The Film Junkie

If all you know of Emily Blunt is her bitchy and fantastic work in ‘The Devil Wears Prada’, you may not be ready to see her raw and frustrating performance in this tale of two girls who fall in love during a crazy summer.

The film in many places seems to be the poor man’s version of the brilliant ‘Heavenly Creatures’ (1994), but it is not as dark and twisted as Peter Jackson’s brilliant film.  Instead here we meet Mona (Nathalie Press), who recalls a young Sissy Spacek, a small town girl just dumped by her boyfriend and left alone with her recently born again brother (Paddy Considine).  Mona meets the intriguing and mysterious Tamsin (Blunt), a rich girl just kicked out of boarding school for being a bad influence.  They bond over the deaths in their family and soon begin a sexual and chemically assisted relationship.

Though largely better than ‘Lost and Delirious’ (2001), I don’t know if I believed the relationship between the two girls as much as the aforementioned or ‘Creatures’.  Also, both girls are almost too beautiful to be representing the forgotten souls they are portraying.  That is not to say that beautiful girls don’t have problems, but I prefer the ‘Creatures’ relationship where one girl is truly an outcast who finds strange beauty in the other.  Yet their relationship was not the all-consuming drama of ‘Delirious’ wherein one girl took their love far too seriously.

It is a strange genre of the film, the teen lesbian love story full of tragedy, but it is always an interesting experience.  For all its faults, this film has the luck of Miss Blunt who is a diamond in the rough.  Her performance is killer, with every gaze we fall more and more into her mystique and we become Mona ourselves.  The words might be tired and somewhat unoriginal, but Blunt makes you want to stay with the film a little bit longer.

Grade: B

This digitally shot indie based on a play seems more like an acting exercise than a movie.  However the characters are intriguing and the premise is quite original both of which make it somewhat worthwhile.

Tom (Scott Speedman) is HIV positive and he kidnaps Dan (James Marsden), the one and only man he has ever had sex with to hold him hostage until he can get Dan’s blood test results back.

The script constantly keeps you guessing.  One moment you are sure Dan is playing Tom trying to get free because he knows he is positive, another you are convinced that Tom is jumping to conclusions and he must be infected from one of a million other reasons.

The film suffers under the glare of digital.  For some films it works, but here it forces the movie to lose some of its realism and ends up helping it play more like a student film with a good script.

This is by no means a great film, but I haven’t seen many films deal with this sort of topic so I respect it for that.  It also proved to me that Speedman is actually quite a good actor.  His work in ‘Underworld’ and especially TV’s ‘Felicity’ was always rather one note, but here he really opens up.  I have always liked James Marsden (’X-Men’s Cyclops/Scott Summers), he has that Tom Cruise/Clark Kent quality about him, but with a darker side.  He is very good here, and the sexual tension between the two actors is palpable.

Grade: B-

I am not really one for concert films, but if you are gonna watch one it might as well star Janis Joplin. The Band and The Grateful Dead. 

This movie is a documentary of a bunch of bands on a train travelling across Canada from Toronto to Calgary trying to spread some musical love while various groups protest the high cost of tickets ($16!).  The bands drink, sing and party and try to appease their fans.

It is a great chance to hear these bands, but I wish there was more footage from the actual time and place of those talents musing, instead of the their guilty reflections years later.

The music is great, but that’s about all there is.

Grade: B

Helen Hunt is horribly miscast in this adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s ‘Lady Windermere’s Fan’ as the slutty secret mother of the title Lady (Scarlett Johansson).  Where the rest of the cast fits perfectly into this world of 1930’s Italy.  The people are full of class and gossip, constantly surrounding themselves with witty Wilde-isms and entertaining one another with their self-obsession.

Hunt on the other hand seems like a kind of drag queen in these surroundings.  Her voice is unintentionally comic in its tonality, constantly fluctuating between high-pitched and masculine.  She fit so nicely in her characters in ‘Mad About You’ and ‘As Good As It Gets’, it is shocking to see her so out of her element.

Johansson is good as ever, with less to work with than ever.  She is the picture of innocence who is put to the test by her husband’s supposed infidelity. 

Tom Wilkinson is great as ever in an underwritten role.  He adds weight and seriousness to what could be little more than a TV movie.

The first half of the film is almost unwatchable it is so dull, but once the film finds its feet, and its Wildeian plot, it breezes along.  Hunt never gets good, but at least in the second half she is tolerable.

Grade: C+

‘The Wire’ is a fascinating show about police detectives tapped into the phone lines of drug dealers in Baltimore.  The first two seasons were gripping, harsh and terribly addictive.

Unfortunately, the third season is uneven, slow-burning and a bit frustrating.  It is still better than most things on TV, but for ‘The Wire’, the third is a disappointing season.

Where the first season dealt with drug dealing in housing projects and the second with drug-trafficking at the city ports, the third encorporates drugs and politics.  This would seem to make the show even more lively and visceral given the plethora or opportunities involved in both worlds and their intersections.  However, the plot hinges on some truly ridiculous actions by one major and the reprecussions within the political world.  Our beloved Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West) is given little to work with other than a dumb relationship with a campaign strategist (Brandy Burre).

The relationships of the other characters develop beautifully this season.  Kima (Sonja Sohn) and her volatile partnership with Cheryl feels the weight of having a child.  Lt. Daniels (Lance Reddick) and his wife find lives outside of their sham of a marriage.  These relationships are the strongest part of the season.

The story lags when it relies too heavily on Avon Barksdale (Wood Harris) and his return to the game.  Also, a lagging tale of a man, Dennis Wise (Chad Coleman), who is released after more than a decade in the joint and tries to make a go of it outside of the game, really goes nowhere.

It is great to see Stringer Bell (Idris Elba) attempting to make it in the business world.  Elba is one of the finest actors on TV, he is in every moment contained while also being full of rage, desire and ambition.  There is a great scene between Stringer and Avon remembering their youth on a rooftop that expresses everything that is so off about this season.  Where once there were moments of great discovery and great capers, there is here a season full of pretty much every bad that could ever happen with no relief.  The grand idea of ‘Hamsterdam’ is silly and hard to buy and without that, it is hard to get on board with the season as a whole.

Grade: B+