Stay with me

Oh, won't you stay with me?
'Cause you're all I need
This ain't love, it's clear to see
But darling, stay with me


Why am I so emotional?
No, it's not a good look, gain some self-control
And deep down I know this never works
But you can lay with me so it doesn't hurt

Cine Me

Still Alice

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3316960/

http://sonyclassics.com/stillalice/

This milestone film on Alzheimer’s draws its power from Moore’s emotionally restrained but very potent central performance.

The toll the disease takes on the life of a brilliant linguistics professor is superbly detailed by Julianne Moore in a career-high performance, driving straight to the terror of the disease and its power to wipe out personal certainties and identity. Written and directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland, the screenplay is faithful to Lisa Genova’s best-selling novel which has a fan base of its own.

Rather than focus on the destructive effect of the disease on relationships, the drama dives deep into how one woman experiences her own deteriorating condition, placing all the emphasis on Moore’s face and reactions, her vulnerability seesawing with her strength. 

In one standout scene, she stumbles onto suicide instructions she has left for herself on her computer. Though this is one of the film's most intense scenes, the directors are able to slip in a moment's humor to lighten things up.

Not all is doom and gloom here. Another key scene has Alice invited to address an Alzheimer's conference. Her anxious preparations end in a triumphant monologue about her condition that is truly touching.

The fact that a woman who’s an expert in linguistics has trouble articulating herself may seem like an obvious device, but it also adds to the film’s sense of sadness and frustration, because Alice knows all too well the power of self-expression. “Still Alice” is about how she reacts to her own deterioration–how she constantly reassesses it and figures out how to cope. She doesn’t always do it with quiet dignity, which is refreshing; sometimes she even uses the disease to manipulate those around her or get out of a social occasion she’d rather avoid.

Despite all that, and in the absence of the anger and the wildness that are crouched and caged within this most terrible of themes, “Still Alice” is worth watching, for the sake of Julianne Moore. She has always compounded sweetness with steel, and both are brandished here. The smile that Alice gives, as her utterance falters, is more heartbreaking for being so radiant; we understand at once what it will cost this particular woman to put on a good show, and a happy face. At the other extreme is the message that, when still compos mentis, she leaves for herself—or for a later version of that self—on her laptop, issuing instructions for suicide. The tone of practical plainness is wonderfully caught. “Hi Alice, I am you,” she begins. To be and not to be, at the same time: that is the question that Moore would, if unleashed, have pursued to its tragic limit. “Still Alice” gives her only half a chance.

Film-makers Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland, adapting the bestseller by Lisa Genova, then track the rapid progress of the disease and its fallout for the family, as some try to dodge responsibility, others to defeat the unbeatable. We stay close to Alice throughout; at times entering her vision - image blurred, context distorted, sound edit frightening - but mostly studying Moore's face as the light fades from it. You gain awful insight into a fate whose horrors its sufferer, for a while at least as she attempts to stymie the disease with word games and bright positivity, appreciates.

Glatzer and Washmoreland have teased one thread from the book further, brought it a touch more up to date (it's set a decade back). Just as Glatzer's own diagnosis with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in 2011 has led him to speak only via an app, so too Alice's reliance on new technology impacts on her illness: after all, she has instant access to a bank of memories.

It's not perfect – or, rather, it is a little too perfect. That Alice's profession concerns cognitive function over-eggs the pudding, adds to the unhappy sense that the tragedy of Alzheimer's is heightened when it hits an intellectual. Making the disease genetic as well as so early – and especially as Bosworth announces her intention to have a baby – also feels unnecessary. All you need is Moore; you don't need seven layers of irony to perk things up.

But it's hard to deny the flooring impact of that central performance; a word too for Kristen Stewart, initially bratty, but developing into something much subtler. Alice quotes Elizabeth Bishop's line: "The art of losing isn't hard to master". 

“Still Alice” remains as polite, as informed, and as cautiously compassionate as the society that it depicts.

This is an effortlessly excellent film, about a horribly hard subject.

Tomboy

An homage to the 1981 Richard Avedon Vogue portrait of Nastassja Kinski.

“Jennifer Lawrence has the perfect combination of strength, sexuality, and humor, and, above all, tomboy to pull this off,” says V.F. fashion and style director Jessica Diehl, who styled the shoot.

P.S- Lawrence only became uncomfortable when the snake took a fancy to her neck. Then the shoot was over and Mr. Boa went back into his box.

Keeping Secrets

A certain kind of light.

P.S - I tell you things,you tell me things.

Cine Me

The Theory of Everything

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2980516/

http://www.thetheoryofeverythingmovie.co.uk/

Here is the sad and frustrating irony of “The Theory of Everything”: it’s a biopic about one of the most brilliant people in the history of the planet, the renowned astrophysicistStephen Hawking – a man famous for thinking in boldly innovative ways – yet his story is told in the safest and most conventional method imaginable.

Of course, Hawking’s story is inspiring – the way he’s battled motor neuron disease over the past 50 years and defied the odds not only to survive, but thrive. And in playing Hawking,Eddie Redmayne more than rises to the challenge of portraying the man's gradual physical deterioration but also conveying the spark of mental acuity that has remained, and marked all of Hawking’s important work. Nothing the 32-year-old actor has done previously (“Les Miserables,” “My Week With Marilyn”) suggested he had this sort of complexity in him. It’s an impressive performance, so much so that it makes you wish it were in the service of stronger material.

“The Theory of Everything” comes from screenwriter Anthony McCarten, based on “Travelling to Infinity: My Life With Stephen,” the memoir by Hawking’s first wife, Jane. A general feeling of tastefulness permeates the proceedings, as if everyone wanted to be overly respectful toward these people, and their life, and the access they provided, at the expense of revelations that might have seemed inappropriate or startling or, heaven forbid, thought-provoking.

We watch biopics for the same reason we read memoirs and obituaries—to walk through the chapters of another person’s timeline, to feel that life has a narrative. But a successful biopic doesn’t just reenact events or an individual’s journey; it is a study in character. We go into a movie knowing that the subject was as genius or a hero, a martyr or titan. We should leave with a more nuanced understanding of who he was, his complexities and flaws. Amadeus gave us a Mozart who was as childish and irresponsible as he was genius. Milk showed us a man whose inexhaustible political zeal exhausted those closest to him.
Where both Theory and Imitation fall short, despite the efforts of their stars, is that they seek to glorify rather than to interrogate their subjects. Of course, both of these men deserve celebration. Hawking fundamentally changed our understanding of black holes, quantum mechanics, and relativity, all the while popularizing science with his best-selling A Brief History of Time. And Turing was responsible for breaking Enigma (Nazi Germany’s secret military code), inventing the computer, and saving millions of lives. His was a gripping, extraordinary tale, and Cumberbatch excels as Turing, his watery eyes, stiff jaw, and slight stutter conveying a man who is awkward and difficult, vulnerable and brilliant.

The Theory of Everything  is pleasing to watch, especially for Anglophiles who enjoy the predictable charms of Masterpiece Theater: period trappings and solid performances. But it leaves little lasting impression. After seeing this film, we know little more about Hawking  than what we could have gleaned from their Wikipedia pages. The fine actors portraying it, deserve better.

Jessie J

London, January 28

O2 Academy Brixton

She did it like it ain't been done.

Cine Me

American Sniper

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2179136/

http://www.americansnipermovie.com/

Clint Eastwood’s “American Sniper” is both a devastating war movie and a devastating antiwar movie, a subdued celebration of a warrior’s skill and a sorrowful lament over his alienation and misery. The movie, set during the Iraq War, has the troubled ambivalence about violence that has shown up repeatedly in Eastwood’s work since the famous scene, midway through “Unforgiven,” in which the act of killing anguishes the killer. Eastwood, working with the screenwriter Jason Hall and with Bradley Cooper, who stars in the film, has adapted the 2012 best-selling autobiography by the Navy seal sharpshooter Chris Kyle (which was written with Scott McEwen and Jim DeFelice). “American Sniper” is devoted to Kyle’s life as a son, a husband, a father, and, most of all, a decorated military man—one of the most lethal snipers in U.S. military history. Kyle, who made a hundred and sixty confirmed kills (and more than two hundred probable kills), is always sure that he’s defending American troops—and his country—against “savages.” Perched on a rooftop in Ramadi or in Sadr City, he’s methodical and imperturbable, and he rarely misses, even at great distance. He shoots insurgents, members of Al Qaeda in Iraq, and, when he thinks it necessary, a woman and a child. He’s haunted by the thought of the Americans he hasn’t been able to save. Cooper is all beefed up—by beer as much as by iron, from the looks of it (it’s intentionally not a movie-star body)—and he gives a performance that’s vastly different from any that he’s given in the past. With fellow-seals in the field, he’s convivial, profane, and funny; at home with his loving wife (Sienna Miller, who’s excellent), he’s increasingly withdrawn and dead-eyed, enraptured only by the cinema of war playing in his mind.

Featuring an amazing performance by Bradley Cooper, “American Sniper” is Clint Eastwood’s return as an important filmmaker. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed Eastwood’s take on “Jersey Boys” last summer but musicals are not his bread and butter. After years of “one for you” (a “Dirty Harry” flick) and “one for me” (“Honky Tonk Man,” “White Hunter, Black Heart”) with Warner Brothers, Eastwood created “Unforgiven,” winning his first directing Oscar along the way. He followed that film up with “Mystic River” (another Oscar nod) and “Million Dollar Baby” (another Oscar) as well as two very different films that looked at war through different eyes, “Flags of My Father” and “Letters From Iwo Jima.” A musical was probably a nice break but Eastwood is best when he’s looking at life and the moral questions it asks.

The film doesn't present a racist serial killer, nor an arrogant psychopath, and it probably portrays Kyle as more humble than he was, but as a clinical examination of how a great soldier (and in particular a Navy SEAL) is made, what a sniper does, how the door-to-door searches that made up so much of the Iraq War worked, and of the intricacies of what may be thought of as relatively mild PTSD (but strong enough to be dangerous and debilitating), the film is winning on all counts. Like 2014's Fury, it is more of a war film than an anti-war film; Kyle is our protagonist, we're meant to like him, and he takes out Iraqis, and sometimes when he does, we're kind of meant to cheer. Don't forget that Eastwood is a deep Republican, and the film has that sensibility - and yet it's neither insulting nor off-putting, and it's not racist. It's a serious story told with steely conviction, and if its politics are a little right of my comfort level, its obvious cinematic benefits are right in my wheelhouse.

Cooper is fantastic. His performance is totally precise. The gradations he and Eastwood have chosen to show - of Kyle's character, personality and disease - are perfectly graded. We really get a sense of a full man, and if that isn't exactly the man Chris Kyle was, it's certainly an indelible movie character. Sienna Miller provides strong support as his wife Taya; beyond her, there are a bunch of dudes playing soldiers, who all do fine, if predictable, work. Which is probably how it is: amongst a lot of guys who are all a little alike, Chris Kyle obviously stood out.

American Sniper is a puzzle. You wouldn’t think it: On the surface, Clint Eastwood has given us another straightforward story of a taciturn acolyte rising to meet high-pressure circumstances and finding cracks in their stoic facades. But despite a career-best performance from Bradley Cooper as Chris Kyle, a sharpshooter whose military service leaves him struggling to connect back home, American Sniper seems not quite willing to commit. The action scenes are appropriately chaotic, and the washed-out sunlight of Iraq suggests the surety Kyle finds there. But Kyle’s home life is filmed as such an afterthought that it loses much of its pull, despite Sienna Miller’s best efforts with a paper-thin part. And the movie seems so determined to sympathize with the soldier without critiquing the war that diminishes its potential power both as a biopic and as a war movie.

Perhaps it’s inevitable Eastwood couldn’t apply the same coolly ambivalent hand to recent events that he did to the West in 1992’s Unforgiven. But in a film that supposedly deals with the price of war, not a single person Kyle encounters in Iraq is innocent—even children take up arms—and the film seems disinterested in the cycles of violence behind Kyle’s orders. American Sniper presents Kyle as a patriot, and Cooper keenly embodies how war disconnects him from home, but American Sniper never frames his story to make him question any of those choices. And it’s surprisingly coy about the violence it’s steeped in—even the closing title avoids the nature of Kyle’s death, as if afraid to suggest guns are anything but a righteous weapon against the enemy. It’s a surprisingly timid turn from Eastwood, a riveting performance from Cooper, and a movie that never quite knows how to say what it wants to.