enjoys drinking, drugs and driving fast with very little preparation. Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl) is the opposite – he scrutinizes every aspect of the car and the race, and seems entirely emotionally detached, saying that the death of another driver must have been his fault. Both are self-centred and unafraid to speak their minds, and you get the feeling they would be the worst dinner guests. However, as the film goes on, you cannot help but care for them - both are depicted as being vulnerable beneath the surface and you end up celebrating in their victories and mourning their injuries and losses along

  ***** DVD Release During World War Two, a disillusioned group of high-ranking Nazi officers and politicians come together in an attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Using their powers in government, they aim to undermine the regime from the inside by altering the plan ‘Valkyrie’ so that when Hitler was assassinated they would be able to end the war. However, the attempt performed on 20 th July 1944 came up against some severe complications. Everyone knows how the assassination attempt ends, and yet that doesn’t seem to matter as we are wholly on the side of the protagonists and their aim. The empathy we feel for their cause is huge and throughout the film we’re willing for them to succeed, and your heart breaks when the inevitable happens. The tension is literally unbearable at times, but there are also touches of humour and lots of genuine human emotion on display. The cast list is astonishing and, as you’d expect from such an ensemble, the acting is top quality

* DVD Release Modern day Los Angeles is under attack from extra-terrestrials. A squad of U.S. Marines is sent to retrieve an unknown number of civilians from a police station within an area already destroyed under heavy fire. The team have three hours to clear the area before the location is levelled by the U.S. Military. The film is poor on pretty much every level: the plot is unoriginal; the characters are boring and undeveloped; the script is clunky; and there is a distinct lack of tension or emotional engagement. Aaron Eckhart heads the squad as the war veteran who just wants to retire, and adopts a very gruff and breathy speaking technique – he sounds like someone doing a bad imitation of Clint Eastwood. All the other characters are fairly interchangeable – one has some black war paint on his face, one was seen in therapy at the start of the film, and one is female, and the rest don’t amount to much. There is a shockingly bad speech in which Eckhart tries to rally h

**/*** (2.5 stars) Richard B. Riddick (yes, that is his name) is back for a third outing and back on familiar territory. After being betrayed and robbed of his Necromonger crown, Riddick is abandoned on a sun-scorched planet where there are venomous aliens lurking in the mud, and various other carnivorous species who want to eat him. Realising that the planet isn’t as safe as first thought, Riddick advertises his whereabouts and two teams of bounty hunters turn up just in time for rainy season. If you’ve seen ‘Pitch Black’, then you’ve seen this film too – the premise is exactly the same and the outcome pretty similar as well. The film, however, starts out quite well and seems to be quite promising. For the first twenty minutes or so, Riddick (Vin Diesel) is the only human on screen and he pulls it off fairly well. In this section, we get to see a more vulnerable version of the Furyan that we haven’t really experienced before. We watch as he hones his skills after living t

***** Before we begin, I should make it clear that I do not do rom-coms; I don’t enjoy all that slushy ‘love at first sight’ stuff and I find most comedy extremely grating – give me a war film with lots of death and destruction any day! So when I found myself laughing and weeping in equal measure at Richard Curtis’ latest film I was rather surprised. Shortly after turning 21, Tim is called into his father’s office to be told that the men in his family have the ability to time travel (only backwards, and in his own time line). From then on, Tim decides that he will do whatever he can to obtain a girlfriend and meets Mary shortly after moving to London. What follows are a series of escapades involving the two young lovers, with a bit of time travel thrown in. However, this supernatural gift cannot solve everything and soon Tim must come face to face with the inevitable facts of life. The first thing to say is that Domhnall Gleeson (Tim) and Bill Nighy (his dad) are an abso

*** In the not too distant future, Earth is a barren wasteland, overrun with sickness and poverty. The rich no longer live on Earth, but a huge spaceship floating in space called Elysium. On Elysium, there is no sickness, thanks to a pod-like vessels that heal every broken bone and cell mutation. Down in the desert-like remains of Los Angeles, we meet Max, ex-petty criminal, who succumbs to a severe dosage of radiation poisoning. He has days to live, and vows to make it up to Elysium.   Visually, the film is excellent. Elysium has obviously been well-planned and looks great from pretty much all angles. The interiors are well realised and juxtaposes the squalor of Earth well - the shack in which Max (Matt Damon) resides is wholly unpleasant and believably so. The political undertones also come through well, without the audience being knocked over the head with the overall 'message'. All the performances are solid, with Damon in control as the anti-hero and Jodie Foster

** DVD release After being convicted for the murder of her husband, Libby is sentenced to prison where she begins to suspect that she has been set up. Whilst in prison she is informed that she cannot be convicted of the same crime twice, meaning that she could actually kill her husband upon release if she wanted to and not be penalised for it. Yeah, you can see where this is going. After being released, she begins a relentless search to track down her estranged son, stopping at nothing to uncover the truth. This film is really stupid. Libby’s character (Ashley Judd) is really annoying and wracks up so much in the way of criminal damages whilst driving around America in the search for her son that she should really go back to prison. She seems to be able to escape anything, be it being handcuffed to a car or locked in a coffin, which is itself inside a big stone crypt. Having not travelled to America I can’t say much for their domestic flight system, but I’m pretty sure y

  *** Before Mike and Sulley were the top Scarers, they attended Monsters University to learn the fine art of Scaring and all that it entails. Sulley comes from a long line of Scarers – he can scare easily, but fails academically, whereas Mike is top of the class with regards to theory but lacks the scariness of a ‘true monster’. After being kicked off their course, they must compete in a series of team games to win back their place and the respect of fearsome Scarer, Dean Hardscrabble. Pixar cannot be faulted for their inventiveness and attention to detail, which makes the film a visual treat. The range of monsters on display is vast, and the university campus is enviable. Indeed, the initial arrival at university is very true to real life, something that younger viewers may not understand but will amuse the older members of the audience. The games in which the teams must compete are also an excuse for the writers to come up with some exciting touches, and there is humou