New Release Review: The Help (Tate Taylor, 2011)

The Help is the film adaptation of Kathryn Stockett’s beloved 2009 debut novel about a young woman, Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan (played by Emma Stone) and her relationship with two black maids during the Civil Rights Era of America in the 1960’s. The novel is told from the point-of-view of the three narrators, with Aibileen Clark (Viola Davis) adopting the dominant voice in the film. Skeeter, a graduate from the University of Mississippi and an aspiring journalist and novelist, returns to Jackson, Mississippi, to discover that her beloved childhood maid no longer works for her parents. Unlike her snobby, middle class friends, who have all married and had children, Skeeter, to the dismay of her mother, Charlotte (Alison Janney), has remained single and is more interested in pursuing a career as a writer. 

Inappropriately, Skeeter asks Aibileen for assistance with her ‘homemaker hints’ column for the local paper, and becomes uncomfortable with the attitude her friends have towards their ‘help’, and especially Hilly Holbrook (Bryce Dallas Howard) and her ‘Home Sanitation Initiative’, a proposed bill to provide separate bathrooms for the Negro maids. Amidst this era when discrimination because of colour was horrifically prevalent, Skeeter, because of her own experiences as a child and her admiration for the women, is one of the few in Jackson to genuinely care about their ill-treatment and the fact that they have spent their entire lives taking care of white children, and losing time with their own, for far less than the minimum wage. It really is atrocious to see such behaviour from these women, raised by maids they idolised themselves, who are now looking down on these same women just as their prejudiced mothers did before them.

Monday Links (05/09)

As I write this I am feeling ridiculously tired, so I will keep it short. I have been working lots, and most of my days have included both shifts and multiple films. I have been watching a lot of Italian film as part of my early coverage of the 2011 Lavazza Italian Film Festival hitting Sydney in less than two weeks. So far I have managed to review A Quiet Life, 20 Cigarettes and Escort in Love. I also watched One Day, which wasn't great, and The Help, which I really enjoyed and intend to review soon. Today, I unveiled my 10 Favourite Seinfeld Episodes.

So, here are some links: 

Steve @ 1001 Plus reviews Dead Man, which I think is Jim Jarmusch's best film.

Alex @ And so it Begins... shares his own 20 Documentaries to (Really) See Before You Die in response to Current TV's original list of 50.

JBT @ Big Thoughts From A Small Mind looks at some films where cities becomes supporting characters.

Nick Prigge @ Cinema Romantico unveils his 10 Favourite Seinfeld Episodes, as I also have. I love his list, though.

James @ Cinema Sights ended his Cronenberg marathon with reviews of Crash and Eastern Promises.

Sam @ Duke and the Movies got to see Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid this week. What a treat!

Tom Clift @ Movie Reviews by Tom Clift has started a new feature: Double Feature Fridays, a weekly competition in which Tom has challenged his readers to pair the week's new theatrical releases with their favourite older or classic films. He also reviews The Help, an excellent film I watched this evening, and Senna, which anyone who reads this site knows I absolutely love. Great work Tom!

Sam, James and Tom return for LAMBcast #82 - Roll You're Own Top 5 where they join Nolahn and host Jason Soto.

Tyler @ Southern Vision reveals Ten Great Indie Dramas You Must See. 

Toby @ Blah Blah Blah Gay - A Movie Review Blog runs a great site. This week he reviews a South Korean film called 3 Iron.

My 10 Favourite Seinfeld Episodes

Inspired by Nicholas Prigge's list of his Ten Favourite Seinfeld Episodes, and being a huge Seinfeld fan myself, I have decided to come up with my own. My list of 25 Greatest Curb Your Enthusiasm Episodes gets a huge amount of hits, so it seems people are interested in what fans consider to be the 'best' examples of popular television comedies. The episodes I will select here are going to be my personal favourites, and not necessarily what I consider to be the 'best', though many of these are often considered some of the best. But, this list is one that is constantly changing also. Every time I put on an episode I love it individually in it's own way.

Considering the fact that there are very few weak Seinfeld episodes throughout it's nine fine seasons (even Season Two has some gems...The Statue and The Phone Message), choosing just ten episodes is quite tough. As a result, I'm going to cheat a little bit and start out with ten 'Honourable Mentions' before getting stuck into the list. But, really, this could be fifty 'Honourable Mentions'. Though I didn't watch it all that much when it was originally aired, I own every season of the show, and have watched every episode multiple times. For classic episodes, like some of the ones listed below, I may have surpassed ten.

So, first, my honourable mentions, and later my TOP 10: 

Lavazza Italian Film Festival Review: Nessuno Mi Puo Giudicare [Escort in Love] (Massimiliano Bruno, 2010)

Escort in Love, playing at this month’s Lavazza Italian Film Festival, with its breakneck pace, funky soundtrack, charming and likable ensemble cast and witty visual gags, is a step above most mainstream sex comedies. For example, I wish the recently released French ‘comedy’, Beautiful Lies, had possessed this much fun. Not surprisingly, because it is light, easy viewing, Escort in Love has been popular in Italy, gathering nearly 12 million on its initial run. While I expect the audience to be predominantly women, I imagine it will do well here in Sydney too. 

This is the sort of screwball comedy that had it been made in America I would have likely tuned out pretty quick. But because there is that unashamed European quirkiness to it – and honestly it feels like a French film – you give it a few extra chances. Luckily, it delivered plenty of laughs, and though it stuck to a common formula and provided few surprises, the quality central performances, and the awareness of director Massimiliano Bruno to deftly address themes of class division, unemployment, racism and homosexuality in Italian culture, is commendable. 

Alice (Paola Cortelessi, who received a David di Donatello actress award for her performance) is used to living a life of luxury at her husband's lavish villa in the north of Rome. The smart-mouthed, disrespectful tart suddenly finds herself facing debtor’s prison and the loss of her 9 year-old son Fillipo (Giovanni Bruno, the director’s son) to social services after her husband is killed in a motorcylce accident, leaving her with his hefty debt to repay. Unable to afford her current high standard of living, she accepts the offer of one of her former employees and moves onto the rooftop of a building in Rome’s multiethnic working-class Quarticciolo neighbourhood.

Lavazza Italian Film Festival Review: 20 Sigarette [20 Cigarettes] (Aureliano Amadei, 2010)

What is most extraordinary is that the events depicted in 20 Cigarettes are all true - based on debut writer/director Aureliano Amadei’s actual experiences in Iraq in 2003.

20 Cigarettes is the shocking tale of the 28 year-old anti-war activist, played by Vinicio Marchioni, who receives a privileged offer from a family friend, director Stefano Rolla (Girorgio Colangeli), to fly to Iraq and work as an assistant director and cameraman on his new film about the Italian Military “peace mission.” 

Arriving at camp, Aureliano, though he has been told there has been an extended cease-fire and believing the war to be over, remains unconvinced about his safety, but no less naïve about his irresponsible and foolhardy ‘internship’. He views it as an opportunity to be a part of something important and as a way out of his ‘slacker’ lifestyle back in Italy. Thrust into this foreign world, Aureliano quickly makes acquaintances and is surprised to discover a brotherhood of shared values, most notably with one of the soldiers, Massimo Ficuciello (an effortlessly compelling Alberto Basaluzzo). 

Italian Movie Siren to Open 2011 Lavazza Italian Film Festival

It has been announced that the ethereally stunning Mathilde Maggio, one of the rising stars of Italian Cinema, will be in Australia to launch the 12th Annual Lavazza Italian Film Festival.

Maggio will officially open the Festival in Melbourne on the 14th September and in Sydney on the 15th September and will also introduce select screenings of her latest film, Martino’s Summer, which screens as part of this year’s event.

Acknowledged as the biggest celebration of Italian cinema in the world, outside of Italy, the 2011 Festival, which boasts over 1,000 sessions nationally, will open with Welcome to the South, an Italian adaptation of Dany Boon’s French comedy, Welcome to the Sticks. This box office hit which has taken over 30 million Euros in Italy alone, follows the adventures of postal worker, Albert, who dreams of being transferred to Milan, but instead finds himself sent to a small southern town which he is convinced must be an uncouth backwater awash with mafia intrigue. 

Lavazza’s partnership with the 2011 Italian Film Festival will also add a delicious dimension to the agenda. For the opening nights, Lavazza will be shaking up Lavazza Mocha Martinis from their very own cocktail bar. 2011 Festival audiences will be treated to the culinary delights of acclaimed Italian chef Donato Buchicchio from Ristorante Due Torri in Italy’s Basilicata region. Chef Buchicchio will be on hand to present exquisite antipasti with produce imported from Italy for special event screenings in Melbourne and Sydney of Basilicata Coast to Coast.

Other notable highlights from this year’s line-up include:

18 Years Later (18 Anni Dopo) directed by Edoardo Leo

20 Cigarettes (20 Sigarette) directed by Aureliano Amadei

A Quiet Life (Una Vita Tranquilla) directed by Claudio Cupellini

The Ages of Love (Manuale D’Amore 3) directed by Giovanni Veronesi and starring Robert De Niro and Monica Bellucci

Corpo Celeste directed by Alice Rohrwacher

The Passion (La Passione) directed by Carlo Mazzacurati

Escort in Love (Nessuno Mi Puo Giudicare) directed by Massimiliano Bruno

The 2011 Lavazza Italian Film Festival will screen on the following dates: Melbourne (14 Sep – 5 Oct), Sydney (15 Sep – 5 Oct), Brisbane (5-23 Oct), Adelaide (12-30 Oct) and Perth (13-26 Oct).

For more information and ticket details visit: www.italianfilmfestival.com.au

New Release Review: One Day (Lone Scherfig, 2011)

One Day is a film that I didn’t want to review. But, as I now have this self-appointed obsession to justify my thoughts on every film I see in the cinema, I felt oddly compelled. I arrived home from the screening with the intention of furiously getting something insightful down on paper, but instead I fiddled around on the net watching Youtube videos, replied to some comments, got up to have a cup of tea, and did anything I could think of to preoccupy myself, so that I didn’t have to start this review. Perhaps I wasn’t sure how to start it? Perhaps I didn’t care all that much about the film? Well, the latter is certainly true. 

Anyway, I guess I started out by rambling like this as I tried to collect my thoughts about Lone Scherfig’s (An Education) new film, which is self-adapted by David Nichols from his 2009 beloved and bestselling novel. Here lies the chief problem. As a novel, divided by chapters with room to divulge into the intricacies of what has transpired in the lives of these characters over the previous 12 months, I’m sure this storytelling technique works very well. But as a film, with the lives of the two central characters flying by so fast that it's hard to get a grasp of anything, it comes across as shallow, episodic, dull, emotionally disengaging and ultimately forgettable. 

Emma (Anne Hathaway) and Dexter (Jim Sturgess) meet on the night of their University graduation – July 15, 1988 – where they spend the night together, but not in the sense you would normally expect. The alcohol has worn off, and Emma’s flustered self-consciousness has ruined the moment. They decide to remain friends, which at this very early stage of the film, seems strange because it is assumed they have never officially met before this night. The events that transpire don’t really suggest or justify their ongoing friendship. But, nevertheless, the 15th of July remains a significant day for each of them, and as their lives unfold, we drop into them on this day, every year, for almost two decades. Sometimes they are together, bizarrely, more often than not. Sometimes they aren't. Unfortunately, few of the vignettes are very exciting.

Lavazza Italian Film Festival Review: Una Vita Tranquilla [A Quiet Life] (Claudio Cupellini, 2010)

Can anyone ever escape his or her past? No matter what one does to cover their tracks or how different one chooses to transform their life, will the past always remain in the past? These are some of the questions raised by Claudio Cupellini’s (Lessons in Chocolate) critically acclaimed crime thriller, A Quiet Life. The film played In Competition at the 2010 Rome Film Festival, with popular Italian star Toni Servillo (Gommorah and Gorbaciof) awarded Best Leading Actor.

Rosario Russo (Servillo) is an aging Italian man living near Frankfurt, Germany with his attractive younger wife and ten-year-old son. He has integrated into his local community, and despite constant disagreements with one of his outspoken chefs, is running a successful hotel and restaurant - da Rosario. Having learnt German, he speaks it well, but generally keeps a low profile. He’s now living a 'quiet life', free from the sinister secrets from a past that he no longer considers and has changed his name to protect.

When two young, hard-nosed Italian men suddenly turn up, asking for him and looking for a room, he fears his secrets are no longer safe. One of these men, Edoardo (Francesco Di Leva), is a hotheaded, irrational, cocaine-using thug. The other, Rosario’s estranged son Diego (Marco D’Amore), is more level-headed and in-control, but strictly committed to an assignment that has brought the pair into Germany, and into Rosario’s new stress-free life.