Wow, for once, yesterday's tv was a bonanza of decent films! I watched three back-to-back.
First up was Paris Can Wait, in which Diane Lane is married to busy film producer Alec Baldwin. (Given that the writer / director is Eleanor Coppola, who's married to Francis Ford Coppola, I have to wonder whether it isn't a bit autobiographical. But anyway.) She's come to France to be with him while he works. They're in the south of France, due to travel to Paris - but he is called away elsewhere, and tells her to head on without him. However, she has an ear infection, and doesn't fancy flying - never fear, his solicitous French colleague offers to drive her, and won't take no for an answer.
So begins a languid road movie. He's a gourmand, and knows every interesting detour - so that she's very late getting to Paris, and her husband gets rather suspicious. (He doesn't appear after the beginning of the film, except for sundry tetchy phone messages, warning her about her driver.) The subject of the film is the growing relationship between her and her driver - but the film is more interesting, in general, as a travelogue, with some lovely settings. To the extent that I'm vaguely thinking of a break there for my birthday. Watch this space. Her companion is unfailingly charming, and the trip is a most watchable one. Recommended.
Right after that was Sweet November, in which Charlize Theron dates a different man every month, fixes their faults, and sends each back into humanity a more empathetic person. She rather meets her match, however, in Keanu Reeves, a workaholic exec. Jason Isaacs also shows up as one of her friends. It's a sweet film, in fact, and the relationship between them is touching.
Finally, I should have gone to sleep - but got hooked into another film of hers - The Italian Job (2003). An all-star cast for this remake, in which she is a safecracker, whose boyfriend (Mark Wahlberg) leads a gang of thieves planning to rob Edward Norton (my favourite actor of all, alongside Andrew Scott.. jeez, if they were ever in a film together, I wouldn't know where to look!). Donald Sutherland plays her safecracking father, who taught her everything she knows, and is a mentor of her boyfriend. Also in the gang we have Jason Statham - whom I've never ever seen in a film before, action films not being my thing - as a driver.
It's a long time since I saw the original - all I could remember of it was that it was a heist film, with Michael Caine, and a fabulous car chase in Mini Coopers. Well, this one doesn't disappoint - the action comes thick and fast, with some great performances, and just like the original, the theft occurs during a traffic jam, and there is a knockout chase in Mini Coopers! (Small and manoeuvrable, you see.) Terrific fun.. anyway, it didn't finish until after 3, and I was too tired to blog.
Today, I decided to head back to that nice chap outside Ennis, who took such pains over washing my car (which already had cobwebs on it again - that's nature for you!), to see about getting it valeted. Which meant I had to clear the rubbish out of it first.. I also looked at what's on in the cinema there - and what appealed was Reminiscence, set in a dystopian, flooded future, where people like to live in their memories, and Hugh Jackman is a "detective of the mind", who has some fancy machinery to bring their memories to life. Thandiwe Newton is his assistant, Rebecca Ferguson the femme fatale. Showing late afternoon, so if I got to that nice man early enough - well, it shouldn't take as long as washing the car did! I'd have to pay for parking, but it isn't much, and he doesn't work Sundays.
Ah well, he wasn't working when I got there either - his little shed was bolted up, and there was no sign to say when he'd be back. Nuts - but I have time before the test, and I'll try him again. At least I got it cleared out at last! And since I wasn't having the car valeted, I had that much more time before the film - plenty of time to trail around Abbey Street Car Park, which was full again, and head back to where I'd come from.
I made the cinema in time - an usher again insisted on showing me to my seat. When we got there, it was to find another couple occupying my seat (and one beside it) - he asked them to move, which they happily did. As they said, they'd thought they were going to be the only ones there, and had moved more centrally. Fair enough. Ironic though, I thought, that I was just asked to sit in the seat that had just been vacated - so much for cleaning the cinema between viewings, so we don't catch each other's germs!
So, this is a film noir with a backdrop of flooding - it's set in Miami, but the low-lying streets are flooded, and, except in dammed areas, people travel in boats: reminiscent of Venice, but not as pretty. There's also a brief nod to temperature increase, as Hugh mentions that it's so hot during the day that people tend to sleep, and live their lives at night. It's a cute idea, but apart from reminding us of the perils of climate change, serves little purpose in the film. Apart from a vague description of how the impending flooding led to war, in which he and his assistant both fought - which explains why she's so handy with a gun.
The other futuristic gimmick, of course, is this mind-reading device, which forms the backbone of the plot - people can come to this chap and relive memories, which can then be viewed and recorded. They have to lie in a water bath to do this, for some reason - electrodes attached to their heads, and to a machine that delivers a low voltage. He speaks softly into a microphone to direct their thoughts, and the results are displayed on a kind of stage, and recorded. Lovely for people to relive past happiness, in what is a miserable age - also very handy if you've lost something and want to remember where you put it!
The plot basically centres around some bad people wanting access to other people's memories, for nefarious reasons - the recordings are stored on nifty transparent plates, sort of like mini floppy discs. Rebecca Ferguson plays a singer again, as she did in her other film with Hugh Jackman, The Greatest Showman, but this time she does her own singing! And is quite passable. Dunno whether he had anything to do with the writing and sketching in his notebook, though. Anyway, aside from the mind-reading aspect, it's pretty straightforward film noir, so if that's your bag you should enjoy it.
Stopped off at An Teach China again on the way back, ordered the same delish meal.. someone ordered satay while I was waiting, I might have that next time! They didn't have the dessert I wanted, so I chose an alternative - but she assured me that they'd have mine back next week!
Tomorrow's film: well. No matinees that suit - all films left that I haven't seen are for a MUCH younger demographic. So I've broken it to my mother that it's going to have to be an early-evening film. So she'll have to do without me for a few hours in the evening. Now, going on IMDB ratings, the top two films in the area are - films I'm just not interested in. Third up is The Courier, a Cold War spy film with Benedict Cumberbatch - but the showings are later than I'd hoped, heading towards the 7pm mark.
Would you believe, next on the list is a horror film! The Night House has a rating of 6.9, which is much higher than horror films typically reach.. Rebecca Hall is a young woman whose husband inexplicably committed suicide. Seeking to make sense of what's happened, she goes to stay in the lake house he built for her. Things get weird. Watch some pretty scary trailers, you'll see what I mean.. I'm not going to give anything away, I'll just say that it reminds me of a seriously weird book I read, whose name escapes me, which was recommended on a list of scariest books of all time. The subject was a house of multiple dimensions.. I've booked that film, at the Omniplex.
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