Tag Archives: Romola Garai

2013, ⓏⒺⓇⓄ, Sci-Fi

The Last Days on Mars (2013, Ruairi Robinson)

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The Last Days on Mars is nothing if not bold in what it rips off. Director Robinson and screenwriter Clive Dawson don’t even bother disguising the primary influences–Alien, Aliens, The Thing, Ghosts of Mars–the last one is probably coincidental. You can only do so many stories about zombies on Mars and have it be original.

The film does have extraordinary special effects, great music from Max Richter (who also borrows from the mentioned films in tone, without abject plagiarism) and decent photography from Robbie Ryan . A lot of Mars is set in the dark and Ryan does well giving the audience just enough to see.

Oh, I forgot. Star Trek II. They rip off Star Trek II a little bit.

Sadly, Robinson isn’t even creative enough to turn these lifts from other, very famous science fiction films, which makes them odd choices for such obvious lifts, into a wink to the audience. He fully seems to expect his audience not to have seen a film before this one.

Even if one had never seen a single film before, Mars would still be lame. Robinson’s not just unoriginal when it comes to his compositions, he can’t direct actors and Dawson’s script doesn’t give them anything to do either.

I suppose Liev Schreiber and Romola Garai are okay in the leads. Elias Koteas is good as the captain, Olivia Williams is decent as a determined scientist. None of the acting’s actually bad except Yusra Warsama.

Mars’s just a bad film.

0/4ⓏⒺⓇⓄ

CREDITS

Directed by Ruairi Robinson; screenplay by Clive Dawson, based on a short story by Sydney J. Bounds; director of photography, Robbie Ryan; edited by Peter Lambert; music by Max Richter; production designer, Jon Henson; produced by Andrea Cornwell and Michael Kuhn; released by Magnet Releasing.

Starring Liev Schreiber (Vincent Campbell), Romola Garai (Rebecca Lane), Olivia Williams (Kim Aldrich), Johnny Harris (Robert Irwin), Goran Kostic (Marko Petrovic), Tom Cullen (Richard Harrington), Yusra Warsama (Lauren Dalby) and Elias Koteas (Charles Brunel).

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2006, ★★★, Comedy

Scoop (2006, Woody Allen)

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Scoop starts out on awkward footing. The film follows Ian McShane’s recently deceased reporter on the boat across the Styx, where he gets a great scoop. McShane’s great and Woody makes the scene a lot of fun. Unfortunately, when Scarlett Johansson and Woody the actor show up in the next scenes, they can’t compare to the McShane scenes. For the first act, Scoop doesn’t work right. Woody can’t decide whether Johansson’s a ditz or not. When she is the ditz, it’s good stuff, the most realistic ditz I’ve seen in a while, but the character alternates during the scenes. Even more, during the first act, Woody and Johansson don’t act well together. At first, I thought it was because I couldn’t separate Woody the actor and Woody the director, but then he started masquerading as Johansson’s father in English society and I was too busy laughing to think about it anymore.

Woody plays a complete jackass, embarrassing the mortified Johansson over and over. She’s being romanced by Hugh Jackman during these scenes, which just makes it more horrifying. From this point, the film gets a lot better, getting itself on a firm narrative. Johansson comes off as less of a Woody muse in Scoop than she did in Match Point (he gives himself just as much to do) and, while appealing, her performance is kind of flat–if they’d been going for the character as a ditz, she’d be great, but they don’t. Woody’s hilarious, fully comfortable now in the non-romantic goof-ball lead. As the possible bad guy, Hugh Jackman’s great. I already mentioned McShane’s great performance…

At ninety-six minutes, I suppose Scoop takes too long before it gets started–and that accelerating isn’t the most pleasant–but it’s steady once it gets going, even getting better as it enters the third act. Still, I prefer it when the “light” Woody Allen films have a little more meat.

3/4★★★

CREDITS

Written and directed by Woody Allen; director of photography, Remi Adefarasin; edited by Alisa Lepselter; production designer, Maria Djurkovic; produced by Letty Aronson and Gareth Wiley; released by Focus Features.

Starring Woody Allen (Sid Waterman), Hugh Jackman (Peter Lyman), Scarlett Johansson (Sondra Pransky), Ian McShane (Joe Strombel), Charles Dance (Mr. Malcom), Romola Garai (Vivian), Kevin R. McNally (Mike Tinsley), Julian Glover (Lord Lyman), Victoria Hamilton (Jan) and Fenella Woolgar (Jane Cook).

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2003, ★½, Drama

I Capture the Castle (2003, Tim Fywell)

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Do the British have an unending supply of novels about wise-beyond-their-years young women (unjustly poor or ordinary, of course) who have slightly dim older sisters who can’t see love in front of their eyes while all the time these younger women suffer for their sisters’ happiness? It certainly seems so.

I Capture the Castle, the film, plays like a combination of Cold Comfort Farm and Pride & Prejudice. It’s an incredibly long film, filled with two and three minute scenes set days or weeks apart, and chock-full of bad performances. The lead, Romola Garai, is excellent–though her performance isn’t enough to recommend the film, as it’s saddled with terrible diary-writing narration (filling the diary seems to be the present action of the film, but it’s decided on later and the film never takes advantage of that reasonable structure). Bill Nighy, as Garai’s father, a troubled novelist, is great. Nighy’s often great in outlandish roles, but Castle is the best work from him I’ve seen, he’s fantastic. Also good–surprisingly, as I haven’t seen him in anything for ten years–is Henry Thomas. Well, I suppose I saw him more recently in some of Cloak & Dagger, before I turned it off.

The rest of the cast is not good. Oh, except the precocious little brother. I queued the film for Rose Byrne, who plays the dull older sister. Given the rest of the cast, she’s not so bad, but she’s not any good in Castle. Tara Fitzgerald is bad. Sinéad Cusack is bad. Marc Blucas–as Thomas’ brother–is so bad he’s laughable. Even if these actors–Byrne aside–weren’t so bad, Castle probably wouldn’t be any better. It’s so shallowly written. Ah, forgot another one–almost Superman Henry Cavill is bad too. Anyway, the writing (I assume from the source novel) gives the characters no depth and gives the audience little to identify with except the occasional humor and the dreadfulness of being a wise-beyond-her-years English young woman who’s sacrificing her happiness for her older sister’s. Her dim older sister’s.

The director lensed the film in 2.35:1, which tends to require a lot of talent when the subject matter is people. He hasn’t got the talent (from his filmography, it looks like he’s done mostly TV movies and Castle was his only chance for glorious Panavision), but the English country-side scenery is pretty. At best, Castle (along with Dirty Dancing 2) will be an odd citation in Garai’s someday excellent filmography. At worst, it’ll be Bill Nighy’s best performance.

1.5/4★½

CREDITS

Directed by Tim Fywell; written by Heidi Thomas, based on the novel by Dodie Smith; director of photography, Richard Greatrex; edited by Roy Sharman; music by Dario Marianelli; production designer, John-Paul Kelly; produced by David Parfitt; released by Samuel Goldwyn Films.

Starring Henry Thomas (Simon), Marc Blucas (Neil), Rose Byrne (Rose), Romola Garai (Cassandra), Bill Nighy (Mortmain), Tara Fitzgerald (Topaz), Henry Cavill (Stephen), Sinéad Cusack (Mrs. Cotton) and Joe Sowerbutts (Thomas).

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