So what is the storyline here? Well, I’ve just already covered it really. The movie begins with a bang, literally, as some attack occurs on America and people panic and try to get shelter. A lucky few get into the basement dwelling of a building that paranoid, but prepared, Mickey (Biehn) was hoping to keep all to himself. It’s not long at all until tension starts to rise, people start to divide rations in their mind and unthinkable acts become easier and easier to accept.

I hate to put it so bluntly but I must say that The Divide was nothing more than an okay movie elevated by a willingness to go to some very dark places and that I’d still much rather watch something more effective like The Hole (2001). Comparing the two films may seem lazy and a bit of a stretch but it’s really not – the two are remarkably similar. Both feature people trapped in an underground environment with very limited supplies and both show how quickly people can descend into savagery when self-preservation becomes the biggest concern. The main difference between the two is that The Hole managed to be a bit more clever and subtle with the material (and I am well aware that it’s not a subtle film in the grand scheme of things) while The Divide seems to give people merely a few hours in claustrophobic panic before turning them on each other like rabid dogs. Okay, that may not actually be the case but I couldn’t tell because the script and execution of the material don’t do enough to show more time passing during the first half of the movie.

The cast all do okay, I suppose, but they’re stuck with the thankless task of playing unlikeable characters interacting with other unlikeable characters. Lauren German is someone I always like seeing onscreen and she, at least, gets to be the steady moral compass for most of the movie but the likes of Milo Ventimiglia, Michael Eklund and Rosanna Arquette are all horrible, horrible people in different ways. Ivan Gonzalez isn’t that much better. Ashton Holmes is too passive a lot of the time, although his character does have a clear sense of right and wrong, while Courtney B. Vance and Biehn are both given some extra shading to their characters that comes along too late for either man to really make the most of.

The script, by Karl Mueller and Eron Sheean, is hit and miss. Some of the exchanges and conversations are disturbing and/or thought-provoking while other moments are almost laughable in the way that insanity becomes the norm. Remember when Stephen King wrote almost every book to include a character who would crack under the strain of his own personal issues and cause almost as many problems as the supernatural danger? Well, The Divide feels very much like a movie populated by those characters.

Interesting on a number of occasions, this is another movie from director Xavier Gens that I won’t be rushing back to rewatch. Give it a try for yourself and see what you think but I thought it was overlong, overcooked and overly praised by people for reasons I just can’t figure out (which I may just end up having to call “The Mr. Biehn Factor”).

DIRECTOR: XAVIER GENS
WRITER: KARL MUELLER, ERON SHEEAN
STARS: LAUREN GERMAN, MICHAEL BIEHN, MILO VENTIMIGLIA, COURTNEY B. VANCE, ASHTON HOLMES, ROSANNA ARQUETTE, IVAN GONZALEZ, MICHAEL EKLUND, ABBEY THICKSON
RUNTIME: 112 MINS APPROX
COUNTRY: GERMANY, USA, CANADA

Film Rating: 6 out of 10 stars

Take Shelter has gone round the world to high acclaim, with praise lavished especially on Michael Shannon’s portrayal of the protagonist, Curtis, who starts having vivid dreams and visions about an impending doomsday storm. He’s 35, and his mother turned into a paranoid schizophrenic in her thirties, so naturally there’s the fear that Curtis may be suffering from a similar genetic disposition. Curtis himself is deeply troubled, understanding that something bad is happening to him, but unable to let go of the feeling that the visions are real; that a devastating storm is really coming.

So he borrows money in the bank to build a sturdy storm shelter in the back yard, all the while growing more and more detached from the ordinary life of his family and small town community. Eventually, a storm does come, and he takes his wife and daughter into the shelter. But it was only a rather small storm, and Curtis now starts doubting the truth of his visions, and gets serious psychiatric help. As he and his wife and daughter takes their annual beach vacation (which they’d planned to cancel this year, but the psychiatrist felt it would be a good thing), something happens that seems to vindicate Curtis’ visions.

Some people are disappointed with the ending, feeling it is “too real” to be in line with a symbolical reading of the story, but for me the ending was a gratifying climax to a painfully long and slow movie. In my view many people are misreading the ending; it is still ambivalent if you just entertain the possibility that Curtis’ paranoia (or visions) is also beginning to embrace his wife.

As a whole I have to say my patience was wearing thin from quite early on, and I thought the first 90 minutes of this two-hour movie were incredibly dull. On top of that, the movie’s message seems to be negative and in line with right-wing anxieties: all your fears are justified; the great unknown (the future) really is a dangerous thing and you’re right to be paranoid. Of course, that’s just the most obvious interpretation of the movie; you could certainly choose other ones. In fact, the director probably intends for us to choose other ones, such as seeing hope in the fact that Curtis and his wife end up sharing the same visions, but I don’t think that comes through very well in the movie.

As for Curtis; the description of this ordinary, uneducated and somewhat introverted guy didn’t interest me very much, although Shannon certainly delivered a very nice acting performance.

A major problem with the movie was that it doesn’t have a whole plot. Only half a plot. We don’t find out what the storm really is, or what it all means, and while I understand that the presence and absence of various elements are supposed to hint at something ominous, I don’t really walk out of the cinema with any kind of idea of what the heck it’s supposed to be. Unless the symbolism is extremely powerful – like in Melancholia from the same year, which plotwise was nearly the same movie, only from a world-class director – I am not interested in vague hints and mysterious sorts of ambience. That fuzzy-wuzzy stuff doesn’t work on me – or most modern audiences, I’ll wager – unless it moves rapidly or is highly stylized.

Although, now that I’ve brought up Melancholia, it becomes more clear what Take Shelter was trying to do. The basic conceit is that the world is growing increasingly and dangerously steeped in apathy, and if we don’t wake up to it then we are all doomed. This is extremely clear in Melancholia. In Take Shelter, Curtis is the one who sees it coming, and the director is offering hope that more people will start seeing it when his wife finally sees it, too. But the problem is that the movie is so much about the negative (Curtis himself is already gripped by a certain amount of apathy), and not about the beauty that is about to be lost. Then it becomes too easy to interpret it in a too depressing manner; such as, like I mentioned, a right-wing manner where fear is the great mind-killer that makes everybody creep ever-further into their own shell(ter)s – which is of course the exact opposite of what is supposed to happen. We are supposed to fight the apathy, not intensify it. If a movie can’t communicate that it’s on the progressive rather than the reactionary side of that line, then it is not an artistic success.

That, at least, is my opinion.

Director: Jeff Nichols
Cast: Michael Shannon, Jessica Chastain, Shea Whigham, Tova Stewart, and others.
Runtime: 120 min.
Country: USA

Film Rating: 5 out of 10 stars

Johnny Depp plays Barnabas Collins, a man cursed by a jealous witch (Eva Green) and turned into a vampire after losing the love of his life. To top everything off, he’s then chained up and buried in a box to suffer for eternity. Well, that was the plan. He’s actually brought back to the surface almost two centuries later to find that the world has changed a hell of a lot since he last saw it. It’s now the 1970s. Yet some things remain constant. Like the Collins name and the ill fortune of the family members (in matters both financial and personal). Things look up when Barnabas discovers a woman (Bella Heathcote) who is the double of his lost love but a large cloud hangs over everything when it quickly becomes apparent that the woman who caused Barnabas the greatest pain is still on the scene. And still after his love or his destruction.

The other thing to bear in mind about Dark Shadows is that it’s based on an old TV show. A soap opera that happened to feature a number of characters who were vampires, witches and other creatures of the night. I’ve never seen the show and I don’t know how popular it was at the time of its original airing but I must say that Mr. Burton SEEMS to get this aspect (the blended tone) of the thing completely right. This is a soap opera on the big screen that happens to feature a number of supernatural and quirky characters. Part of the plot follows Barnabas as he considers trying to reconnect with a woman he views as his one true love, part of the plot (the biggest) shows the battle between Barnabas and the witch Angelique, part of the plot is given over to family tensions and growth and part of the plot even dwells on the redevelopment and growth of the family business. With a couple of proper vampire attacks (Barnabas may be our leading man but he IS a vampire and thus sometimes has to . . . . . . . . . kill people and drink their blood) and a few supernatural surprises up its sleeve I can’t imagine a better mix of material to replicate that small screen drama template on the big screen.

Yet it’s that mix of material that leaves half of the cast languising in the background, sorely underused. Depp and Green, understandably, get all of the best bits but Michelle Pfeiffer and Jackie Earle Haley also do well with their decent characters. Bella Heathcote feels like she’s hardly onscreen but at least when she is there she gets decent treatment from the script/plot strand, which is more than can be said for Jonny Lee Miller and Chloe Grace Moretz (though the latter gets a few good scenes in the first half of the movie she’s sadly left hanging for most of the second half). And as for the inclusion of the doctor character played by Helena Bonham Carter, you’ll definitely be wondering just why screentime is given over to her when she seems to be almost completely redundant. Cameos by Christopher Lee, the cast of the original show and Alice Cooper stand out as highlights while Gulliver McGrath, playing the youngest man in the Collins household, does okay with the little he’s given.

The script by Seth Grahame-Smith could have been a LOT sharper and wittier but I ended up liking the final result that was settled upon. This isn’t a movie to try and label Beetlejuice 2 or an unabashed high point in the filmography of Tim Burton but it is a great mix of fun characters, great design and dark humour more in line with the better movies from his past as opposed to the shudder-inducing awfulness that was Alice In Wonderland. There’s also a great soundtrack, a barely noticable score form Danny Elfman is overshadowed by some great songs from the 70s, and no need to pay extra for 3D. Bonus points.

DIRECTOR: TIM BURTON
WRITER: SETH GRAHAME-SMITH
STARS: JOHNNY DEPP, EVA GREEN, MICHELLE PFEIFFER, HELENA BONHAM CARTER, CHLOE GRACE MORETZ, JONNY LEE MILLER, JACKIE EARLE HALEY, BELLA HEATHCOTE, CHRISTOPHER LEE
RUNTIME: 113 MINS APPROX
COUNTRY: USA

Film Rating: 7 out of 10 stars

Morten Tyldum is talented. “The Firm meets Blood Simple,” one reviewer wrote. But there are lots more elements than that in the new Norwegian movie Headhunters: they include Hitchcock, Patricia Highsmith, the Bourne actioners, B-Horror, and the coldly elegant style of the “New Berlin” school as applied to both corporate graft and art crime. This is a slick, precipitous thriller well crafted to provide non-stop fun. Its buffoonish and grotesque, even momentarily revolting, sides suggest early Coen brothers. Its opening premise of a corporate executive recruiter who uses the questioning of highly successful job hunters to set up art heists of their domiciles is ingenious and far-fetched, and also typical of what is to come in this film. It’s adapted from Jo Nesbo’s eponymous bestseller, and has things in common with those other Nordic bestsellers about the girl with the dragon tattoo. And like the Millennium series, Headhunters is entertainment, not great filmmaking. There’s so much in Headhunters, something essential is missing, a heart, a moral core, a true motivation, true psychological depth. It’s got a pro-forma endorsement of love and family, but more overtly it’s a hymn to power and materialism — and sexual mistrust. The oddly named protagonist Roger Brown (Aksel Hennie) has been so suspiciously dealt with by women here that when he settles down happily with his wife at the end, you can’t really believe it. That baby in her belly has got to be a demon child, or a bomb.

I can’t help being suspicious of Roger Brown’s nemesis and arch enemy Clas Greve (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) too. To start with, he looks like a male model, and he has too many devious skill sets he never has to use, and is an ex-mercenary and former CEO of Dutch GPS firm HOTE. In the initial setup, Roger tells us he’s an overachiever out of insecurity — he moonlights as an art thief to buy compensatory baubles for himself and his blond trophy wife Diana (Synnøve Macody Lund), who’s just starting a big slick gallery — because he’s short. Okay, whatever. Then a trap is set for him: he learns the newly arrived Dane Clas Greve — arrived to “redecorate” an inherited flat — not only is involved in a corporate war between competing security companies, but has fallen heir to a painting more valuable than anything Roger and his partner in crime (Eivind Sander) have ever had a chance at. It’s bait, and when Roger gets cornered he escapes into a privy — a hint of the grotesquely comic stuff to come and a nod to Boccaccio.

Roger is barely one step ahead of Clas, and takes some really, really hard knocks trying to stay clear of him. In the end, I feel the fun (and action worthy of Hollywood) has been achieved at the cost of the other styles dabbled in along the way — the suave crime caper, the cold study of corporate sparring, the dangerous war of the sexes — just to drag us through a raggle-taggle adventure and demonstrate the indestructibility of the underdog-everyman crook-hero. But you can’t walk out without hearing some admiring cries of, “Wow! Wasn’t that just absolutely outrageous?” The Millennium producer, YellowBird, also handled this production.  The adapted screenplay is actually co-credited to Ulf Ryberg, who scripted The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. Images include some car and helicopter shots directly borrowed from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  But it’s all combined with a very nice acting and technical package.

DIRECTOR: MORTEN TYLDUM
WRITER: LARS GUDMESTAD, ULF RYBERG,
STARS: AKSEL HENNIE, SYNNOVE MACODY LUND,NIKOLAJ COSTER-WALDAU
RUNTIME: 100 MIN
COUNTRY: NORWAY

Film Rating: 7 out of 10 stars

Brandon is to all intents and purposes a fully-functioning and normal member of society. He commutes to work at his unspecified job, socialises with work colleagues and lives in a trendy modern apartment. His burden is very much a secret one which adds to his growing sense of isolation. Brandon watches pornography, pays for hookers and masturbates on a seemingly never-ending loop to the point where it’s all just part of his daily routine. That carefully managed routine is shattered when his sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) turns up in town needing a place to stay.

Sissy is chirpy and playful and seems in direct contrast to sullen Brandon. Yet she also shows a great fragility beneath the surface and turns to Brandon for brotherly affection and help, maybe even protection. Such is his remoteness however, he simply has no affection to give and at one stage he even implores her to “stop playing the victim”.

Sissy does however convince her brother to come and see her sing at a local lounge bar. Brandon grudgingly brings along his sleazy boss David, a married man who tries tragically to emulate Brandon’s single life who we see earlier trying in vain to pick up girls in bars. In one of the stand-out scenes in the whole movie, McQueen lets his camera linger on Mulligan’s face as she sings a slowed down version of ‘New York, New York’ that is dripping in longing and melancholy. The camera briefly cuts to Brandon who allows himself a brief moment of emotion which hints at a shared pain in the two sibling’s past.

Sissy comes over to the table and she and David begin to flirt, much to Brandon’s obvious chagrin. The trio share a decidedly uncomfortable taxi ride back to Brandon’s apartment and while David and Sissy sleep together, Brandon, steely-eyed and frustrated, leaves the apartment for a jog through the cold and desolate streets.
Brandon does attempt something approaching a normal human relationship with co-worker Marianne. The two share a dinner date and it seems to go well if a little awkwardly as Brandon struggles to maintain a veneer of normality. His inability to share meaningful physical contact with someone he actually cares about ultimately becomes an issue though and Brandon’s need for taboo and depraved sexual gratification becomes more prominent. As Sissy’s frailty becomes more and more prominent and Brandon’s self-loathing begins to take over, he starts to realise his affliction is getting out of hand.

Fassbender is proving himself to be one of the finest actors working today and he is truly outstanding here as a man struggling with an addiction and keeping his sordid private life a secret. The opening scene where he flirts with a married woman on a train only to turn the situation into something all the more unsettling and creepy is truly superb. Fassbender fully conveys the necessary remoteness and portrays Brandon not as a dangerous sexual predator but a regular guy with a personal problem, the root causes of which we are never privy to. Likewise, Carey Mulligan is pitch perfect as Sissy, a seemingly bright and cheerful girl who longs for her brother’s affection and who herself is dealing with an unspecified inner pain. Mulligan captures the fragility of the character perfectly and it is her arrival which proves disastrous to Brandon’s carefully honed secret life. A telling scene sees Sissy burst in on Brandon pleasuring himself in the bathroom. While she finds it hilarious and seeks to laugh it off, he storms out of the bathroom in a rage, partly through embarrassment and partly out of the misplaced anger which he has towards himself.

Great credit must be given to McQueen for creating such a powerful piece of cinema. He indulges in plenty of long takes, which despite often proving uncomfortable to watch, allows the viewer to gain a real sense of the two lead characters’ conflicting emotions. The aforementioned ‘New York, New York’ scene being a prime example of this. The director paints a portrait of a sex addict, not in a lurid or titillating way, but in a manner which highlights the hollow and empty lifestyle it can often lead to. The desolated streets, sterile apartment buildings and bland office spaces heighten the sense of emptiness in Brandon’s life. The director doesn’t really offer any answers, be it a cause or a cure, moreover he is simply showing a snapshot of a sufferer and allows the audience to experience what he experiences.

It’s a bold and provocative movie with two truly bravura performances at its centre. Shame is a compelling and yet, at the same time, very difficult film to watch which renders it a movie that lingers with you long after it finishes but nevertheless a film which you may wish to watch just the once.

Shame is out on DVD & blu-ray 14th May 2012.

Director: Steve McQueen
Stars: Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan, James Badge Dale
Runtime: 101 min
Country: UK

Film Rating: 8 out of 10 stars

Elena is a retired nurse with no money of her own who ten years ago met a moderately wealthy man, and married him two years ago. Elena has a son from an earlier marriage, and this son now has a family of his own which he has a hard time supporting, being unable to find a job. Elena repeatedly begs her Mercedes-driving husband to help her son, and help pay for the education of her grandson – but he always refuses, taking the harsh attitude that her son is a slacker who should be able to support himself.

After the husband suffers a minor heart-attack, it occurs to Elena that if he were to die, she would be legally entitled to half of his money. So in a state of great pain and conflict, weighing the husband’s life against the well-being of her son’s family, she kills him. Being a nurse, she knows just which types of drugs he shouldn’t take together in his condition, and she explains to the hospital afterwards that the husband took those drugs himself, and she didn’t even know he had them. And despite some minor complications with the husband’s grown (but estranged) daughter, Elena gets away with it. Her son’s family quite simply moves into the late husband’s upmarket apartment.

The movie doesn’t explicitly pass judgment on Elena for what she does – it leaves that to the audience. Was it right or wrong? But I believe the director is actually entirely on Elena’s side, and so am I; everything she does is what most mothers would do for their distressed children.

At the same time the movie illustrates the new Russian class society, with struggling working class families who have to contend with insensitive nouveau riche – the message being that in the name of social justice it is legitimate to rebel against the capitalist system for the sake of the greater good. The unspoken implication is that maybe Russia needs a socialist revolution all over again.

The movie moves rather slowly, especially in the beginning, but the entire narrative is stylish and deeply emotionally memorable. Philip Glass has provided the soundtrack, in his usual and distinctive style of minimalism, which is fitting. Elena is not the kind of movie that leaves your mind anytime soon.

Director: Andrei Zvyagintsev
Cast: Nadezhda Markina,
Runtime: 109 min.
Country: Russia

Film Rating: 8 out of 10 stars

The film is set in 1891 and storm clouds are gathering across Europe as a spate of anarchist bombings threatens to push two of the continents biggest powers, Germany and France, into war. Sherlock himself is reeling from the news his partner in crime is getting married whilst at the same time trying to get to the bottom of who or what is orchestrating the bombings. He senses an esteemed Oxford Professor and long-term adversary Professor Moriarty may well be involved, an intuition that is very soon proved correct. Moriarty is embracing the advent of industrialised weaponry and plans to make a fortune out of the arms trade by forcing two great countries into a war and selling them the weaponry to fight it once they do. It’s a fiendish and diabolical plot and Jared Harris is superb as Moriarty, a cool and calculating genius rather than a typical over-the-top maniacal villain. When his and Holmes’ paths cross, he makes it clear that he will accept no meddling in his affairs.

Meanwhile, poor old Watson is meant to be relaxing into married life but unfortunately he has been deemed guilty by association and is targeted by Moriarty’s minions as he and his blushing bride try to slip off on a romantic honeymoon. Sherlock turns up just in time to safe his assistance and after throwing Watson’s bride from the train (she’s fine, trust him), leaves Watson with no choice but to join him on one last adventure. Soon enough, the two men set off across Europe to thwart Moriarty’s plans and stop Europe sliding into war.

As with the first film, the interplay between Downy Junior and Law is what really makes the movie tick. Downey Junior especially revels in the role of a charismatic adventurer who is a certifiable genius one minute and a petulant man-child the next. He and Law bounce off each other perfectly as they continue their affectionate and mildly homoerotic bromance. Both characters are also happy to throw their fists when required, this being an all-action Holmes and Watson after all. Sherlock purists may scoff at the steam-punk flourishes but it works in the context of the film. It’s definitely a Hollywoodized version of Sherlock Holmes, playing out more as an action-adventure movie than a complex mystery thriller, but it is thoroughly entertaining all the same.

It’s undoubtedly Ritchie’s best work since his Lock, Stock/Snatch heyday and his directorial quirks seem to suit the boy’s own adventure tone of these movies perfectly. The standard jaunty Irish music, colourful cockney characters and the use of slow-mo are all present and correct. In moderation the slow-mo effects can work really well and looks mightily impressive, for instance the gang’s mad dash through the woods as they escape a munitions factory with shells exploding and bullets whizzing past them, does look pretty darn cool. However the slow-mo Holmes mind-mapping shtick though does get a little overused and rather than being a neat little flourish it becomes a mild annoyance slowing down the actual action.

Stephen Fry is great as the plumy Mycroft, perfectly cast as a know-it-all clever clogs and keeping his little brother in check with a well-timed barb. As I mentioned previously, Jared Harris is on top form as Moriarty as well. The only slight let-down though is Noomi Rapace’s Simza. Don’t get me wrong, Noomi does well with what she is given, it’s just the character herself feels entirely superfluous. She has a minor role to play is driving the plot forward, but nothing that couldn’t have been worked in via other characters. It does feel like she was just thrown in there as an afterthought to fill the attractive leading lady void.

The plot builds itself up nicely and there’s tension to be mined from the fact that after already being bested by him once, you’re never entirely sure whether Sherlock will be able to defeat his rival. The two meet for a game of chess at the Reichenbach Falls (alarm bells should be sounding for aficionados of the Conan Doyle books here) at the films climax and engage in a spot of intellectual sparring. Throughout the movie the two geniuses, as well as us mere mortals at home, are never completely sure who is playing who, and sure enough, it all comes to a dramatic crescendo.

It’s not a masterpiece by any means, but in terms of enjoyable popcorn cinema, it’s perfect family fun. It’s a perfect sit back and enjoy the ride type of movie and leaves things open nicely for another sequel.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows is available on Blu-ray Triple play, DVD and digital download 14th May. Pre-order here

© 2012 Warner Bros. Ent. All Rights reserved

Director: Guy Ritchie
Stars: Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, Jared Harris, Noomi Rapace
Runtime: 129 min
Country: USA

Film Rating: 7 out of 10 stars

The winning short will be featured on the DVD of Silent House released later in the year!

For more info check out…

http://shootingpeople.org/blog/2012/04/make-an-88-second-short-for-silent-house/

Nigel Cole

On entering the room Nigel Cole enquires, “are you going to ask me why did I decide to make a film that was a play?”
FF: No.
NC: Ah yes you have ten minutes then.

FF: Your background was strongly grounded in documentary and current affairs, why the move into feature film?  Was this something you have always wanted to do?
NC:  All I have ever wanted to do is tell stories and work with actors.  I had worked in the theatre a little bit; I wanted to be an actor.  I just wasn’t very good.  (Laughs)  It seemed like a small thing but you know…  I don’t think I looked like a movie star.  That was a bit disappointing.  I spent a long long time failing to tell stories with actors.  I didn’t mind if it was television drama or what it was.  My aim had always been to make good TV drama.  I got out of university thinking this is what I will do.  Ten years later, I still hadn’t achieved it.  I had done everything!  Location manager, Assistant Director, Driver, Producer, Production Manager, I had every bloody job in the film industry!  I had not persuaded anyone to let me direct.  I was almost close to giving up.  I had been doing commercials, I had done these documentaries, nothing quite got me any closer.  One day I managed to persuade a wonderful woman called Michelle Butler to let me direct an episode of Peak Practice and although it was series six of a very long running TV series, it was like I had King Lear!  Somebody died in the episode and people cried!  I approached it like it was a movie, like it was my life’s ambition to make it great.  I got spotted just from this one episode of Peak Practice and by the end of the year I was doing the first series of Cold Feet.

FF: I loved Cold Feet…
NC:  It was a gift!  It was one of those great shows.  It was beautifully written and had a great cast.  I always wanted to be a storyteller and I was well into my 30’s before I achieved it.  And out of Cold Feet, I got this TV film for Sky Television called Saving Grace.  I didn’t even think of it as a movie, it was a full length TV film.  20^th Century Fox decided to release it in cinemas here.  We took it to Sundance and at the time I didn’t even know what Sundance was!  Within 48 hours the movie was a hit.  We sold it for a fortune, I can’t remember how much.  Several million dollars, I think.  And then we win a prize!  Overnight, I went from completely unknown TV director to an international movie director overnight.  It’s like someone just said, “you’re in.”  I went straight from Sundance to L.A. and hung out in Hollywood for a few months.  I couldn’t quite believe that.

FF: With All in Good Time, you worked with a lot of the cast from the play, did you want to put a completely different spin on the subject material or did you want to bring the play to the screen?
NC:  I wanted to capture the same magic that the play had captured.  I knew I would have to do that in a slightly different way.  If you try to capture magic, it’s slightly mercurial anyway.  You might not be able to do it.  I knew the play had this weird ability to suck you in with a kind of strong broad comedy and then completely surprise and shock an audience by the way it turns in the second half.

FF: When you get to the last ten minutes, you feel like you have to watch the entire film again…
NC:  Yes!  That’s the whole idea!  And you will!  It almost has a Sixth Sense twist!  I knew how brilliantly that had worked in the theatre.  I thought, I want to try and get that too.  I want to capture that sense of this being a real surprise.  I wanted it to really work its charms on the audience and then when you least expect it, throwing them a curve ball.  I didn’t want to deviate from that in any way.  Clearly, in a film you have a wildly different set of techniques to achieve that but we have more time, more scenes, less talk and more action.  You can get right in close to those eyes and see what’s going on.  The rhythm of it, the structure of it, it’s different, it flows in a different way.

FF: A lot of people have commented that you are a feminist director, would that be correct?
NC:  Yes. Absolutely.  I much prefer women.  I am more beguiled and fascinated by them.  I am a guy…  And I don’t find men nearly as interesting.  Since I was a child, I’ve been absolutely delighted by women.  I think also, if you make women’s films you are seen as different.  I don’t want to make the same films as everyone else.  I just don’t do guns and cars.  (Both of us laugh) I’m not interested.  I’m not interested in cars in my own life and I’ve never seen a gun, never mind hold one.  That rules out 90% of films for me!  I don’t disapprove of them!  I love them and I watch them but I just don’t do them.  And they are boring to shoot!  Car chases are really boring.  Get in the car, drive from A to B, what’s interesting about that?!?

Meera Syal

FF: Meera, you really knew your character inside out.  You had played her for nine months in the play on stage.  Did you try and reinvent her in any way?
MS:  I think the play changed a little.  I know it was the same story but on film you have a chance to play things so differently.  You can play things a lot more subtlety and you can have a lot more that is unspoken that the camera picks up.  Obviously, you don’t need as many words, so you’re just using your eyes to say a lot of things.  It’s such a completely different way of working.

FF: Towards the end you feel like you have to go back and watch the film more closely, but this is especially true in relation to your character, was this always intentional?
MS:  Oh yeah, all the way through.  Obviously with my character, her big secret isn’t revealed until the closing moments of the film and suddenly, there’s that “oh my god” moment where everything makes sense.  We had to be so careful about how we threaded that into the story, giving enough hints but not giving it away.  Also, the playing of it, you had to believe that this was a woman who had lived with this secret for about twenty years.  How could you live with something like that day to day?  When the spotlight is on you, how much can you let out?  I think very little if you’re used to carrying a secret around.  You know there’s a scene where she almost spills the beans and I feel like that is how it would be in real life.  You wouldn’t tell anybody, it wouldn’t come out that quickly, it would be wrenched out of you.  So you see a little chink and you get a horrible sense of a whole world of pain inside and then she shuts it back up again.

FF: With Harish and the fact that you had worked together for so long on this project, was it much easier for you to be that married couple?
MS:  Totally.  It made a huge difference.  Most of the time when you turn up on a film set, you have no rehearsal or very little and you almost have to come with your ideas ready formed and you hit the ground running.  In this instance, we had nine months of playing these characters and a whole luxury of building up a subtext, sort of easy communication and funny ticks and comedy touches that you would only find in live performance over a long period of time.  It was so great to bring all of that to the screen.

Amara Karan (pitcured with Reece Richie below)

FF: How did you become involved with the project and Nigel Cole?
AK:  I saw the play at the National and it was sensational.  When I saw the script and heard that Nigel was involved, and I knew Nigel’s work from the films he had done, I thought this was amazing and that I needed to make sure I got the part.  So I put in a lot of work for the audition…

FF: You weren’t actually around for the audition?
AK:  YES! How did you know this?!  I sent in an audition tape and got a call to meet the director’s and the producers in person.  I just thought “Oh my god, finally… it’s come

FF: In terms of Vina, it’s almost like she is innocent to the world at the beginning and learns a lot over the course of the film…
AK:  She grows up very quickly…

FF: It’s kind of sad to see that really…
AK:  Yes!  You’re right!  She begins very optimistically.  She’s found the man of her dreams, she moves in to this fun loving, gorgeous warm family and wants to make it work and is happy.  I think she’s mortified by what happens and transpires.

FF: She also seems quite isolated?
AK:  Yes.  She’s stuck in a situation that it would be a betrayal to her husband if she was to discuss it with someone else.  You want to contain the problem, you don’t want to make it any bigger but then again that problem has to happen at the end.  Her background is very interesting; it’s implied that she comes from a loveless marriage.  My character tries to confide in her mother but her reply is simply “what’s love got to do with it?”

FF: You have some amazing work in the pipeline. I know you’re working with Simon Pegg on A Fantastic Fear of Everything.  It must have been an experience working with him…
AK: (Gets really excited that I’ve seen the trailer). Yes! I am so proud of that film.  It was such a great experience working with him and Crispian Mills.  The script is absolutely amazing!  It’s out June the 8^th.

Reece Ritchie

RR:  All in Good Time has just got so many layers.  I couldn’t call it a comedy.  It almost feels like you’re selling it short.  There’s just so much more that this film has to give besides making you laugh.

FF: Did you think your character was a little selfish?
RR:  Well the problem here is communication, that’s a simple fact.  I don’t really see it as either of them being a problem.  I think the lack of communication is their problem and that’s there due to their circumstances, which isn’t necessarily his fault.  It’s an interesting part and I made a distinct choice to play it truthfully.  I mean from the outset his dad tells him he’s lazy, he works in a cinema, he has no ambition.  But in fact, this poor young bloke is in his father’s shadow, he’s never had any confidence given to him from his dad.  There is a naivety that I deliberately put into the character because he would be like that.  If you look at this bedroom, there’s a furry tiger up on the shelf, things that are still looming.  He’s still part boy.  I think it would be wrong for me as an actor to present a character that was 100% likable or 100% crowd pleaser and I think that’s happened a lot in generic comedies.  Here, we wanted to give you an insight into a real family life and this feels more true to me.

FF: This has had some great outings at festivals, has it been worth it going to festivals with this film?
RR: It’s funny but a lot of the time I don’t really care about what critics think to a certain point but with an ordinary audience, to get their reaction after a Q&A and to get their input, to see them get joy from something, that is the biggest gift that you can possibly get.  We have had an overwhelming response from festivals and hopefully that can represent the rest of the general public.

***

All in Good time hits cinemas 11th May 2012.

Tom Cruise returns to play Agent Ethan Hunt and he’s joined by a mix of old faces (mainly Simon Pegg playing Benji) and new ones (Paula Patton as Agent Jane Carter, Jeremy Renner as William Brandt) in a globetrotting adventure that features daring, treachery, wit and a major nuclear threat to the fate of the entire planet. Just another day at the office then.

From the very beginning, it’s clear just what the main hurdle is for this Mission: Impossible movie and that is just how will it top the previous Mission: Impossible movies? Thankfully, the script by Josh Appelbaum and Andre Nemec puts an emphasis on humour and the group dynamic while the assured direction from Bird ensures that when the action takes the spotlight it does so in a way that you’re not likely to forget in a hurry. The extended middle section of the movie that takes place in, and out of, the tallest building in the world (the Burj Khalifa tower) is the best example of this – a dizzying spectacle that easily sits up there with anything from its predecessors.

While the script and direction are great there’s also a lot of praise to aim at the cast. Cruise has been playing Ethan Hunt now for a while and owned the role from the very beginning so it’s no surprise to find out that he does just as well this time out, Simon Pegg seems to clearly relish having much more screentime after his supporting role in the third film, Paula Patton is a worthwhile member of the team and Jeremy Renner brings some decent backstory with his character. Michael Nyqvist makes for an okay villain but he’s not best served by the script, especially when compared to the fantastic threats spat out by the villains in the previous three films. Lea Seydoux fares better, and it’s a shame that she doesn’t have more screentime, and Samuli Edelmann does a good line in menacing behaviour while Anil Kapoor adds some more humour with his scenes.  With small roles for Josh Holloway and Tom Wilkinson, there is enough talent on display to keep most people happy.

From an uncertain beginning (I can’t have been the only one wondering just what Brian De Palma was going to do with a potential franchise-starting blockbuster), the Mission: Impossible movies have developed into a series of fantastic adventures that you want to see continuing. And with an exciting prison break in the mix, a raid at the Kremlin, that amazing sequence in the Burj Khalifa tower and much, much more being used to provide the thrills this time around you have to already wonder . . . . . . . . . how will the next instalment top this one?

DIRECTOR: BRAD BIRD
WRITER: JOSH APPELBAUM, ANDRE NEMEC
STARS: TOM CRUISE, PAULA PATTON, SIMON PEGG, JEREMY RENNER, MICHAEL NYQVIST, SAMULI EDELMANN, ANIL KAPOOR, LEA SEYDOUX
RUNTIME: 133 MINS APPROX
COUNTRY: USA, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

Film Rating: 8 out of 10 stars