Lone Scherfig
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Hornby may have been pigeonholed as a writer who tells men's stories (or even the stories of boyish men) with High Fidelity and About a Boy, but his work here, building from the foundation of Barber's memoir, builds compelling, human characters regardless of gender or class or age; it's some of his finest work.
High Fidelity, arguably the best Hornby film, held out hope that he might still rescue himself on the strength of John Cusack, Stephen Frears, and the brotherhood of vinyl record geekdom.
When sitting down to watch a film penned by Nick Hornby (High Fidelity, About A Boy) you expect something lighthearted and emotional, with a bit of British humor.
Funnily enough, it's boys' own novelist Nick Hornby (High Fidelity) who adapted this story from the memoir by journalist Lynn Barber and, though liberties have been taken and names changed, he paints an accurate portrait of this precocious girl which remains just as smart.
The screenplay by Nick Hornby (" About a Boy " and " High Fidelity ") is based on a memoir by a real person, the British journalist Lynn Barber.
With its 12-year narrative timeframe, comfy middle-class Britishisms and sparky pairing of striving, pure-hearted girl and raffish, self-oriented guy, “Love, Rosie” evokes Rob Reiner’s aforementioned 1989 hit far less than it does Lone Scherfig’s “One Day” (2011) — another polished adaptation of a megaselling romantic novel, but one that fell oddly short of commercial expectations.
Love, Rosie will appeal to teenage girls, should cheer up those disappointed with the adaptation of the similarly themed One Day, and will interest those who have enjoyed the Brit-coms of Richard Curtis over the years.
Like Lone Scherfig's disastrous One Day , the film involves best friends who seem destined to become a couple, but don't.
Love, Rosie plays out a little like a cross between a Richard Curtis film and One Day without ever managing to find its own groove.
The dinner and its all-too-predictable outcome consume much of the film, with the riotous diners blurring into one horrid mass like the piggies at the end of George Orwell’s Animal Farm.
I haven’t read One Day the book, so I didn’t know not to expect a Same Time, Next Year sort of gimmick.
Even the story's conceit is shoddy: Unlike its precursor (1978's Same Time, Next Year), this couple doesn't necessarily need an annual face-to-face encounter.
On the other hand... Reel Thoughts: A Blue Valentine (That People Will Actually Want to Watch): From Same Time, Next Year to (500) Days of Summer to last year’s brutal Blue Valentine, films that unfold on timelines are fascinating, because you get to see the characters change, sometimes radically, from date to date.
Nicholls' charming novel had a Same Time, Next Year?style premise, checking in on Dex and Em every single July 15 for 20 years, wherever they might be on that day; in adapting his book for the screen, Nicholls skips some years and does some compression of events.
From Same Time, Next Year to (500) Days of Summer to last year’s brutal Blue Valentine, films that unfold on timelines are fascinating, because you get to see the characters change, sometimes radically, from date to date.
Still, there's a spark between them, which makes the plot somewhat derivative and implausible: we saw this in Sandra Goldbacher's more complex Me Without You.
The Diary of a Teenage Girl (2015)
Directed by Marielle Heller
influenced by An Education (2009)
Themes Plot
Nonpornographic films that showcase teenage girls’ sexual desires are few; among them are the recent An Education, as well as Smooth Talk and Thirteen.
To the filmmaker’s great credit, “The Diary of a Teenage Girl” goes where “ Lolita ,” “ Smooth Talk ,” “ Thirteen ” and “ An Education ” have gone before — just to name a few — and claims it as new territory.
If we get the odd movie about teenage girls and older men, they tend to be civilized, restrained affairs, often from England, such as "An Education" (2009) or, a generation back, "Wish You Were Here" (1987).
"Diary" is not the first thoughtful, challenging movie about sex between a young woman and a much older man -- "An Education" and "Smooth Talk" are worth seeking out -- but what sets it apart is artistry, how Minnie's desire to be an artist drives her and how that drives how the movie is made.
We’ve seen this "way-too-young girl with an older man" scenario many times before, in Lone Scherfig’s An Education, Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank, and countless other films.
Sturgess, on the other hand, proves quite capable of channeling the kind of charming lout that Hugh Grant played in the similarly structured "Four Weddings and a Funeral."
"One Day" is more of a piece with a march-of-time, thwarted love epic like "The Way We Were," and those in the date-movie crowd who've not read the book need to prepare for an extremely uncute ending.
Patricia Clarkson (Far from Heaven, Easy A) is good as always in her brief turn as Dex's doting, terminally ill mother.
Many films have sought to explore and uncover the wealth divide at the heart of British life, from If…. (1968) to The Riot Club (2014), with each dissecting the inherited power and privilege at the heart of the British state.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: My Policeman is like An Education crossed with Bros .
To qualify as a Dogme film writer/director Scherfig follows the Dogme Manifesto “Vow of Chastity” championed by Lars von Trier (The Idiots) by using a hand held camera for shooting the color film on location without special lighting, music, or subsequent sound dubbing.
If the existing constellation of Danish vérité exercises could be imagined, for a moment, as Snow White's dwarves, Thomas Vinterberg's inaugural entry, 1998's The Celebration , would probably be Grumpy, Lars von Trier's spastic The Idiots would be Sneezy, and Kristian Levring's torpid The King Is Alive , in effect if not in ambition, would be Sleepy.
Based on the non-fiction book Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Coast Trail, and adapted by excellent screenwriter Nick Hornby (About a Boy, An Education), Wild may offer some inspiration to those who’ve hit the end of their rope and need somewhere to fall, while to others it will feel like a long and predictable list of “carpe diem”-style platitudes.
Nick Hornby’s (An Education, About a Boy) screenplay predictably dramatises conventional themes like individualism and personal growth but Wild is more interesting as a study of gender and femininity.
To hold all these soul-stretching themes together is quite a feat and director Jean-Marc Vallee ( The Young Victoria , Dallas Buyer's Club ) and screenplay writer Nick Hornby ( About a Boy , An Education ) prove themselves up to the challenge.
The screenplay, deft and nuggety, comes from Nick Hornby, the About a Boy writer whose affinity for female-driven stories resulted in the pitch-perfect adaptation of Lynn Barber's '60s coming-of-age memoir, An Education .
Created by an award-rich group including director Jean-Marc Vallée (Dallas Buyers Club), Academy Award® winner Witherspoon (Walk the Line) and screenwriter Nick Hornby (nominated for An Education) that brings Strayed’s captivating story to the screen, Witherspoon gives the best performance of her career, by far.
Vallee ("Dallas Buyers Club") works from a script by Nick Hornby, whose novels ("About a Boy," "High Fidelity") and screenplays ("An Education") might make him seem an odd choice for this film.
But then she meets sophisticated thirtysomething David (Peter Sarsgaard, "The Skeleton Key," "Orphan") driving his rare, maroon Bristol and his interest in her exposes her to everything from London clubs to dog tracks.
(Mulligan's biggest splashes were in supporting roles in the British television series "Doctor Who" and the 2005 adaptation of "Pride & Prejudice.")
¶ With just a few film roles behind her, including flighty Kitty Bennett in the Keira Knightley-starring "Pride & Prejudice," Mulligan seizes the character of 16-year-old Jenny in a once-in-a-lifetime way.
Her dazzlement and uncertain footing in these adult environs is deftly demonstrated in a remarkable supper club scene, where she’s the guest and curio of David, as well as his inscrutable friend Danny (Dominic Cooper) and Danny’s dimbulb girlfriend Helen (Mulligan’s Pride and Prejudice co-star Rosamund Pike, working hard to play dumb).
Your eyes are drawn to the deep dimple that, when she laughs, runs up her left cheek like a sweet scar; and your ears to her rich cello voice, so mature and supple an instrument for someone who's played girls on the cusp of womanhood since her movie debut as Keira Knightley's sister Kitty in the 2005 Pride and Prejudice.
Bright-eyed actor Mulligan (Pride & Prejudice, Public Enemies) lights up every scene she's in, followed closely by veteran changeling Sarsgaard in yet another of his shadowy roles, as a well-spoken, middle-class man with hidden reserves of untrustworthiness.
Also lingering long after the moment has passed is Patricia Clarkson's (2010's " Cairo Time ") touching admittance that she worries her son isn't the nice person he used to be.
At the other end of the spectrum, Mulligan turns in her best work since her breakthrough work "An Education" with a highwire performance that is as exposed and edgy as Fassbender's is insular and restrained.
But when Brandon's emotionally needy sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan, "An Education," "Drive") crashes his pad after weeks of avoided phone calls, Brandon might actually begin to feel something like "Shame."
Mulligan is another appealing comer: she received an Oscar nomination for her role as a precocious teen in An Education, and, like Fassbender, was a runner-up in this week’s New York Film Critics’ vote (for best supporting actress).
Other performances are on-point and effective, from Dominic Cooper (2008's " Mamma Mia! ") and Rosamund Pike (2009's " Surrogates ") as David's friends Danny and Helen, to Olivia Williams (2003's " Peter Pan ") as Miss Stubbs, to Alfred Molina (2008's " Nothing Like the Holidays ") as Jenny's caring, if misguided, father.
The Imitation Game (2014)
Directed by Morten Tyldum
influenced Their Finest (2017), An Education (2009)
Plot Visuals
A cross between “Shakespeare in Love” and “The Imitation Game,” “Their Finest” is an offbeat romantic comedy about making a film and making love in a Blitz-pounded World War II-era London.
Like The Imitation Game and The King’s Speech before it, the film largely relies on a muted blue-gray color palette as a means of tastefully conveying the past.
The Imitation Game, with Benedict Cumberbatch is a very different kind of English film, also set during the Second World War.
Matthew Beard, who was the drippy tea-table suitor in An Education , does fine work here as a junior colleague affected personally by one of Turing’s judgement calls.
Phoebe Fox (2011's " One Day ") plays Eve Parkins as amiable, resolute and down-to-earth, a young woman who cares about the welfare of her pupils and will do whatever she must to protect them.