It's really no wonder Ken Loach's magnificent I, Daniel Blake won the Palme D'Or at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival. I've been a longtime dedicated Loach fan since my teens, and this one really is a masterpiece. He's made some very strong films, though critics at times find him a little too didactic. I, Daniel Blake is the agonizing tale of navigating social services and welfare in the UK. It follows a widower trying to collect interim benefits while out of work following a heart attack. It also follows a single mother as she navigates the impossible system, the bond Daniel and her young family forge, and how they all love, help, and support each other. I, Daniel Blake is heartbreaking and profound. 5/5 |
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The Lady in the Van is quite remarkable. This film is adapted from the play by British playwright Alan Bennett. It's weird and delightful, surprising and curious, and fascinating, and it's mostly true. Oh, and it's meta in all the right places. This is the story of an odd-couple relationship between Bennett and an eccentric homeless elderly woman, Margaret Shepard, who lives for 15 years squatting in a van parked in Bennett's driveway. Maggie Smith is incredible, of course. Smith previously portrayed Margaret in the stage play in 1999 and the radio play in 2009. Alex Jennings is terrific pulling double duty as two Bennetts. 5/5 Here's another stellar pick from the Telluride Film Festival. I love a nice quiet, subtle, little character driven piece and that's what 45 Years is. During the week leading up to their 45th wedding anniversary things are thrown off course when the husband receives news that the body of his fiancee from before his current marriage has been recovered in the Alps--where she fell and died 50 years before in a climbing accident. The husband becomes moderately obsessed with his own memories and feelings about this woman whom he had pushed to the back of his mind for so long, while his wife is thrown into a spiral of confusion and jealousy. Charlotte Rampling is stunning. This beautiful film does a remarkable job staying with the wife, often refusing reverse shots and leaving others off camera. 5/5 Sid and Nancy (Alex Cox, UK, 1986) I'm a big Alex Cox fan. Repo Man and Straight to Hell are stellar little punk rock movies. Cox's Sid and Nancy, however, is more than that; it's a remarkable piece of cinema. Don't be mistaken, while based on real people and actual events, this is not really so much a bio-pic as a portrait of self-destruction. Cox did little research and fictionalizes quite a bit. The result is the raw and poignant story of young love through a drug and alcohol fuelled haze. Oldman and Webb are brilliant. 5/5 Amy is a new documentary about the late, great singer Amy Winehouse. This doc is comprised wholly of found footage, that is often set to off-screen interviews about Amy. There are no talking heads or experts in this film. These are the voices of Amy's friends, family including her father Mitch Winehouse, her ex-husband, and her a few colleagues including her former manager Nick Shymansky and producer Salaam Remi. The film focuses on Amy's rise to stardom, her short but impressive career, and her tumultuous personal life during those years. As such, it was a concise (at 2 hours and 8 minutes) portrait of the road to fame its subsequent path of destruction. It's about addiction, self-destruction, eating disorders, fame, talent, heart, and love. Along the way there are several impressive performances, though the documentary is not overly pre-occupied with performance footage. Amy is gut wrenching. I cried. 4/5 The Imitation Game is about mathematician Alan Turing who, with a team of mathematicians, cracked the enigma code and helped Britain win the war against the Nazis in WWII. Cumberbatch was good and all, so was Mathew Goode and even Kiera Knightley. Turing was gay, which was against the law in the UK. He committed suicide in 1954 after a year of court mandated chemical castration following a sexual indecency charge. The film, while it mentions his sexuality several times, it does little more than mention it. Normally, this might bother me. However, I thought that the way it was handled allowed the focus to be on his amazing work and not on his sexuality. This film was under 2 hours, and yes, it is interesting, but it could have been longer. 4/5 |
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