Cine Me

Fifty Shades of Grey


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2322441/

http://www.fiftyshadesofgreymovie-intl.com/ww/

At the end of a recent New York sneak preview of “Fifty Shades of Grey” — in the blackout between the final lines of dialogue (“Anastasia!” “Christian!”) and the first breathy notes of the last Beyoncé song — a lot of the audience burst out laughing. The source of that laughter continues to puzzle and intrigue me, perhaps more than the actual movie did. Was it delight? Derision? Embarrassment? Surprise? All of the above?

The last answer seems the most likely, since Sam Taylor-Johnson’s screen adaptation of E. L. James’s best seller is, like the book itself, a wildly confused treatment of a perennial confusing subject. Sex is a knotty business, perhaps all the more so when actual knots are involved, as they tend to be in the world of Christian Grey, the kinky billionaire bachelor who lends his name and his impressive collection of neckties to this Seattle-set tale of seduction, submission and commodity fetishism.

Reviewers have complained about Ms. James’s pedestrian prose, but the bad writing serves an important purpose. “Fifty Shades” not only destigmatizes kink, bringing bondage and spanking to airport bookstores and reading groups across the land. But it also, so to speak, de-sophisticates certain sexual practices, taking them out of the chateau and the boudoir and other fancy French places and planting them in the soil of Anglo-American banality. If E. L. James were a better writer, her books would be more — to use one of Anastasia’s favorite words — intimidating. And much less useful.

W.H. Auden once wrote that “the proof that pornography has no literary value is that, if one attempts to read it in any other way than as a sexual stimulus, to read it, say, as a psychological case-history of the author’s sexual fantasies, one is bored to tears.” In defiance of this irrefutable good sense, the “Fifty Shades” phenomenon has spawned innumerable kink-themed think pieces, though the analysis has dwelt less on Ms. James’s psyche than on the fantasies of the tens of millions of women who have bought her books. The writers transform their boredom into mockery and judgment as they circle around a tantalizing, perhaps frustrating question. Why do so many women read these novels, even though they have no literary value?

I’m no expert, but I can venture a guess: for fun. They seem to be the kind of books you can simultaneously have fun with, make fun of, trash and cherish and adapt to the pursuit of your own pleasures. Which brings me back to the laughter at the end of the sneak preview. 

The movie is neither one of those things. It dabbles in romantic comedy and splashes around in melodrama, but the one thing it can’t be — the thing the novel so trashily and triumphantly is — is pornography. Ms. Taylor-Johnson’s sex scenes are not that much different from other R-rated sex scenes, though there are more of them and more hardware is involved. You know the routine: an arched neck, some curled toes, a buttock here, a breast there, a wisp of pubic hair, a muffled moan, another Beyoncé song. Maybe a riding crop for variety.

Mr. Dornan has the bland affect of a model, by which I mean a figure made of balsa wood or Lego. What vitality “Fifty Shades of Grey” possesses belongs to Ms. Johnson, who is a champion lip-biter and no slouch at blushing, eye-rolling and trembling on the verge of tears. She’s a good actress, in other words, and Ms. Taylor-Johnson matches the colors and the visual texture — the chilly blues and pulsing reds, the drab daylight and the velvety dusk — to Anastasia’s moods and desires.

“Fifty Shades of Grey” might not be a good movie — O.K., it’s a terrible movie — but it might nonetheless be a movie that feels good to see, whether you squirm or giggle or roll your eyes or just sit still and take your punishment.

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.