Birdsong (2012, UK)

Oh, Eddie Redmayne. You could be watching paint dry and I would be utterly captivated. You merit at least a full additional star for yourself in every movie. You are beautiful and brilliant with your too-wide mouth and your piercing eyes and your childlike freckles and your one-of-a-kind voice.

Excuse me. Now that I got that out of the way... This was a beautiful piece. I'm really curious to read the Sebastian Faulks novel that it came from. (I watched Charlotte Gray a long time ago, before the blog, and I remember really enjoying it too. It's also from his loosely connected France Trilogy.) The juxtaposition of Stephen's life before and after the war is amazing. They did a great job of contrasting bright and lovely greens in the idyllic 1910 countryside with the dusty, depressing browns of that same country covered with trenches. Stephen learns really important life lessons that he needs both personal tragedy and global tragedy to understand. It's hard to explain this, but it's the core of Birdsong.

I liked basically everything about this. Obviously, I think Eddie Redmayne is a genius. He has such an emotive face and a strong range. I think this was the first I've seen of Clémence Poésy (outside of Fleur in Harry Potter), but she was utterly perfect for the role too, as was Joseph Mawle, who plays a miner in the trenches who helps Stephen on his path to enlightenment. The rest of the cast was good too, but those two stood out.

I already mentioned the perfection of the mis en scène. I also found the music to be very powerful. It was very piano-heavy, and many of the songs were simple, relying on repeating series of 3 or 4 notes. It fit the tone perfectly. (Incidentally, this is, as far as I know, only the third score I've heard by Nicholas Hooper. His HP6 score was a big tone-perfect standout for me too.)

Oh, I'm just not doing it justice. I spent nearly 3 hours with the mini-series, plus extra time for the special features, and I loved every second. It was beautiful, heartbreaking, well-acted, realistic, enlightening, and powerful. Highly recommended.

Rating: 4.5

A Single Man (2009, U.S.)

Wow. This is a truly beautiful film, but in a quiet, understated way. Basically, it's about a man who was in a long term relationship, and his partner dies in a car accident. Because they're gay, the man isn't able to properly or publicly grieve.

It was directed by a fashion designer, which I thought was very clear in the overall look. Everything was brown, white, tan, and black, but then there are moments of bright color, like a little girl's dress—why that? When George remembers the deceased Jim, everything turns into this reddish gold, glowing tone, which is very effective in making his memories feel pleasant and warm, especially in contrast to the stark, painful present.

Colin Firth is absolutely phenomenal. His performance is so subtle and detailed and believable. He was George Falconer. The rest of the cast was good too, but they didn't shine as much as Firth. They also had a great script to work with. It used poetic writing without being saccharine. I thought the plot was more effective than if a woman was mourning her husband because a) he is a man and therefore less able, or allowed, to share his grief with anyone and b) because he is gay and therefore has to hide his love for Jim and therefore his grief.

A lot of the film revolves around the importance of human connection to pull George back from his suicidal grief. It's the "stranger" (student) who does more than George's close and intimate friend. The writer also uses a Huxley novel to talk about minorities and fear. In a college class he teaches, George compares the Nazi fear of Jews to the current fear of homosexuals, and he compares the fear of the unknown (from which most persecution of minorities stems) to the pervading fear of being alone. It was well done, much more smoothly than I can explain it.

The score was one of the best I've heard in awhile, especially as a companion to the film. It is understated for the most part, lovely but unremarkable until the end, when it is very heavy on the violins and much more prominent, as if an audio parallel to the clarity George is finally getting.

The 1960s sets and costumes were beautiful and realistic, which gave the movie a strangely dated feel when the subject matter seemed so current. It really underlines the fact that we have the same problem with gays that we've had for years, and that it's a really backwards mindset to have. Paired with the classroom discussion of Nazi antisemitism, it subtly says, "This is just as prejudiced and just as ridiculous." It was so subtle that I didn't even notice it until I started thinking about the film afterward. I do wonder why they chose a 1960s setting. I see why they didn't use present day and why they wanted to use a post-WWII setting. It's just interesting because the last movie I saw about a socially unaccepted sexual relationship was An Education, which was also set in the 1960s. I guess it's just a good decade to show a parallel with the current hypocritical decade, sexually repressed/judgemental and sexually open all at once. Interesting.

Rating: 4.5

Leap Year (2010, U.S.)

This was one of the best romantic comedies I've seen in a long while, probably because there was more wit... even the slapstick parts were witty.

Basically, Anna (Amy Adams) has a perfect little life. She stages apartments for a living and her boyfriend is a successful cardiologist. However, it seems like they're never going to get married. So she takes the initiative and flies to meet him at a conference in Ireland, the land of her ancestors, where there is a tradition that a woman can propose to her man on one day only—Leap Day. A series of things goes wrong, and somehow she ends up stranded in the middle of nowhere on the coast of Ireland, where she enlists the help of pub owner Declan.

Hilarious antics ensue, and Declan and Anna inevitably fall in love. Duh! I was surprised to find that critics tore this apart, calling its plot recycled and other horrible things. There was great situational comedy, lots of witty jokes, and wow was Matthew Goode fabulous. I've always found Amy Adams hilarious, but Goode stole the show. His performance was so subtle but he had my friend and I giggling out loud the whole time. You have to believe that he's a coastal Irish lad, though he's really from Devon!

Irish scenery speaks for itself. Beautiful.

The only thing I really didn't like about it was how conveniently-ever-after it all ended. Of course, that's not unusual for a romantic comedy, but really. An upscale American girl and a down-on-his-luck Irish guy? We end with them starring dreamily into each other's eyes as the sun sets, but where will they live? How will they make their money? What happens when the credits roll? Anyhow.

Rating: 4.0

Watchmen (2009, U.S.)

I finally saw Watchmen. Seemed like one of those things that you have to see. I'm not a graphic novel reader, because I always find myself having read to the end of the page and not looking at the pictures—therefore I have no idea what's going on. (Though usually I enjoy the film adaptations.) And that's kind of how I felt watching this movie. It was all tangled up, and I'm still not sure I know what happened and why. Also, I thought it was incredibly slow-paced for an action movie; it almost bordered on boring.

But even though it was not my favorite movie of all time, it did have some great points. For instance the music was... wow. They used the most unusual songs in the most unusual places. It was bizarre, and sometimes jarring, but somehow it worked. The ones that stick out in my mind are The "Sound of Silence," "99 Luftballoons," and something that sounded incredibly like Mozart's "Requiem in D Minor" (and I think that's what it was). Very interesting. The score that was composed for the film was obviously designed to blend rather than stand out, as the rest of the music did, but it was well done also.

Of course, thanks to the graphic novel origins, the visuals were fascinating. The use of extreme geographies, from Mars to Antarctica to a dark and filthy city provided interesting contrast. Also, Dr. Manhattan's glowing blueness was just as mesmerising as Rorschach's gritty and ever-changing mask. Those two characters were definitely the most interesting. I don't know if that's just because of who they were or because they were the two who got a lot of deep, rambling narration.

And in that vein, the casting was quite wonderful. Jackie Earle Haley, who I'd never heard of, was especially fantastic as Rorschach. With or without his mask, he was creepy and disturbing and yet oddly easy to relate to. Simply amazing.

That's about all I've got. I do want to make one comment about how annoyed I get with superhero girls and their long hair flying all over the place. Really, it would get in the way, and they would not be able to fight crime that way. I'm just saying.

So, rating. As I said, it had some fabulous elements, from music to acting to cinematography. But the plot was just too hard for me to follow and the film felt way too long. Balancing out, that earns it an "okay."

Rating: 3.0