Precious

I went to the Electric with Koi-lee on Friday night.  I love the Electric.  The foot stools, the seats, the space and the bits in between the seats where you can put your drinks and scooby snacks.

We saw Precious and it was one of the most gut wrenching movies I’ve ever seen. It was shocking in a ‘oh my god I can’t believe some people live like that’ sort of way.  A similar reaction as the one I had when I saw Once Were Warriors.  A totally different movie though.  It’s about Precious, who is a morbidly obese, illiterate girl who is pregnant with her second baby, by her father.  As well as incest she also has to deal with her mother, who is actually jealous of the fact she is having a baby with ‘her man’ and takes every opportunity to belittle and humiliate her.  One particular rant finished with “I wish I’d aborted you.”  She was quite a despicable character and Mo’Nique the actress played her superbly.  She just won a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress for her role.

The acting wasn’t overplayed and felt totally authentic.  Mariah Carey makes an appearance as a dowdy social worker who tries to help Precious and there is no sense of the musical diva about her at all.  Lenny Kravitz is John the nurse and he is smoking hot.  Ms Rain ,the ABC teacher, who steps in and gives Precious some genuine encouragement and support also gave a brilliant performance.  Actually there wasn’t a duff note in the whole thing, apart from the fact that the sound boom kept entering the picture.  Seriously, that is like film making 101, keep the boom out of shot.

I felt quite disturbed after watching this.  Not just for the people in the movie, but for the fact that there are some girls out there, trapped in similar circumstances with seemingly no way out.  Destined to repeat the cycle.

Sometimes we just don’t know how lucky we are.

Nine

Isn’t it ironic that the storyline for this movie is about a director who doesn’t have a script and is looking for inspiration.  Well the whole movie felt uninspired!  It’s based on the book written by Arthur Kopit, which is derived fron an Italian play, which was (stay with me people) inspired by Federico Fellini’s autobiographical film called 8 1/2.

The result of all of this plot ‘inspiration’ is a distinctly average movie, which is surprising given the stellar cast line up.  Not to say that there weren’t good performances, Judi Dench, Nicole Kidman, Marion Cotillard, Kate Hudson and Penelope Cruz were all excellent.  In particular, Kate Hudson and Penelope Cruz gave scorching performances in their sexy musical numbers.  

The rest of the story is less satisfying, with deep soul searching of a man facing a mid life crisis.  I was rolling my eyes in the theatre and couldn’t wait for the over dramatised emotion to reach it’s final conclusion. 

With the director from Chicago at the helm I expected something as sharp and sassy, but instead I got a giant heaping of schmaltz.

Happy Go Lucky

I’ve just finished watching Happy Go Lucky and think Sally Hawkins played her part brilliantly.  The story is about Poppy, a happy go lucky kind of girl (see what they did there) who lives in London.  The movie follows her over the course of a few weeks, when she starts taking driving lessons with an angry instructor and she gets a little bit of lovin’.   At the start I liked the character. although I thought she was a little bit TOO happy, but then her character showed a little more depth and it hit just the right note of quirkiness and optimism.   Life really is all about the hand we’re dealt, the thoughts we think and the choices we make and this movie illustrates this beautifully.

Happy go lucky is a fabulous feel good movie that totally drew me in.  I want to be Sally Hawkin’s friend, her flatmate in the movie was brilliant too.  I could hang out with both of them and a glass of wine.  (Yes, I know they were only playing roles, but sometimes you just get people and I think they’d be fabulous).  I’ve reserved some of Sally’s other movies on Lovefilm, so at least I can be her friend for another couple of hours.