Conviction (2010): review: 5.5/10

In Michigen, a working class mother trains to become a lawyer in order to free her brother, whom she believes has been wrongly convicted for murder.

This is a protracted and earnest picture in which Hilary Swank's unusual lips provide the only light relief.

Please Give (2010): review: 5.5/10

A New York couple run a shop where they sell Scandinavian style furniture often bought cheaply in house clearance sales. They have a pimply charmless daughter; an elderly, cantakarous grandmother lives in an apartment opposite whom is occasionally visited by her grand-daughters.

The porcine husband, who is selfish and has an affair is contrasted with the wife who feels the need to give and do things for others; it also contrasts the two sisters, one who is a goody two shoes, the other who is rather harsh and unkind.

But it is hard to care: there seems so much hand wringing about the film, which lacks the least spark delight or spontanaity and, as a result, is rather boring despite reasonable performances all round.

True Grit (2010): review: 7/10

*

A headstrong girl, having recently lost her father to a thief, hires a marshal to bring him to justice. A second marshal joins them, forming a party spanning three generations They proceed into Indian country to pursue the villain.

Overlong, but with some interesting intergenerational conflicts. As so often, Jeff Bridges overplays his hand.

The Coen's seem to have an ability to make films which mesmerise, usually because of their beauty, but which fade from memory very soon after being watched. 

True Grit contains  considerable violence and cruelty: hangings, shootings, stabbings, a man has a finger cut off. These have a revoting sadistic quality.

Letters to Juliet (2010): review: 3/10

A girl with unusually large eyes, but who is otherwise quite insipid, works as a fact checker for the New Yorker (she is also a writer but she is too dull to send any of her work out). She has a fiancee whose lips are always oddly shiny, as if permenantly coated in vaseline. He is going to open a restaurant, and is plainly a little obsessed about this. He certainly isn't much interested in his blonde fact-checker, which isn't surprising given her utter dreariness.

They proceed to Tuscany for a sort of pre-maritial holiday where he spends his time in pursuit of fancy food-stuffs, while she meets an elderly woman who is in pursuit of an old flame from the fifties, and whom she decides to assist. She also meets the grandson of the old woman, who is an ill-mannered twerp (he is supposed to be from the snob-British classes but actually he sounds and looks like a German- quite badly cast). Nonetheless, perhaps predictably, they fancy each other though they are too straight and dull to exchange body fluids except for a little saliva on a lawn.

And so on and so forth...

For reasons which I cannot explain, this drivel is somehow watchable despite its manifest absurdity. I guess it's partly just because it doesn't take itself too seriously.

The King's Speech (2010): review: 7/10

The Duke of York, brother to the heir to the British throne, has a debilitating stammer: his wife, Elizabeth, finds an speech therapist, a lively and perceptive Australian, to help.

The film charts their friendship through the challenges faced by the Duke most notably when, due to the abdication crisis, he unexpectedly becomes King, and when addressing the nation at the onset of the Second World War.

The film has been extravagantly praised. But, as with The Queen (2006), a large part of my time watching this film was passed in embarassment.

In part whis is a specifically British embarassment of seeing a royal figure depicted intimately.

Before, I had seen George VI to be a dignified figure, assured and calm, having seen him elegantly and formally depicted on coins (British coinage is notable for it's excellent portraiture) and oil paintings. Now, I see human failure, an unhappy, sometimes mean-spirited figure, with limited depth or charm, capable of duty, not much more; bossed about by his shrill wife (played almost satirically by Bonham-Carter). His elder brother is worse, of course-  cruel, selfish and silly.

If we are stripped of our illusions are we reft from our ideals, or do we learn compassion? Do you want to feel compassion for kings?

The film is episodical shot, lacking a certain fluency. The scenes of London are interesting, with nicely decorated art deco sets, and there are enjoyable contrasts between the family life of the Australian therapist and that of the Royals.

But the film is less interesting than it might be. It begins to ask questions about the value of duty, of respect for convention and tradition, and how an indvidual should relate to these, but fails to explore them with thoroughness. This is mainly because the hero is lacking in the depth and intelligence required to be a vehicle for such explorations (as the summary description of the British royal family would imply: "German and not too bright").

Blue Valentine (2010): review: 7.5/10

The charmed early romantic meeting of a removal man and a student are contrasted with torrid scenes depicting the decline of the relationship.

The film does not describe why their relationship could not be sustained.

 The acting in the film is very alive. The girl is the courted- passive, later judgmental, he is the suitor, becoming angry when she rejects him.

The film is overlong and less purposeful than it needs to be, lacking a central message.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010): review: 1/10

Notorious financier Gecko is released from prison, writes a book and gives lectures. His dreary daughter is having a relationship with a young broker with an effeminate manner*  and big dark eyes: thanks in part to Gecko this fellow sees the light and rejects the wicked ways of speculative capitalism.

This results in the usual macho posturing in boardrooms as well as supposedly creepy meetings and conversations with his mentor.

This is a long, preachy and joyless film, an utter stinker, which even Douglas cannot save from tedium.

*Don't you think he looks rather like the Marc Almond in his "Tainted Love" days?

Black Swan (2010): review 9.5/10

A ballerina is chosen to play the lead in Swan's Lake: the film details her inner turbulence, the relations with other members of her company and her mother and with her predatory dance master.

Beautifully shot, superbly acted and intense.

The Chronicles of Narnia (2010): The Voyage of the Dawn Treader: review: 7/10

Susan has discovered her sex appeal in the USA and is therefore not invited to Narnia (sex not being Mr Lewis's cup of tea): instead brattish Eustace, a cousin with whom the children are staying, is taken on with Prince Caspian's Voyage.

The effects are supurb, and the children not too obnoxious but the narrative is somewhat episodic: this a fault traslated from the original text.

It is also difficult for the film-makers to figure out quite how moralising to make the films: again, this issues from the books themselves. Aslan, with blow-dry mane, makes his occasional appearances to instruct and reassure, quite why and when is never really explained.

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010): review: 1.5/10

In London. an elderly man leaves his wife to date a prostitute of low social origins; his ex-wife consoles herself with the aid of a soothsayer and alchohol. Meanwhile, their daughter and her husband, who are an art dealer and struggling writer respectively, argue and meet others.

The stilted script and wooden acting suggest an utter lack of curiousity about how people truly fuction: as a consequence the film lacks humour or bite.

And Woody Allen's London is, as ever, insipid: completely lacking any of the messiness of the real. Indeed there is something annoying about his parade of expensive places.

Woody Allen's stock themes and devices: older man and younger woman, stuggling writers, the cultured upper middle classes, jazz music and Americans abroad are shuffled together and reproduced with increasing weariness each time he makes a film.

The Social Network (2010): review: 5.5/10

Creepy Harvard Nerds battle it out between themselves and some posh jocks over the provenance of a successful social networking site.

All the characters are unpleasant, shallow, clever, heartless people. They seem to dislike women especially.

It is difficult to care who originated Facebook, which is little different from any of the other social networking sites, and harder still to care about the characters in this film.

An Englishman in New York (2010): review: 2/10

Quentin Crisp is in New York where his individualism and wit make him popular, until he upsets people by describing AIDS as a "fad". His editor friend, for whom he writes reviews, tries to persuade him to retract his remark.

The film also traces Crisp's friendship with a young painter.

The film is not unenjoyable, but it is not good either: Hurt's performance is heavy going, arch and unsubtle, as if translated from the stage to the screen without consideration of the differences in the two media, and the other actors, especially Cynthia Nixon (of "Sex and the City"), are are two dimensional.
 

Cemetery Junction (2010): review: 7.5/10

In a small town in 70s England, a young man attempts to advance himself in insurance sales, attempting to rejecting the culture of his group of friends.

Amiable black comedy which reveals much about the English distrust of strivers.

Eat, Pray, Love (2010): review: 2/10

A narcissistic woman, played by Julia Roberts (whose mouth is incredibly wide) leaves her husband, then proceeds to Italy to eat, to India to pray and to Bali to discover love.

Stange, overlong offering which illustrates the self-obsession of contemporary western women without analysing it, and which features pretty, if obvious, touristic imagery of various places and a pleasant soundtrack.

The Infidel (2010): review- 2/10

A Muslim London Taxi driver discovers that his birth parents are Jewish: meanwhile his son intends to marry the daughter of an extremist Islamic cleric.

There is enough material here for a very fast, funny short film, but instead we get a lengthy one in which cultural cliche after cultural cliche is labouriously worked through.

This is simply too narrow, and unsurprising a basis for comedy, which should at some point has to touch more closely on observed experience.

Omid Djalili does his best but even his energetic performances cannot save the film from tedium.

Hot Tub Time Machine (2010): review- 2/10

*

Four friends mysteriously return to the 80s and a winter holiday resort and festival they attended as teens.

The film raises, and fails to resolve, various issues about the disappointments of life, instead seeking to divert through rapid pacing and gross humour.