This is not a retirement home, this is a madhouse!

Quartet

(2012)

I’m fully behind the rise of OAP cinema, if there actually is a nascent subgenre forming (see also The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel). Or should I say, British OAP cinema (I’m not including Amour, which is a chin-stroking affair for middle-aged types). I don’t know if the appeal is a nostalgic twinge for the days of ruling classes and Empire (the British in India, the cultural hierarchy of opera), a desire to see an assembly of the great and good of British thespdom, or simply of movies catering for certain age groups so rarely. But the fact that these films have been sizeable hits suggests there’s a sizeable gap in the market waiting to be plugged.

So it’s a shame that this dramedy about concert put on by a retirement home for musicians is so laboured. The scenario is acutely artificial (apparently Verdi founded such an establishment in Italy, but its occupants are generally not in the fine fettle we see here, and most likely they don’t reside in such opulent surroundings), and as such it encourages a population of larger-than-life characters to act out theatrically broad and melodramatic scenarios. There’s never any doubt that the home will make the money it needs, nor that the contrived estrangement between two of the leads will end in reconciliation. Sometimes this kind of approach wins through despite itself, the pleasure deriving from the sheer familiarity of it all. But this one just plods along.

As you'd expect, the home is populated by quirky, loveable, idiosyncratic luvvies. The quartet comprises Maggie Smith, Tom Courtney, Pauline Collins and Billy Connolly. The first three deliver expectedly solid performances, Collins proving particularly appealing with her dottily palatable version of onset dementia. And Michael Gambon has fun as the resident grouch. Sheridan Smith is completely unconvincing as the anti-Nurse Ratched, who cheerfully indulges her patients little foibles (hers is the Dev Patel youthful part). Connolly does his usual thing as the recovering stroke victim who gives voice to his every rascally randiness. I’ve a lot of time for the ever charming comedian, but he fails to convince both physically and vitally here. You still expect him to go leaping round the room at any moment (director Dustin Hoffman originally offered the role to Albert Finney and Peter O’Toole). Everyone gets their own comic/dramatic moment (aren't swearing pensioners adorable?), but at a pace that is not so much lethargic as comatose.

It’s all very genial, spineless and heartwarming. Particularly unconvincing is Courtney explaining how rap is kind-of like opera to a group of surprisingly credulous school kids. No doubt Robin Williams would be employed for this in US version of the film, but it’s no less patronising or desperate in its attempt to claim relevance for opera (Courtney delivers a monologue on how the upper classes appropriated the performing art for themselves). Director Dustin Hoffman never makes the stage origins less than obvious (Ronald Harwood adapted his own play). The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is no less of a fantasyland piece, but it has a genuine spring in its step and so manages to muster significantly more goodwill.

Comments

She writes Twilight fan fiction.

Vampire Academy (2014)
My willingness to give writer Daniel Waters some slack on the grounds of early glories sometimes pays off (Sex and Death 101) and sometimes, as with this messy and indistinct Young Adult adaptation, it doesn’t. If Vampire Academy plods along as a less than innovative smart-mouthed Buffy rip-off that might be because, if you added vampires to Heathers, you would probably get something not so far from the world of Joss Whedon. Unfortunately inspiration is a low ebb throughout, not helped any by tepid direction from Daniel’s sometimes-reliable brother Mark and a couple of hopelessly plankish leads who do their best to dampen down any wit that occasionally attempts to surface.

I can only presume there’s a never-ending pile of Young Adult fiction poised for big screen failure, all of it comprising multi-novel storylines just begging for a moment in the Sun. Every time an adaptation crashes and burns (and the odds are that they will) another one rises, hydra-like, hoping…

Prepare the Heathen’s Stand! By order of purification!

Apostle (2018)
(SPOILERS) Another week, another undercooked Netflix flick from an undeniably talented director. What’s up with their quality control? Do they have any? Are they so set on attracting an embarrassment of creatives, they give them carte blanche, to hell with whether the results are any good or not? Apostle's an ungainly folk-horror mashup of The Wicker Man (most obviously, but without the remotest trace of that screenplay's finesse) and any cult-centric Brit horror movie you’d care to think of (including Ben Wheatley's, himself an exponent of similar influences-on-sleeve filmmaking with Kill List), taking in tropes from Hammer, torture porn, and pagan lore but revealing nothing much that's different or original beyond them.

You can’t just outsource your entire life.

Tully (2018)
(SPOILERS) A major twist is revealed in the last fifteen minutes of Tully, one I'll happily admit not to have seen coming, but it says something about the movie that it failed to affect my misgivings over the picture up to that point either way. About the worst thing you can say about a twist is that it leaves you shrugging.

There's something wrong with the sky.

Hold the Dark (2018)
(SPOILERS) Hold the Dark, an adaptation of William Giraldi's 2014 novel, is big on atmosphere, as you'd expect from director Jeremy Saulnier (Blue Ruin, Green Room) and actor-now-director (I Don’t Want to Live in This World Anymore) pal Macon Blair (furnishing the screenplay and appearing in one scene), but contrastingly low on satisfying resolutions. Being wilfully oblique can be a winner if you’re entirely sure what you're trying to achieve, but the effect here is rather that it’s "for the sake of it" than purposeful.

No one understands the lonely perfection of my dreams.

Ridley Scott Ridders Ranked
During the '80s, I anticipated few filmmakers' movies more than Ridley Scott's; those of his fellow xenomorph wrangler James Cameron, perhaps. In both cases, that eagerness for something equalling their early efforts receded as they studiously managed to avoid the heights they had once reached. Cameron's output dropped off a cliff after he won an Oscar. Contrastingly, Scott's surged like never before when his film took home gold. Which at least meant he occasionally delivered something interesting, but sadly, it was mostly quantity over quality. Here are the movies Scott has directed in his career thus far - and with his rate of productivity, another 25 by the time he's 100 may well be feasible – ranked from worst to best.

Well, you did take advantage of a drunken sailor.

Tomb Raider (2018)
(SPOILERS) There's evidently an appetite out there for a decent Tomb Raider movie, given that the lousy 2001 incarnation was successful enough to spawn a (lousy) sequel, and that this lousier reboot, scarcely conceivably, may have attracted enough bums on seats to do likewise. If we're going to distinguish between order of demerits, we could characterise the Angelina Jolie movies as both pretty bad; Tomb Raider, in contrast, is unforgivably tedious.

This is it. This is the moment of my death.

Fearless (1993)
Hollywood tends to make a hash of any exploration of existential or spiritual themes. The urge towards the simplistic, the treacly or the mawkishly uplifting, without appropriate filtering or insight, usually overpowers even the best intentions. Rarely, a movie comes along that makes good on its potential and then, more than likely, it gets completely ignored. Such a fate befell Fearless, Peter Weir’s plane crash survivor-angst film, despite roundly positive critical notices. For some reason audiences were willing to see a rubgy team turn cannibal in Alive, but this was a turn-off? Yet invariably anyone who has seen Fearless speaks of it in glowing terms, and rightly so.

Weir’s pictures are often thematically rich, more anchored by narrative than those of, say, Terrence Malick but similarly preoccupied with big ideas and their expression. He has a rare grasp of poetry, symbolism and the mythic. Weir also displays an acute grasp of the subjective mind-set, and possesses …

If you want to have a staring contest with me, you will lose.

Phantom Thread (2017)
(SPOILERS) Perhaps surprisingly not the lowest grossing of last year's Best Picture Oscar nominees (that was Call Me by Your Name) but certainly the one with the least buzz as a genuine contender, subjected as Phantom Thread was to a range of views from masterpiece (the critics) to drudge (a fair selection of general viewers). The mixed reaction wasn’t so very far from Paul Thomas Anderson's earlier The Master, and one suspects the nomination was more to do with the golden glow of Daniel Day-Lewis in his first role in half a decade (and last ever, if he's to be believed) than mass Academy rapture with the picture. Which is ironic, as the relatively unknown Vicky Krieps steals the film from under him.

My name is Dr. King Schultz, this is my valet, Django, and these are our horses, Fritz, and Tony.

He mobilised the English language and sent it into battle.

Darkest Hour (2017)
(SPOILERS) Watching Joe Wright’s return to the rarefied plane of prestige – and heritage to boot – filmmaking following the execrable folly of the panned Pan, I was struck by the difference an engaged director, one who cares about his characters, makes to material. Only last week, Ridley Scott’s serviceable All the Money in the World made for a pointed illustration of strong material in the hands of someone with no such investment, unless they’re androids. Wright’s dedication to a relatable Winston Churchill ensures that, for the first hour-plus, Darkest Hour is a first-rate affair, a piece of myth-making that barely puts a foot wrong. It has that much in common with Wright’s earlier Word War II tale, Atonement. But then, like Atonement, it comes unstuck.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

Search This Blog