Brooklyn
Saoirse Ronan stars in this trans-Atlantic drama about a
young woman who leaves 1950’s small-town Ireland for New York City but finds
her past coming back to her door. Brooklyn is an undoubtedly sentimental film,
rich in gloss and polish, but the film
has more than enough to its merit to work. Fundamentally is Nick Hormby’s
screenplay based off of Colm Tóibín’s novel that is filled with a very Irish
sense of wit and warmth that helps give its Irish characters life. Saoirse
Ronan sparkles as lead character Eillis whilst Jim Broadbent and Julie Walters make for memorable
supporting cast even with the affected accents. The film’s treatment of
Americans is a little blander with Emory Cohen’s turn as Eillis’
Italian-American love interest running a little bit towards stereotype, but the
film as a whole is engaging and warm with some memorable performances. ***
(pick of the week)
Burnt
Bradley Cooper’s latest film, Burnt has him playing a
maverick chef rebuilding his career with a new restaurant in London. What Burnt
is built around is its all-star cast with supporting performances from Sienna
Miller, Omar Sy, Daniel Brühl, Emma Thompson, Alicia Vikander, Lily James and
Uma Thurman. The shame of it is, it is only these performances (of which there
are no real displays of actors excelling themselves beyond their admittedly
often high abilities) that provide any real interest in a film that takes a lot
of the passion and aggression of the life of a chef (and owing a definite debt
to the tropes and themes of an underdog sports movie) but with little sense of
joy or love of the food, leaving us with Cooper’s occasionally unsympathetic protagonist.
Given that it’s all-star-cast film about cooking, there are
inevitable comparisons with John Favreau’s film, Chef (2014). Whilst Chef was not
without its flaws and definitely didn’t take itself as seriously as Burnt, it
was fun and knew how to entertain without trying to overplay its dramatic sensibilities.
All in all, Burnt is a fairly appropriate title because it’s…well…all a bit
overdone. **
He Named Me Malala
On the heels of Amy (2015), comes another documentary film
with widespread mainstream appeal in this film about the story of Malala
Yousafzai, the teenage Pakistani education activist who survived an assassination
attempt by the Taliban. He Named Me Malala lacks Amy’s stylisation and goes for
a much more basic approach, even with the regular use of animation sequences.
This allows for the message of the film to be unfailingly coherent, even if the
film lacks something of a definite structure. It’s an interesting story, especially
with tenets that are not often given as much of a voice as Malala’s near-death
(such as her father, an extraordinary man in his own right) and there’s
definitely some punch to proceedings and even an admittedly half-hearted
attempt to hear out some criticism of Malala and the media’s coverage of her.
Whilst there’s nothing but good intentions there and a story that definitely
needs to be told, as a film He Named Me Malala is good but a little too long
even for its short running time and in need of a little more artfulness. ***
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