“Never Let Me Go” is most certainly on the moral side of presenting human life and more importantly, the individual, as uniquely precious, and this British import based on the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro deserves credit for that.  Where it fails, however, and does so miserably, is in its presentation of the human spirit. About a half-hour in the central premise of the story is finally revealed and fully explained. Not to give too much away, but essentially we discover that our three main characters have been born into and chosen for a horrific future. As tragic and sad as this is, there’s just no way to get around the fact that watching our protagonists quietly and passively accept this fate like dumb stockyard cattle does not make for compelling storytelling.

 
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Set in a dreary alternate past where everything’s familiar except for the central circumstance, the year is 1978 and Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth are growing up and benefitting from a prim and proper British education in what at first appears to be a storybook English boarding school. Something’s amiss, though. The young students don’t seem to have last names and normalcy is regularly broken up by the inexplicable. In-between standard academic courses, games, and meals, the children have been conditioned to never leave the school grounds and whenever they exit the building there’s an electronic device in their wrist that appears to do some kind of electronic roll call and/or head count.  

By 1985, Kathy has grown into Carey Mulligan; Tommy, Andrew Garfield; and Ruth, Keira Knightley. Having graduated, they’re shipped off to the countryside to await their fate and work though a brittle friendship damaged by a years-long love triangle. You see, Kathy loves Tommy but Tommy loves Ruth and Ruth loves that she stole Tommy from Kathy. The motives behind the romantic machinations are eventually revealed as something deeper and more complicated than expected, but even in affairs of the heart this is a passive bunch and frustration at their inaction overwhelms any sympathy one might otherwise have for them. (more…)

No matter how frustrated, disappointed, or outright disgusted Hollywood makes me, all is forgiven during that brief moment just after the trailers finish and just before the film begins. When those lights dim the chip dissolves from my shoulder and all the filmmaker need do to win me forever is tell one helluva story.

Politics shmolitics… Just take me away.

For we hopeless movie lovers, each year hope (if you’ll pardon the expression) springs eternal with a fresh offering of pull-out-the-stops-studio-balance-sheet-in-the-crosshairs slate of tent poles. And for that reason, this is my favorite part of the movie year because all I want for my ten bucks is to get lost for a couple hours, and from May 1st through the end of August filmdom at least attempts to put the political nonsense on hold to do just that. (more…)

There were two big stories that emerged from Hollywood this week.  The first was the release of the first trailer for Bruno, Sacha Baron Cohen’s newest movie creation, a highly offensive faux documentary about a gay Austrian fashion critic touring America.

The second was the release of Keira Knightley’s new ad about domestic violence.

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Now these two videos have very little in common.  Cohen’s trailer is an outrageous piece of shock theater.  Knightley’s ad is a public service message designed to raise awareness of domestic abuse. 

But what both have in common is a willingness to cross all lines of good taste and judgment.  (more…)

There was not a great deal of drama surrounding this year’s British Academy of Film & Television Arts Awards, commonly known as the BAFTA Awards. Slumdog Millionaire (Fox Searchlight) is a movie with deep roots in the UK. Director Danny Boyle was born in Manchester, England, lead actor Dev Patel is the star of the popular British television series Skins, and the movie is a gigantic hit in the British Isles with an impressive $20.6M (US dollars) in box office for Pathe, since its release there on January 6.

BAFTA Winner Mickey Rourke

The two major uncertainties entering Sunday’s ceremony were whether Kate Winslet, twice-nominated for Best Actress, would split her own vote and miss out on her second BAFTA Award and who would prevail in the Sean Penn-Mickey Rourke battle for Best Actor. Aside from that, it seemed like a Slumdog sweep, and that’s exactly how it played out.

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