Change Your Image
tonys_aussie
Reviews
The Lake House (2006)
A clever little romantic classic
Hi from the future time of Easter 2024, watching this charming time travel (or at least time communications travel) romance about the strongly - referenced years 2004 and 2006. I love the movie, and see it every year or two.
I watched with my significant other, and it's a delightful movie, very effectively tugging at the heartstrings.
Very sophisticated smart dialogue. It's not often you'll see discussions about architecture of Le Corbusier and Richard Meier, the play of light in buildings and how it's different in Spain and Rome and LA, and a short architectural walking tour of Chicago in 2006, all wrapped up into a wonderful romance.
The stars, Sandra Bullock, and Keanu Reeves, work well together. Wonderful to see desirable natural body shapes on all the actors from 2006, before today's anorexic Ozempic diet drugs look.
Sandra Bullock scrumptious, Keanu Reeves excellent, Christopher Plummer very effective, and supporting actors including Ms Shahreh ahadashloo as a Polish (!) Chicago emergency ward senior doctor.
And wonderful referential nods to Cary Grant and the beautiful Ingrid Bergman in "Notorious" where Ingrid is probing whether Cary cares for her. Movie buff heaven in the mix. And by the way, for all of those critics who commented that Sandra and Keanu underplayed the roles, the grabs of "Notorious" showed that Ingrid Bergman was also playing those scenes very low-key and understated. I think that director Alejandro Agnesti was aiming for emotional parallels in "the Lake House".
I've seen this movie several times. In its low-key manner it's at least as effective as Sliding Doors and other time shift romance fantasy fables and with more emotional depth.
Sure, it involves suspension of disbelief, but that's what fantasy is about - artistic creations designed to appeal to the heart and brain. The Lake House works extremely effectively as a cinematic work of art.
The music is also very effective, with a mixture of Paul McCartney and Italian crooners providing very effective underscoring of the plot points.
An underappreciated minor classic.
Irish Wish (2024)
Okay, so it's a romance, but not bad...
This is a fun movie. It's not a thriller, no evisceration, no blood and intestines flowing (not that I don't mind these sometimes). But it is enjoyable, it's a movie I can watch with my wife without her cringing, and operates as a fun travelogue of Ireland (bravo the location scouts and cinematographer and colorization team). Lindsay Lohan is OK, she and Ed Speleers work well together, as do the other cast. The script and plot are just average, and will not win any awards, but the actors perform adequately with the material. And it's a good antidote to "end of the world, end of life, end of civilisation" movies and series where you feel you need an antidepressant, or a good stiff drink after watching them.
The Professor and the Madman (2019)
Excellent, moving and literate movie with heart
First streamed this excellent movie in late 2023: very engaging and surprisingly moving. It was based on a true story, detailed in the book by Simon Winchester, about a Scottish autodidact Mr Murray, (well acted, Mel Gibson, who also drove the film as a passion project) who is asked by Oxford University to rev up the project for an authoritative English dictionary based on historical principles and sources. Murray has the bright idea (predating Wikipedia by a century) of asking volunteers to submit English words and their historical origins. An American former army doctor Dr Minor with schizophrenia (Sean Penn, magnificent acting) commits murder and later connects to the project. Outstanding acting includes Jennifer Ehle and a great cast of English character actors, familiar through English film and TV. The story and film explore rehabilitation,the courage to forgive people, for their transgressions - very moving - academic politics, the progress of justice and how it can be influenced by those with a passionate belief to right wrongs. The film is superbly directed, and I'll be back to stream it again. I wondered how I missed this since 2018. Looks like many critics panned it, but I think many critics' taste is debased by a diet of juvenile movies and they can't engage with movies that have heart and brains. This film has dramatised history as effectively as The Crown and A Beautiful Mind. Do yourself a favour and watch it: you'll be back.
Faith, Hope & Love (2019)
Enjoyable romcom, "pick yourself up, dust yourself off, start all over again"
I enjoyed this movie a lot. Excellent rom-com, dance, family movie - widower with daughters and divorced dance teacher connect, reinvigorate their damaged lives through dancing and find faith and love. Great premise - like the TV dance shows with a love interest. I suspect the movie had minimal theatrical release due to COVID so negligible formal critic reviews, but I loved it.
The actors were very good. Peta Murgatroyd the female lead is a professional dancer, very well known on US TV, looked great, camera loves her, she acted well, reminded me of Jennifer Garner - I loved the Australian accent and that she kept her real surname. Robert Krantz the male lead did great: the leads had great chemistry as their acquaintance morphed into love. Excellent supporting actors, including some well known actors such as Ed Asner and others from movies and TV in character roles - like Easter eggs which added to the pleasure.
The story was heartwarming and had great feelgood factor. The movie was about faith and life and moving on after death and life disruption, great fit at a time of epidemic and social disruption. Great writing by Robert Krantz.
Robert Krantz not only wrote and starred but also directed. I think it's his first movie direction: the movie started slow but built well. It had a realistic tone and buildup - the joy of dance, love and faith which revives peoples' souls and lives. But, the tone was naturalistic, no-one became a Broadway star and that made it all the more affecting.
This is a great show for the holidays, a pick me up for your heart if the weather or life is cold. You'll walk out smiling. I'm recommending this to all my friends.
Queen of the Desert (2015)
Excellent, well worth watching - a longer time/series would have improved it
Excellent, underappreciated, well worth watching
I've just finished watching "Desert Queen" in all its 2 hour movie length. The movie is underappreciated, and reviewers in its year of release were jaded by bang-bang-shoot-em-up and missed what this movie has to offer.
Gertrude Bell - Gertrude of Arabia, who inspired jealous comments from many including TE Lawrence - was born into the 6th richest family in England, the first Oxford woman graduate, incredible adventures in the Middle East, tragic love life with two potential husbands dead which constrained her life. Through this all . Ms Bell gained the respect and confidence of the Bedouin (fiercest Arab tribes) and had major role in the creation of the Middle East after the First World War. She published numerous books including photographic records, advised British imperial policy, seeking to win nationhood and independence for the Arab countries.
This is a powerful life, and we can understand why famed director Werner Herzog, who also wrote the screenplay, had difficulty getting it all in. "Lawrence of Arabia" covered similar historical and dramatic territory and took almost 4 hours to tell the full personal and historical story. So perhaps this movie was too short to fit in the life, the history, the tragedy and all. In 2021, a series (Netflix? Reese Witherspoon) could be built off the storyline
But the movie is wonderful. It reads as a reverie, a homage to the career of Ms Bell and also the sociology of the Arab tribes. It has very sophisticated script lines as throwaways eg. A Bedu sheikh discusses the French poet Rimbaud in his tent with Ms Bell, And this throwaway interchange scene
(Gertrude reading at dawn golden light, Arab guide Fattuh comes with eggs in his hands to Gertrude):
F Can the lady show me how to do it?
G. To cook an egg?
F. The desert knows no eggs, the desert knows no hens
G. You boil it for five minutes
F. The desert knows no minutes
G. The length of a prayer
F. Oh. Ever present.
(cut)
All these little pieces gifts scattered throughout.
The photography is glorious. It will get you immediately planning a trip to Morocco to check out the locations. The soundtrack of Arab inspired music is wonderful. Nicole Kidman does a good performance, Damien Lewis is good, others too.
I suspect that Hertzog was trying to present the British "stiff upper lip" attitude of the era while portraying the seething emotions below. He wasn't wholly successful in that aspect, unlike other masterpieces he's done. But who complains about low-key characterisations in "2001" or Ibsen or Bergman, when we are expected to be actively thinking about the back story, the environment, the historical milieu.
I suspect this is the issue. Reviewers and audience thought this was a genre piece - female Indy Jones - but it isn't.
So the movie is definitely worth watching. It's a homage, a dream, a history. It will make you want to find out more about Gertrude Bell, get her books, watch the documentary about her life, and think about travel to Morocco if not Iraq just now.
Doc Martin: Dry Your Tears (2011)
Magnificent: lots of transitions, lots of business, full of sly humor
(This review from Australia, in the plague year 2020). This is a wonderful episode of Doc Martin, effortlessly pulling off a series of transitions and pivots (to use the 2020 favourite stockmarket term) in a very humorous manner. First, the funeral of Aunt Joan leads to replacement Aunt Ruth (Eileen Atkins, wonderful setup, initially dour for reasons we come to understand). The aunts of Doc Martin provide through the series a lot of connections to the doctor's broader family, and give all 9 seasons a B plot arc of the aunts' life on their farm. I loved the sly humour of the relationship between the doc (who's "on the spectrum") and Ruth who shares these family characteristics, how the doc in his usual Superdoc guise diagnoses that she's not actually dying of lupus and wonderfully says to her "I'm sorry but you're not dying", she gives him a hug (wonderfully awkward because they are both not touchy-feely).
And then the episode sees the doc, initially for a period of some months, not actually leaving the village to return to London: a geographical non-transition. Additionally we see the first appearance of the Morwenna (Jessica Ransom) as the new receptionist - whom we all come to love all the way through to the end of series 9 and hopefully series 10 being shot in Cornwall in summer 2020.
And to cap it off, Louisa (Carolyn Catz) has borne Martin's and her son, and returns with Martin. Carolyn Catz is positively luminous in this episode (she and Martin Clunes and team must have been having a lot of fun, as the often spiky demeanour of Louisa became much gentler in this episode). A shout out for the wonderful dog-handling: I've never seen a series which has done better with finding appealing dogs to pop up in unanticipated places for Martin to dislike and us to enjoy.
It's wonderful to see a team absolutely on top of their game: wonderful writing, great acting, deft direction and lots of really sly humour deftly handled. A wonderful uplifting episode, which achieves a major foundational setup for the 5 seasons to follow.
Doc Martin: Dry Your Tears (2011)
Magnificent: lots of transitions, lots of business, full of sly humor
(This review from Australia, in the plague year 2020). This is a wonderful episode of Doc Martin, effortlessly pulling off a series of transitions and pivots (to use the 2020 favourite stockmarket term) in a very humorous manner. First, the funeral of Aunt Joan leads to replacement Aunt Ruth (Eileen Atkins, wonderful setup, initially dour for reasons we come to understand). The aunts of Doc Martin provide through the series a lot of connections to the doctor's broader family, and give all 9 seasons a B plot arc of the aunts' life on their farm. I loved the sly humour of the relationship between the doc (who's "on the spectrum") and Ruth who shares these family characteristics, how the doc in his usual Superdoc guise diagnoses that she's not actually dying of lupus and wonderfully says to her "I'm sorry but you're not dying", she gives him a hug (wonderfully awkward because they are both not touchy-feely).
And then the episode sees the doc, initially for a period of some months, not actually leaving the village to return to London: a geographical non-transition. Additionally we see the first appearance of the Morwenna (Jessica Ransom) as the new receptionist - whom we all come to love all the way through to the end of series 9 and hopefully series 10 being shot in Cornwall in summer 2020.
And to cap it off, Louisa (Carolyn Catz) has borne Martin's and her son, and returns with Martin. Carolyn Catz is positively luminous in this episode (she and Martin Clunes and team must have been having a lot of fun, as the often spiky demeanour of Louisa became much gentler in this episode). A shout out for the wonderful dog-handling: I've never seen a series which has done better with finding appealing dogs to pop up in unanticipated places for Martin to dislike and us to enjoy.
It's wonderful to see a team absolutely on top of their game: wonderful writing, great acting, deft direction and lots of really sly humour deftly handled. A wonderful uplifting episode, which achieves a major foundational setup for the 5 seasons to follow.
Lewis: Music to Die For (2008)
Excellent episode on so many levels...
(watching from Australia during Covid lockdown)
Makes me want to go to Oxford right now; glorious photography (bad luck I can't leaver the country and UK visiting is dangerous in these plague times)
A very sophisticated treatment of Germany in the Cold War, and examination of the motivations and pressures that led to traitors and damage to lives
Great connection to Morse and development of Lewis after some training wheels episodes - particularly unresolved characterisation of Lewis which had even Hathaway looking at him as a specimen) in series 1. We see a smart of attractive character at last.
Lewsi-Hathaway "bro" relationship starts to see real developmentm, with very clever amusing writing, with sophisticated lines and situations.
A lot of fun..
Le bureau des légendes (2015)
This is the best - if there was ever a lockdown TV series this is it
This show is so good I'm smiling and shaking my head in respect - this review is written in Victoria Austraklia lockdown in July 2020, just having seen all 5 series
It's a spy series: the best I've ever seen. It's so good I will, when I rewatch it (investing another 50 hours) I'll comment more on individual episodes. It's at the very least the equal of Le Carre's George Smiley series based on his books, and reminds me very much of the Sandbaggers and Callan, two series helmed by former intelligence pros. And unlike Le Carre's books which were the plotline for the series here it's completely the invention of showrunner Eric Rochant and team: that is, it's original. it's influenced by French DGSE experiences and gossip as well as the plotting of Rochant and his writing team (great article in Variety, March 31, 2020). And Rochant even appears in s5e3 in a small role briefing a French agent in Phnom Penh.
The action (if you're talking about bang-bang shoot-em-up or blow-em-up or cut-em-up) is doled out sparingly. But the intellectual action, the game of cat and computer mouse is magnificent, played over the globe (in this series and indeed in this one episode Paris, Moskva, Phnom Penh, Cairo, Sinai Peninsula) and takes your breath away. There are 4 significant plots arcing and intersecting and overlapping and knotting into one another. The A plot of the French agent who made a big operational mistake 5 series ago continues to drive the action, with all the other plots interweaving and tangling with that. The fine grain of the plotting messes with the brain of the viewer: it's truly mesmerizing and addictive. If you take your eyes off the screen for 2 seconds you miss major plot potential developments. I can't believe how the last few seconds of S5E3 cause you to turn over events of the last 3 series over in your mind - talk about late-breaking genius ....
The acting is superbe. The intensity is magnified by the expressions of the actors/agents, trained to suppress emotions. I remember (series 2) a senior officer training a junior to not betray emotion as that's for amateurs and seeing the junior dial down her facial expressions. The show is full of magnificent tradecraft, about shadowing, avoiding shadows, avoiding being hurt when roughed up, organising keys in hotels ... S5 expands on the magnificent display of spying tools including facial recognition on a global scale, IT disinformation, AI and the high tech world of interest to us geeks.
Magnificent. You owe it to yourself to watch it. A NYT reviewer rated it in December 2019 as the 3rd best non-US series he'd ever seen but that was before series 5 which I think lifts its rating.
Van der Valk (2020)
Excellent pilot and excellent Amsterdam
Really excellent show. I enjoyed the acting, the story, the mood. I'm looking forward to this becoming even better in future episodes