"If I'm gonna make a fake movie, it's gonna be a fake hit"

Hello Everyone :-)

It’s awards season! Yay!

I like awards season. I know it’s all film people giving themselves a pat on the back and every year we ask ourselves if ceremonies like the Oscars are relevant anymore (My Twitter friend Ross wrote an article on the subject last year on the Huffington Post, read it and follow him, he’s lovely). However I’m the kind of girl that gets distracted by sparkle and giddy at glitz so I always enjoy watching awards ceremonies, especially when you’ve recorded them and can whizz all the boring bits. And… there’s always the possibility that someone might swear.

So the other week was the BAFTAs and I think we gave as good as our American counterparts in terms of pomp and circumstance. The big winner of the night was ‘Argo’ that walked away with Best Editing, Best Director and Best Picture (You can see all the winners here).

‘Argo’ centres on the 1979 Iran hostage crisis. During this conflict 6 US embassy workers escaped capture and were forced into hiding at the Canadian embassy. The US State department explores options for "exfiltrating" the 6 from Iran. Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck), a CIA specialist, is brought in for consultation and comes up with the idea of pretending that the escaped embassy workers are a Canadian film crew looking for a filming location for their next movie. Tony then enlists the help of industry insiders Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin) and John Chambers (John Goodman) to help him make his fake film seem as real as possible.

This is a topic about which I knew nothing prior to seeing this film. I don’t just mean the immediate story (which was kept classified until 1997), I mean the entire hostage situation (history is really not my strong suit). That said my lack of knowledge didn’t impede my enjoyment of the film at all, in fact I think it enhanced it. The good Doctor Kermode always refers to an incident when he was watching a press screening of ‘Apollo 13’ and a fellow critic was on the edge of their seat because they were didn’t know whether everyone made it out alive, despite the fact it was based on a well-documented historical event. The same is true for me and ‘Argo’.

What stuck me first off was the 70’s-ness of it all. It looks great. Second thing that struck me was the sense of authenticity. There are multiple scenes of rioting and civil unrest that look like they could have bee taken from the footage of the ongoing Arab Spring uprisings. The film has a palpable tension that really impressed me.

Ben Affleck stars as well as directs in ‘Argo’ and acquits himself well on both counts.

Affleck plays Tony as a very subdued, pensive man which works well. However, what I’m most impressed by is his directorial prowess. One of the main strengths of ‘Argo’ is its ability to weave seamlessly between comedy and tension. There is a scene where Tony, Lester and John are hosting a press junket to promote their (unbeknownst to the press) fake movie and it’s all quite jovial. This is inter-cut with scenes from the US embassy in Iran where hostages are being tormented by their captors. It’s a brilliant piece of cinema that really gave me an insight into the talent working behind this film.

That’s not the only talent involved in this venture either. John Goodman and Alan Arkin are brilliant as the two movie makers. They are a necessary comic relief and bounce off each other effortlessly.

The roles of the 6 escapees could have been a bit of a ‘tab A into slot A’ exercise but was impressed by how much the characters were fleshed out. Scoot McNairy and Rory Cochrane particularly stood out for me.



I don’t really know what I was expecting when I went to see ‘Argo’. Considering the period in which it’s set I’d half expect younger audiences to switch off but the screening I was at was solely attended by under-30’s and, like me, they were all laughing and perched on the edge on the edge of their seats throughout.

It may not have the grandeur of ‘Les Miserables’, the historical significance of ‘Lincoln’ or the emotional resonance of ‘Beasts of the Southern Wild’ but it it’s own, quiet way I think ‘Argo’ deserves its place in this year’s awards roster.

Showcase cinemas are re-showing ‘Argo’ prior to this year’s Academy awards; catch it while it’s there!

After all that awards talk lets have some…

Reasons to be cheerful

1. I don’t know how this has escaped my attention but the god-like genius that is Guillermo Del Toro has a film out this year. 12th July will see the release of the CGI-laden ‘Pacific Rim’ to our silver screens. It looks like it could be seven shades of hideous ‘Transformers’ rip off but knowing that Del Toro has had a hand in proceedings calms my nerves. I’m looking forward to it.

2. STAR TREK!!!!! So much ‘Star Trek’ news so little time! Here is the official trailer for ‘Into Darkness’ with the beautiful and bulked up Benedict Cumberbatch being all sexy and badass. Also… Photos! I actually could not be more excited about this if I tried!

That’s enough wittering from me.

Goodbye till next time :-)

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“Bilbo Baggins, I am looking for someone to share in an adventure."

Hello Everyone :-)

Welcome to 2013! I know it’s probably too late to wish you a happy new year but I’ve had some techno-trauma (my laptop died) and this is the first chance I’ve had… so Happy New Year :-)

I’m not usually fond of New Year, it’s all a bit expensive and there’s so much pressure to have a good time (having said that, it was not the case this year, I genuinely had a good time on New Year’s Eve) that I usually have to reconcile myself with an annual family outing to the pictures. This year’s chosen film; ‘The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’ (just ‘The Hobbit’ from now on).

If you’ve been living under a rock since 1937 ‘The Hobbit’ is an adaptation of the children’s book by J.R.R Tolkien that centers around Bilbo Baggins (initially Ian Holm but mainly Martin Freeman), a respectable Hobbit that lives in the Shire. Bilbo’s sedate existence gets interrupted by the Wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen) who enlists our hero for a quest. The titular Hobbit gets wrapped up in an adventure with a group of Dwarfs, lead by Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage), to reclaim their stolen home.

There are so many points to make about this film it’s hard to decide where to start…

I have seen and heard ‘The Hobbit’ get a thorough pasting in some reviews which I think is unfair. I’ve seen it twice; it is undeniably over-long and certain sequences use references to the LOTR trilogy as a crutch with which to prop-up the film but none of that diminishes the joy of being back in middle-earth.

Jackson has used a great deal of poetic license and has invented a brand new antagonist, The White Ork: Azog the defiler. It’s quite a bold step to take but I think Azog gives the story a more immediate antagonist. The problem with Smaug (since when has ANYONE pronounced the ‘a’ in Smaug?!?!) is that he’s very remote and has very little to do with things until the dwarves and Bilbo get to the Lonely Mountain, the inclusion of Azog spurs the action on which, I think, can only be a good thing.

There are some fun references to LOTR. When Bilbo falls backwards and the ring slips onto his finger it is very reminiscent of Frodo in the Fellowship/Prancing Pony Inn scene and I liked that kind of visual cue which would only chime with people that know LOTR inside-out.

What I was less keen on was the desperate attempts to keep the audience interested by constantly linking things to the LOTR trilogy. There is a ‘Lord of the Rings: The Reunion’ style meeting where Galadriel, Elrond, Gandalf and Saruman have a conflab in Rivendell about the Necromancer. This scene made my eyes roll so much anyone watching me would have thought I was trying to look at the inside of my own head. To my mind this aside exists purely to foreshadow the events of the existing trilogy and that is not enough of a reason for me to have to endure Kate Blanchett’s super-annoying Galadriel. I put it to you dear reader, in a film that is 2 hours 49 minutes long, why have they decided to include this gathering when it doesn’t advance the immediate story in any way, shape or form?

As for Frames Per Second (FPS) I saw ‘The Hobbit’ in the standard 24 FPS and it looked sublime to me.  The effects are great, especially on Gollum. Two Towers is 11 years old this year (I know… THAT MAKES ME FEEL SO OLD!) so the effects are a little dated now, but in this most recent incarnation Gollum looked so real; I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

Helping keep the film afloat are some nice performances from the cast. Ian McKellen is back as Gandalf and appears to be having a hoot. Gandalf is a lot less pressured in this film (the stakes of the quest at hand not being as big as in LOTR) which makes him quite a fun, breezy influence.

Martin Freeman is obviously the most talked about member of the cast prior to the films release and rightly so, he is the titular character after all. As we all suspected Freeman takes to the role like he’s been playing it all his life. He has brilliant timing and is the king of the comic reaction. I look forward to his involvement in the new two Hobbity installments.

Freeman’s scene with the Middle-Earth stalwart Andy Serkis is the highlight of the film. Serkis is the darling of performance capture and the improvement in this technology over the past decade makes his brief turn all the more captivating. Freeman and Serkis bounce off each other like a Tennis ball at a wall. It’s great.

Somewhat unexpectedly this turns out to be Thorin's film and Richard Armitage does well as the regal and pig-headed dwarf. Whether or not this should be Thorin’s film is up for debate but I think he does a good job.

If I was to give any advice to Peter Jackson it would be to get a new editor. I know nothing about films (as demonstrated numerous times in this blog) but when a simpleton like me says something isn’t working then it really must be broken.

Peter Jackson has a long-standing relationship with editor Jabez Olssen (the pair have worked together on LOTR: Two Towers, King Kong The Lovely Bones, amongst other things) and that may well be part of the problem. What ‘The Hobbit’ needed was someone to sit in the editing room with Jackson and objectively say “I really don’t think it’s necessary to have an extended scene in the middle of the film that foreshadows future events” or “They need to spend less time at Bilbo’s house, let’s shave a few minutes off that scene”. I’m optimistic enough (or maybe naïve enough) to think that this all comes from a good place; that Jackson desperately wants to show us every facet of middle earth and dragging the story out isn’t for financial gain but, whatever his motives, the end result smacks of a director that has given in to self-indulgence.

Another thing that makes me suggest ending the Director/Editor collaboration is that this film is 11 minutes short of being three hours long. It’s like the Good Doctor Kermode is always saying: In ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ Stanley Kubrick goes from the dawn of man to the birth of a new species in 142 minutes, if you can’t tell your story within that space of time you’re not trying hard enough. The fact that we have two more installments of a similar running time to come in this series is damn near insane. You can talk all you like about prologues and footnotes; the simple truth is that the LOTR books are hefty tomes and, as such, are entitled to run as long as they do. ‘The Hobbit’ is over 200 pages shorter than the first book in the LOTR series and yet is only 9 minutes under the running time of ‘The Fellowship of the Ring’. I’m admittedly crap at maths but even I know that that doesn’t add up.

  

Owing to the fact that this is a Peter Jackson film, it comes with an inbuilt quality level below which it will not fall, whether that is good enough remains to be seen. ‘The Hobbit’ is it’s own beast (a Dragon to be exact) and Jackson needs to treat it as such. I don’t want to be too down on ‘The Hobbit’ because there are lots of things in it that I liked, especially Martin Freeman.

As far as prequels go it’s not ‘Phantom Menace bad’ but it’s not ‘Batman Begins good’ either, it falls in the middle somewhere. Middling results from the latest episode of Middle-Earth… how appropriate.

After all that I fancy some…

Reasons to be Cheerful…

1. I spoke about this AGES ago but now the first trailer for ‘Warm Bodies’ has been released! It looks highly amusing and, in a stroke of Valentines based scheduling, is due for release in the UK on 8^th February.

2. The new series of ‘Black Mirror’ is imminent and we have some details about the episodes and cast! Have a look if you want but there is a part of me that thinks it would be better to go in cold to this series. I watched series 1 with no prior knowledge (save for Charlie Brooker’s involvement) and those episodes totally floored me… in a good way! I’ll just say that with people like Daniel Rigby, Jason Flemyng, Lenora Crichlow, Domhnall Gleeson and Hayley Atwell involved I am super excited about it! If you want to catch series 1 it is available on 4OD now.

That’s enough rambling for today!

Goodbye till next time :-)

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“Less of a random killing machine, more of a personal statement”

Hello Everyone :-)

So where do you stand on James Bond? This MI6 shaped pillar of British cinema has divided audiences for many a year.
Me? I’m a fan. Admittedly some are better than others but I can’t help but like them. After the success re-boot of the franchise in 2006 with the fantastic ‘Casino Royale’ the saga floundered with 2008’s ‘Quantum of Solace’ that has flashes of brilliance but gets wrapped up in its own plot and is an unfortunate product of the Writers Guild of America strike. So, four years later it’s the 50^th Anniversary year of the James Bond series, Sam Mendes is at the helm and Daniel Craig is, once again, donning the tux of our favourite secret agent.

‘Skyfall’ follows Bond (Daniel Craig) in the wake of a mission where he is injured, presumed dead. Bond treats this near-miss as an opportunity to retire from duty until an explosion at MI6 headquarters pulls him back to MI6. The attack is thought to be a message for M (Judy Dench) from the enigmatic and dangerous Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem) who is hell bent on revenge.

I listened to the always entertaining ‘Kermode and Mayo Podcast’ the other day. Al Murray and the ‘Oyds (Boyd Hilton and Nigel Floyd) were filling in for the Good Doctor and Mr Mayo the week after ‘Skyfall’ opened and Al Murray said (I’m paraphrasing) “If ‘Casino Royale’ and ‘Quantum of Solace’ are post-Bourne Bond films, then ‘Skyfall’ is a post-Nolan Bond film”. In fact, some people have actually complained that ‘Skyfall’ has borrowed themes from ‘Dark Knight Rises’. IN WHAT WORLD IS THAT A BAD THING?!?!?! Whether or not ‘Skyfall’ was influenced by Nolan’s Batman Trilogy is irrelevant. Personally I think if we get two films of the same quality as DKR and ‘Skyfall’ every year I’ll be a happy girl.

The opening scene of ‘Skyfall’ is absolutely wonderful and shows films like ‘Taken 2’ exactly how to do a chase across the roofs of Istanbul. There is a moment in this first sequence that is included in the film’s trailer where Bond leaps onto the back of a train carriage as it is ripped open by a digger. He jumps, lands amidst the chaos and calmly adjusts the cuff of his shirt. It is a wonderful moment of pure cinema that signals a return to some of the more fantastical elements that have traditionally been present in Bond’s action scenes of old. I like that the film makers have catered for the section of the audience that feels that there should be a certain suspension of disbelief where Bond is concerned. This doesn’t just apply to action scenes either; the film makers have hit the perfect line between the recent gritty take on Bond and nostalgia for previous instalments of the series.

It isn’t just the action that is on point, the acting is too. ‘Skyfall’ continues Craig’s impressive run as Bond. I love his dark and brooding take on the character. He’s charismatic without being too comic, he’s serious without being too severe and he plays perfectly against the other performers.
There is a distinct lack of a traditional ‘Bond-Girl’ in ‘Skyfall’. Naomi Harris’s Eve is an interesting character whose identity is the worst kept secret ever, nevertheless I won’t drop any spoilers here. Bérénice Marlohe is a beautiful, if ultimately pointless, shot of oestrogen in the film but ultimately it falls to Judi Dench’s M to represent those of us lacking a Y chromosome.
It’s accepted that Dench is a massive spanner in the continuity of the Bond universe but that doesn’t stop her giving the performance of her Bond tenure in 'Skyfall'. When M quotes the poem ‘Ulysses’ during a parliamentary hearing I swear my Goosebumps had Goosebumps. She’s fantastic.
A little mention to NerdyRachelMay favourite Ben Whishaw, star of ‘The Hour’ and ‘The Hollow Crown’. If I didn’t have a crush on him before I definitely do now thanks to ‘Skyfall’. Whishaw is the physical embodiment of the franchise’s move forward into more modern, relevant movie making. He is young, clever, pithy, has a playful on-screen chemistry with Craig and a face that makes me melt… but enough of my ridiculous crushes.
Question: Can you remember the names of the villains in Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace? I know I can’t, not without consulting Professor Wikipedia. Aside from the fact that he has already played one of the most terrifying on-screen antagonists I have ever seen, casting Javier Bardem as Silva was a stroke of genius. Bardem plays ‘Skyfall’s big, bad, cyber-terrorist as camp riddle wrapped in an intimidating enigma. He is threatening in every way; physically, psychologically even sexually. The first scene in which he appears is a hypnotic monologue delivered as he slowly walks towards Bond and the audience; I was utterly transfixed. To my mind he’s the best Bond villain to date.

The film is great on a narrative level but also on a technical level it far surpasses, not only its immediate predecessor but most of the previous Bond outings. Sam Mendes initially seemed like a strange choice to direct the latest film in the series but he pushes the story forward at a rate of knots and thoroughly earns his keep. I like his vision for the character and I would love it if he stayed for a second film.
The effects are fantastic, both CGI and in camera. The unsung hero of the piece is cinematographer Roger Deakins. ‘Skyfall’ is utterly beautiful; to the point where some of the shots made me well up with just how gorgeous they are (I am very aware of how ridiculous that makes me sound but it’s true). I haven’t seen a more handsome film this year and doubt anything will touch it between now and the end of December.

Some have said that the latter half of the film gives way to OTT displays of firepower and unbelievable plot contrivances. There is a certain level of truth in that accusation but in my opinion the first two acts delve into character and plot so much that I think it earns the right to let loose and go hell for leather in the final few scenes.
I have heard negative reviews of ‘Skyfall’ that decry it to be “boring”, but that baffles me. Call it what you will but “boring”?!?!? REALLY?!?!?! I understand that other opinions are available, you may have liked the film or you may have hated it but I fail to see how you could find any of it boring.

I loved ‘Skyfall’. It has such a wonderful marriage of energy, performances and drop-dead gorgeous cinematography; I fail to see how you couldn’t get swept up in it. ‘Skyfall’ left me with no doubts; Bond is back and better than ever.

Let’s keep the merriment going with some…

Reasons to be cheerful :-)
1. The official synopsis for ‘Star Trek: IntoDarkness’ has been released! Unfortunately it doesn’t go a long way to answering the question we’re all asking: Who is Benedict Cumberbatch playing? Early reports said Khan (from ‘Wrath of…’ fame) and more recently Gary Mitchell has been suggested. Gary Mitchell was a Starfleet officer and friends with Captain Kirk until he has an unfortunate encounter with a galactic barrier and turns rogue. I think he would make the most interesting villain out of potential candidates but we won’t know who it is until we see the trailer… and even then there is no guarantee we’ll get a definitive answer!
The trailer is to be shown before screenings of ‘The Hobbit’ part 1 and no doubt nanoseconds later the Interweb will be aflutter with blogs and articles dissecting every last frame of it! Can’t wait :-)

2. The Sports Personality of the year shortlist has been released! I adore so many of the athletes on the shortlist so in a year where (due to the efforts of our sports-men and women) I have been constantly reminded of how truly grateful I am to have been born into such a brilliant country (I say that with complete sincerity) I have genuine sympathy for the people that have to choose a winner out of that shortlist. If it was up to me they’d all get an award!

3. The award for ‘The Thing That Made Me Laugh The Most Today’ goes to this guy :-)

That’s all I’ve got for you today!

Goodbye till next time :-)
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“Listen to me carefully, Kim. Your mother and I are going to be taken."

Hello Everyone :-)

Question: When did Liam Neeson become such a badass? Answer: When ‘Taken’ happened. I think it’s safe to say that ‘Taken’ came as a bit of a surprise to everyone. It was a sleeper hit, spread mainly by word of mouth; a decent, gritty, exploitation B-movie that re-invented Neeson as an action star virtually overnight.
The trouble is that in today’s cinematic climate no one can leave anything as a successful one-off, everything has to have a sequel. Enter the hilariously named Olivier Megaton. Megaton is the Director of ‘Taken 2’ which I went to see a few weeks ago.

Now doing contract security work, Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) is learning to accept that his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) is growing up and is going through all the things teenagers do like learning to drive and getting a Boyfriend. When picking Kim up for a driving lesson Bryan finds his ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen) has had an argument with her husband and as a way to cheer her and Kim up he invites them to meet him out in Turkey where he will be working the following week. The three meet up in Istanbul but it soon transpires that some men are plotting against Bryan and he and his family and may be in danger.

If it’s not been made clear over the course of this blog so far, let me declare it in the most unequivocal way possible; I love cinema.
I love watching trailers, I love deciding what films to see, I love buying my ticket, I love getting my Ben and Jerry’s (I always have 3 scoops of Cookie Dough Ice cream when I go to the pictures), nothing makes me happier. All this cinema related joy makes me an eternal optimist; I go into a film expecting the best. You can therefore imagine what a crushing disappointment it is to me when the film in question turns out to be as appallingly bad as ‘Taken 2’.

The plot is tracing-paper thin and totally devoid of excitement. The most galling thing is when it does have an interesting idea (which are few and VERY far between) it throws it away. Take, for instance, a scene where Bryan has been ‘taken’ (a word that is thrown around in this film far too liberally for my liking), he calls Kim and gives her some instructions so he can work out where he is being held captive. That is a really interesting idea; that Bryan has to instruct Kim in order for her to find and free him. They could have run with that idea and made Kim the gun-toting rescuer, flipping the Father/Daughter dynamic on its head but instead they cop out and do a piss poor chase around the roofs of Istanbul before Bryan comes and saves her. So unbelievably BORING! I have never fallen asleep the cinema but halfway into ‘Taken 2’ I was getting a wobbly head and had to be sharply elbowed by my friend to keep me awake.

I think the rating is part of the problem. One of the things that made ‘Taken’ so enjoyable was the mad violence that took the film up to its totally appropriate 15 rating. Blockbusters are so often filled with dull CGI action that when you get something like ‘Taken’ that has an insane amount of gritty, realistic brutality, it’s actually quite fun. ‘Taken 2’ has had all the violence toned down so it can achieve a 12A rating and in doing so has made the film completely beige. It’s been demonstrated that a 12A film can be brutal; ‘The Hunger Games’, for example, is a 12A with as much vicious-clout as a higher rated film. The difference between that and ‘Taken 2’ is that ‘The Hunger Games’ was well edited whereas this looks like an appalling hack-job.
Not just the violence itself but the feel of the fight scenes is disappointing; they’re dull. The final fight between Bryan and one of the Albanian cronies takes place in a Turkish bath house. What is supposed to come across as a tense, brutal showdown actually turns out to be a damp-squib of a fight between Neeson and a short, fat Albanian.

The cast try their best but they can’t lift this dull lump of a movie.
There’s quite a sweet story that starts to play out before anyone gets ‘taken’, where Kim is trying to get her Mum and Dad back together. In these scenes Janssen is quite good but that’s all the character development she’s afforded before someone puts a bag over her head and ties her to some metal piping for the remainder of the film.
Likewise Grace has the scene where she has to be Bryan’s eyes and ears and help him work out where he is in Istanbul when he gets kidnapped. After a paint-by-numbers car chase Kim is packed off to the American embassy not to be seen or heard from until the film’s conclusion.
Neeson makes a debonair killer and at 6”4 he is undeniably physically imposing but his talents aren’t pushed much further than demonstrating his ability to shoot a gun from the window of a moving car. He really convinced in ‘Taken’, it felt like he really was a Father on the edge. He never gets near that level of conviction in ‘Taken 2’ and has the look of a man who is only doing this for the paycheque.

Even if you don’t give a hoot about plot or narrative or things like that; even if all you want from a film is exciting action set pieces, trust me, you will come away from ‘Taken 2’disappointed. It smacks of a film made as a result of a financial spreadsheet and something with that kind of origin rarely turns out to be any good. If you liked ‘Taken’ and want to spend more time with those characters just buy it on DVD. Please don’t go and see this mind-numbingly dull film.

Well after that bitter taste of disappointment I desperately need some…

Reasons to be Cheerful :-)
1. OMG Les Misérables Official Trailer! My lovely Twitter-friend (Twiend?) Mike had the privilege of seeing this trailer when he went to see ‘Skyfall’ (my blog post about which is on the way) and I was super jealous because it wasn’t shown at my screening. Since then it’s been put up online and Mike was good enough to send me the link. It looks so good! I’m excited :-)

2. Any of you that see my Twitter feed will already know but last week I watched‘Game of Thrones’ series 1 for the first time.
The ‘Song of Ice and Fire’ books are fantastic; what Harry Potter was to me as a Teenager, these are to me as an adult. The TV adaptation is so wonderful I cannot begin to tell you, everything is how I imagined it, the opening titles are amazing, the music is fantastic; I just love it.
Anyway, I’m yet to see series 2 due to the fact I don’t have Sky but I have been looking at the new cast members for series 3! Paul Kaye as Thoros of Myr... INSPIRED!

That’s all I’ve got for you today!

Goodbye till next time :-)
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Rachel’s DVD Extras - “Most Engagements end up like ‘Saving Private Ryan’. Good Luck. God knows you’re going to need it”

Hello Everyone :-)

I realised something the other day; I’d forgot to write up some films. One was because I went to see it on my Birthday and I must have been distracted by the various celebrations that were happening at the time and it slipped my mind. So I’ve decided to write it up now as a 'DVD extra' because it was released last week on DVD and Blu-Ray. Let’s have a look at ‘The Five Year Engagement’.

Tom and Violet are a couple living in San Francisco that get engaged a year after they started dating. Tom is a sous chef at a successful restaurant and Violet is a psychology PhD graduate. The couple begin their engagement with the best of intentions but unfortunately life gets in the way of their planned nuptials.

I enjoyed ‘The Five Year Engagement’. It was advertised as “From the producer of Bridesmaids” but it’s not as broadly comic as that statement would suggest. It is funny but its humour comes mainly from its observations of life as an engaged couple that are fighting to keep it together.

I think this is quite nice spin on the modern Rom-Com. The characters are well written, believable and in a genre that is so often filled by adults that behave like they’re teenagers these are adults that (to a certain extent) act like they’re adults. The characters have jobs and families and worry about grown up things like money which gives the film a nice authenticity. The times the story strays into the realms of unbelievably is when it’s at its worst. One of the characters has a breakdown during part of the film that just seemed a little bit OTT and not in keeping with the rest of the film's realistic look at relationships.

The two leads are great and there are some nice supporting roles. Jason Segel as Tom is really very sweet and believable. He makes the phone call that we have all made to our ex where you try to be civil but then descend into name calling and blame pinning.

Emily Blunt is effortless and charming as ever. She is funny, sweet, clever, beautiful, all at the same time… some girls really do have all the luck!

I like the supporting performances from Alison Brie as Violet’s sister Suzie, Chris Pratt as Tom’s best friend Alex and Rhys Ifans at his slimy best as Winton, Violets lecherous Boss. That said the strength of the film is in the central pairing between Blunt and Segel. They’re adorable, the conversations they have are really realistic and above all else they make you root for them; you want it to work out between them.

The film’s humour is quite gentle save for a few broadly comic scenes. Tom’s relationship with Chris Parnell and Brian Posehn’s characters Bill and Tarquin lends itself to some brilliantly gawky moments but it’s the Elmo/Cookie Monster conversation between Violet and Suzie that had me in absolute stitches. Some of the attempts at comedy fell a little wide of the mark. The scenes with Violet’s colleagues Ming (Randall Park), Vaneetha (Mindy Kaling) and Doug (Kevin Hart) didn’t work for me. Also a scene with a breakfast conversation between Tom and his parents jarred. It didn’t make me laugh partly because it seemed to have been clumsily improvised and felt really awkward to watch.

Overall I liked ‘The Five Year Engagement’. It’s attempts at out and out comedy sometimes miss the target; it sags a little at the start of the third act and could have done with 15-20 minutes being cut from the run time but by and large I think it succeeds. It plays well with its intended audience (I went with 4 of my girlfriends and by the end of it we were ALL a little bit in love with Jason Segel) and it would take the stoniest of hearts not to warm to the central coupling of Violet and Tom. Highly recommended rom-com fluff :-)

Now it’s time for some…

Reasons to be Cheerful :-)

1. ‘The Hour’ is back! YAY! I recently saw the trailer again for the new series and immediately got on Amazon bought series 1 on DVD. I’ve been watching it again these past two days and I must say it’s so bloody good! There are some clips on the BBC website; a chat with the show's writer Abi Morgan and a clip from the first episode of the new series! Series 2 starts on Wednesday 14^th November at 9pm on BBC 2.

 2. New series of ‘Black Mirror’ has been confirmed! The always wonderful Charlie Brooker have been speaking about the new series and lots of lovely things besides :-)

That’s all I’ve got for you today!

Goodbye till next time :-)

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