Just when you thought being married to Uma Thurman was stress enough for poor Ethan Hawke, he moves to Paris and gets involved with a vampy older woman who may or may not be real. That’ll teach him to have a silly name, eh? The Woman in the Fifth is a fascinating tale which will lead you into a completely new world and do its level best to leave you there.
Written and directed by Kenneth Lonergan, Margaret has been in production for nearly five years, delayed due to multiple set-backs arising from Lonergan’s stubborn pursuit of the elusive perfect cut (and further exasperated by multiple ongoing law suits), concluding in a limited release orchestrated by Fox Searchlight Pictures. With only a handful of showings across the country, Margaret may be the best film you never see this year.
This month sees the release of Thatcher-fest The Iron Lady, much to the chagrin of David Cameron, and rather than being what we all want it to be – a cross between Robert Downey Jr. in Iron Man and Ted Hughes’ not-quite-as-good-as-Iron-Giant-but-still-pretty-good The Iron Woman – it is, in fact, another boring, by the numbers, Oscar hounding biopic, no different to any that have come before. Sigh, does the biopic genre show that the film industry is running out of ideas?
Erm, Tom, don’t you think you should start shooting soon?
Did you know Benedict Cumberbatch spent a year teaching English to Tibetan monks? That he sent himself on a secret mission to Morocco in order to prepare for his role in Tinker Tailor? That his air miles must be stacking up by now? Cheat Sheet! Sherlock Cheat Sheet! Is this pure indulgence? Yes. But he shouts a bit in War Horse, so that counts as relevance.
Who knew that sci-fi films were allowed to be set outside New York City? Every timeworn trope of the ‘alien invasion’ genre beloved of Cold War screenwriters has hurdled the Iron Curtain and descended on Moscow for The Darkest Hour, a virtually irredeemable mess of contrived clichés, crap CGI and Cyrillic cignage. And some things that don’t begin with C (as well as some others that do which we can’t mention here – looking at you, Bekmambetov).
Having picked up the award for Best Actress In A Drama at Sunday’s Golden Globes, it is already very clear what The Iron Lady’s strengths are. In choosing to take the woman out of the politics (or rather, the other way around), however, director Phyllida Lloyd runs the risk of wasting everyone’s time in exchange for one award worthy performance.
Snipe London
Recent Comments