Stephen Daldry
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Connections, in both directions
Unfortunately, instead of hearing the theme from Summer of '42 , we then flash back to 1958, when the teenage Michael (played by the gawky, endearing David Kross) had a furtive love affair with the much older Hanna Schmitz (Winslet), a ticket-taker on the Berlin trolley.
A flawed mix of a kind of German "Summer of '42" with a theatrically bound courtroom drama and aftermath, "The Reader's" lopsided before-and-after structure defeats part of its dramatic impact.
All of this is cloaked in a "Summer of '42" coming-of-age story about a boy's first love and an older woman's last brush with tenderness.
There is a bittersweet element to this, but "Summer of '42" it ain't.
Directed with fittingly broad strokes by Dexter Fletcher, “Eddie the Eagle” may or may not become another “Billy Elliot,” but it ought to mark Egerton (“Kingsman: The Secret Service”) as an actor worth watching.
Actually, though, in movie terms, Eddie the Eagle is almost exactly like that: if “Billy Elliot on skies” was not part of the pitch meeting, I can’t imagine what else got the greenlight for this almost entirely fictional biopic of the unlikely English ski-jumper, who exploited the loophole of no actual British ski-jumping team existing, then finished dead last as a goofy crowd favorite.
The script is peppered with on-the-nose comparisons to previous underdogs, especially the bobsled shenanigans of Cool Runnings and Billy Elliot's yearning.
There's a long and successful strain of British films about unlikely outcasts following their dreams, including Stephen Daldry's Billy Elliot, where a coal-miner's son pursues a passion for ballet, and Eddie the Eagle neatly sets up the familiar dynamic of parental doubt and wider disbelief.
Scalding and courageous, “Together” isn’t necessarily fun, but to echo Joaquin Phoenix’s mad Emperor in “Gladiator,“ you will be entertained.
I can only compare the intense outpouring of emotion from these scenes to a late sequence in Billy Elliot , bidding farewell to his own nan with him, ready to pursue his ballet dream.
It almost feels like someone took Far From Heaven (2002) and The Hours (2002), flattened out all of the depth and nuance of their commentary, put it through a Stepford Wives filter, replaced all of the characters with uninteresting archetypes, and called it a day.
Not just any old fling, though, but the kind where intense physicality is coupled with reserve of feeling to signify profound unspoken anguish (Last Tango in Paris), and where a character is forever emotionally withered by an early encounter (The Go-Between).
Screenwriter David Hare (Plenty, Wetherby) and director Stephen Daldry (The Hours, Billy Elliot) appear to be overwhelmed by the sheer weight of the themes and ideas being stroked here.
Screenwriter David Hare (Plenty, Wetherby) and director Stephen Daldry (The Hours, Billy Elliot) appear to be overwhelmed by the sheer weight of the themes and ideas being stroked here.
Imagine The Hours, but in this version Julianne Moore's character, instead of reading Mrs. Dalloway, reads an airport thriller, a Lee Childs or James Patterson.
The film's central dramatic twist is also somewhat unsatisfying, and other films -- like Judgment at Nuremberg and The Night Porter -- have tackled the consequences of Naziism and the intertwining of sex and power in post-war Germany with much greater skill and vision.
Carol is very much a love story but not even remotely a conventional one, and it might owe as much to Steven Daldry’s The Hours as it does to Far from Heaven because it’s very much about the relationship between these women.
Not just any old fling, though, but the kind where intense physicality is coupled with reserve of feeling to signify profound unspoken anguish (Last Tango in Paris), and where a character is forever emotionally withered by an early encounter (The Go-Between).
Add the clean lines of the widescreen images of Seamus McGarvey, cinematographer of “The Avengers,” “The Hours” and “High Fidelity,” and a magisterially sour theme by the compulsively productive composer Alexandre Desplat and you’re talking one slick package.
The quality is there, but the message has already been imparted, to much greater effect, in similar films like Music Box and Apt Pupil.
The best comparison, though, is to The Hours?the Julianne Moore segment in particular.
"Brokeback Mountain," on the other hand, is a monotonous and often inadvertently campy romance that rivals "The Hours" as the most overrated movie of the decade.
A plot of sorts develops as they try arranging an exchange while dealing with sidebar issues involving first love, getting to a popular school mate’s party and realising a stereotype-breaking dream, Billy Elliot -style.
The Graduate meets Schindler’s List in Stephen Daldry’s earnest, tastefully shot adaptation of Bernhard Schlink’s 1995 partly autobiographical novel.
Truth is “The Reader” outdid its Oscar peers that year — a decades-spanning drama that, like “Downfall” before it, went beyond facts into slippery human nature of lust, manipulation, retribution and doubt.
Flashes of the difficult moral quandaries tackled in the book – does acting within the law absolve heinous crimes, should a war criminal be permitted any happiness – are largely provided courtesy of Michael’s law professor (Bruno Ganz, who portrayed the ultimate Nazi piece of work in Downfall).
But by casting Holland, a British actor who once danced as Billy Elliot , we have the Spidey of the selfie generation.
You wonder if novelist David Mitchell was aiming for a sci-fi “The Hours,” or to start his own L. Ron Hubbard religion.
There’s maybe a touch of “The Hours” in the juxtaposed stories, but it’s truly not like any movie you’ve ever seen.