Arriving just in time for both awards season and the mood in which a vast swathe of audiences no doubt find themselves submerged, Marielle Heller's A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood is the tonic we'd forgotten we needed.
Focusing on near-legendary American children's TV presenter Fred Rogers, it's less of a biopic and more a musing on the cultural impact of his work over the decades. Played expertly by Tom Hanks with quiet and relentless patience and optimism, the film's story-proper takes place in 1998, following curmudgeonly journalist-in-crisis Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys) as he's despatched by Esquire magazine to get a 400-word interview on the concept of modern-day heroes. Upon meeting Rogers, Vogel begins to be drawn into his well of calm, and begins to unpick the knotted threads of his own life.
And it's lovely. Ponderous in some places, outright surrealist in others Beautiful Day is no less sappy than you'd imagine but certainly darker than you'd expect. A parable for 2019, the film cuts through our cynicism like a knife while never forgetting how it was formed in the first place. Through Rogers, Heller reassures us that everything will be alright in the end, but there's work to be done to get there, and not everything matters as much as we think it does.
A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood is likely to drift through the UK box office without creating too many ripples. Don't let it pass you by.
It is.
I'm very aware that the majority of UK audiences will be in the room because of Tom Hanks rather than knowing who Mr. Rogers is, but I assure you as someone who was in that exact camp that this is worth watching, even as an introduction to the man.
It is.
It's definitely 'up there'.
Although I'm not exactly a huge fan of Hanks, so...
That's possible.
There isn't.
Level 2: Chris Cooper is in this, and he was in 2012's Muppets movie along with Donald 'Calrissian' Glover.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Well, if Brad Pitt played with unabashed glee recently in his Casablanca-themed sandpit, Live By Night is very much Ben Affleck's Godfather fan-film. Adapted from Dennis Lehane's 2012 novel, our Ben directs and screen-writes and stars*1 in the tale of self-made gangster Joe Coughlin, rum-running in prohibition-era America while somehow managing to keep his hands clean.
It's not bad, but given the films which clearly influenced it, it's certainly not great and feels like Affleck couldn't decide what sort of movie he wanted to make. The script is fairly mechanical, with exposition in every other sentence as a four-hour story is squeezed into a two-hour film, and characters are killed off-screen with a single perfunctory line. The hero's wily, moustache-twirling nemesis is set up in the first twenty minutes then seemingly forgotten about until the last ten, and as much as the story rushes through its fifteen-or-so years (with minimal ageing to the principal cast, obviously, and with the heavy-handed assistance of Coughlin's sporadic narration), it still finds time to slot in some quite astonishing sermonising*2.
When he's not trying to channel Gene Kelly in modelling a wide selection of jauntily-angled hats, Affleck struggles with his character's Boston accent*3, almost as much as any Irish character that's not being played by an Irish actor struggles with theirs.
But perhaps the film's biggest problem is that the pacing's all over the shop. Affleck's great at directing the action sequences, but fails to bring any real dynamism to the dialogue-led scenes (of which there are many). With more patience and focus, this could have been a contender for the all-time great gangster-flicks. The ingredients are all there but the chef lacks the discipline to cook them properly.
The lengthy gunfire sequences are pretty neat, though (and with some fantastic head-shots).
In the January no-man's land between awards-bait and popcorn-fodder, Live By Night should be a lean, visceral yet extravagant drama; instead it's just period-detailed padding.
Well Ben would have you believe Scarface and The Godfather, but I think the film actually has more in common with American Pastoral. And not just because of the presence of Elle Fanning, a performer who manages to ride right through the centre of the Uncanny Valley without even being CGI…
Why not? It'll save you going out to buy it on DVD then going out again to drop it off at the charity-shop when you've watched it once.
Create a non-demanding buffer film while we all wait impatiently for Batman?
Sure.
It is not.
I will not.
There is not.
Level 2: That Brendan Gleeson's in this, and he was in that Calvary alongside his boy, Domhnall 'Hux' Gleeson.
*1 Which, let's face it, is a level of involvement that's rarely a good sign for any project.
*2 Because our hero may be a smug, opportunistic, lying, treacherous murderer with commitment and authority-issues, but at least he's not a racist. I'm not kidding, this is literally Act III of the film.
*3 Well I say 'struggles', it's more 'forgets about until he says a word like "bar" or "walk", at which point he's all over it like Peter Griffin'.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
