Eddie The Eagle

Michael Edwards better known as Eddie 'The Eagle' Edwards was a charismatic British folk-hero that most Americans will never have heard of. This plasterer from a blue-collar family ignited the U.K. public's imagination when, in this real shaggy-dog story and without any real experience, in 1988 he finagled his way into the British Olympic Team to become the country's only Ski Jump Competitor. He came in last of course, but thanks to the blanket media coverage at the time his spectacular endeavor made him the crowd's favorite and the people's man of the hour. 

This real story is now the basis for a vaguely true new movie that has taken a few liberties with some of the facts leading up to the Games, and thus making it one of the most enjoyable crowd pleaser feel good sports movie for quite some time.

Eddie (a wonderful Taron Egerton) has been obsessed with competing in the Olympic Games ever since he was a kid and his less-than-patient father was always collecting him from the bus stop where young Eddie was running away and 'off to join the team'.  When he grew up he did actually learn how to ski race, but never quite good enough to be selected by the rather snooty class-conscious British Team managers who never wanted to accept him. When Eddie therefore hit on the idea of becoming a ski jumper instead, he assumed that he would be automatically be chosen as Britain hadn't had anyone compete in that event for he past 30 years.

However the British Authorities suddenly introduced a minimum standard jump for qualification so that they could refuse Eddie. Crestfallen but still determined to participate, he took himself off to the Olympic Ski Jump Training Camp in Germany to try to meet the new requirements.  As he practiced he was the laughing stock of all the experienced athletes, and also Bronson Peary, a one-time American champion who had for some reason given up ski-jumping and replaced it with drinking whisky for breakfast.

Peary (a very relaxed Hugh Jackman) is eventually persuaded to lay the bottle aside to help train Eddie and he does so because he believes in supporting the underdog, plus besides the fact that he is worried if he doesn't Eddie may just kill himself out there doing one of the more dangerous jumps.

Directed by British actor turned director Dexter Fletcher from a script by two newbie writers Simon Kelton and Sean Macaulay, this highly entertaining movie  has some impressive photography that takes you down the high slopes the same time as Eddie, plus a great '80's soundtrack with a few Hall & Oates tracks.  The filmmakers make it nigh on impossible not to want this obsessed and fearless and extremely likable eccentric to beat the odds.  And as we are reminded more than once here, it's the taking part and not the winning that counts. 

★★★★★★★★

Burnt

In this new mouth watering movie from the Weinstein Company there are three things that are hot.  The food, the tempers and the star Bradley Cooper.  It's not the first time he has tried his hand at playing a temperamental master chef: back in 2005 he was in the very short-lived Fox TV series 'Kitchen Confidential' based on the life of Anthony Bourdain.  Now he is back playing Adam Jones an ex-pat American in London trying to get his 'A' game back after having an almighty meltdown in Paris due to an expensive drug habit and an ability to wreck everything good in his life including the Michelin Two Star restaurant whose premature closure he apparently brought about.

For some unexplained reason he has been redeeming himself by shucking oysters in a New Orleans dive for the past two years and getting 'clean' at the same time.  Now he's back in London penniless and with a single purpose in mind : to open a restaurant to get an elusive third Michelin star. It's not going to be easy as it seems that half the capital city has a grudge to bear against this rather arrogant man, although they all seem eager enough to line up to proclaim that he is possibly the best chef in the world.

He does however manage to persuade a very reluctant Tony a Maitre D' at his family owned high-end Hotel to hand over his restaurant to help him achieve his goal.  Like so many others in this drama, Tony keeps cryptically referring to their past experiences together and 'what happened in Paris' but without ever going into any real detail.  The only reason that he is prepared to try to forgive and forget is that he has a bad case of unrequited love for Adam. Next Adam sets about gathering together his hand-picked motley crew of young talented chefs to cook with him. They include Michel who initially expresses his anger at Adam for being responsible for him losing his own restaurant in Paris, but then who begs him for a job. Plus there is an ex-con Italian just released from Prison, and a very nervous young Brit chef who has to even put Adam up on his own couch initially when he is homeless.

The only female in the team is Helene a single mother and an exceptional sous chef who is the one who takes the longest to fall for Adam and his genius as he treats her even worse than anyone else in his new kitchen.  When things start cooking he is always on an angry rampage doing his very best Gordon Ramsay impression hurling china and abuse every single second he doesn't get his own way, which in this culinary melodrama, is quite often.

There are also angry encounters with a chef from a another highly successful restaurant, plus temper tantrums with anyone who isn't going to help him achieve the ultimate Michelin accolade.  The only people that seem to get the better of him ....physically anyway ..... are the drug dealers trying to collect from him all the monies he owes for 'what happened in Paris'.  However, with only one minor unexpected twist to this plot, it is very obvious that Adam will always get his own way, even with Helene no matter how bad he treats her.

Bradley Cooper puts in a passionate performance as the fiery megalomaniac who is obsessed and has to deal with his inner demons as a perfectionist wanting to achieve his ultimate goal.  He does however look in far better physical shape than one would

expect from someone who has allegedly been abusing his body for years ....but this is a movie after all. The co-star of the movie is undoubtedly the food ... top Brit chef Marcus Waring who has his own Michelin 2 Star Restaurant in London, was the consultant .... and director John Wells ensures the camera lingers long enough to have you salivating through a good part of the movie.

There is a great international supporting cast headed by Sienna Miller who is a very spirited Helene, Daniel Brühl as lovelorn Tony, Riccardo Scamarcio as ex con Max, Omar Sy as Michel, Matthew Rhys as Adam's bete noire Reiss, and in two cameo roles Uma Thurman and Alicia Vikander.  In every movie these days there is always one scene stealer, and in this instance it is the ever wonderful Emma Thompson in a very small but crucial role as the Therapist hired to ensure that Adam doesn't relapse into his old bad habits.

What the movie lacked however, was that special ingredient similar to the problem that Adam had in his kitchen trying to avoid his dishes being just mundane.  There were too many aspects of the story that even the actors seemed to have trouble been convinced about and it certainly wasn't helped with rather stomach churning grandiose statements like Adam declaring 'I want to make food that makes people stop eating'.   

Adam had a very simple mantra in the kitchen of 'if it's not perfect, you throw it way' which is far too tough to apply to the movie itself. After all we can enjoy food without a Michelin star then we can also enjoy a movie that is certainly not going to win any awards any time soon as it is still very palatable.

★★★★★★

Trash

When Jose Angelo is caught by the Police who have been chasing him through his working class apartment building in a Rio de Janiero suburb. he manages to throw a wallet that he has been grasping over an outside wall and it lands in the back of a passing garbage truck. Whilst the police are beating the living daylights out of Angelo as he refuses to talk to them about the wallet's contents, it actually ends up at the Municipal Trash dump where it is quickly discovered by Raphael, one of the scruffy young boys who spend their days sorting through all the trash.

Raphael splits the cash with Gando his best friend but when the Police turn up offering a hefty reward for the wallet's return they realize that it must contain something much more important than money. They seek advice from another more worldly boy called Rato who lives in the nearby sewers and he tells them that the key that was part of the contents will open a locker at the Railway station downtown.  That leads them to a letter with some code on it, and so they head back to the favela to sneak a peek on the local priest's laptop to see if that will help them try and decipher what this all means.

Father Julliard is one of those ex-pats full of good intentions (and a lot of alcohol too) that landed there years ago to help and minister to the locals in the favela, but is now a little too jaded to do any real good.  He tells Olivia another American who has just arrived full of energy and enthusiasm to teach the boys "don't waste your life fighting battles that make you bitter or make you dead."

When  Raphael and Gando fail to show up for work at the Dump next day a very suspicious Police Inspector hunts them down, and this time its Raphael who is almost beaten to death.   Instead of being scared off by this experience, it actually increases his determination to get to the bottom of the matter.  He had overheard the cops talk about a powerful businessman who is running for Mayor, so armed with this information, the boys persuade Olivia to take Gando to meet the person who the letter is addressed to, who happens to be in prison.  

They learn from Clemente the prisoner that the code works in conjunction with a Bible he has, and after the boys bribe a Prison Guard to get this, they are on the way to solve the mystery that Angelo had lost his life protecting.  The fact that these 14 year near illiterate street boys could crack the code is more than a tad far fetched but as that scene follows an exhilarating chase through the back alleys of the favela, we allow this rather big stretch of the imagination. This is after all Hollywood's take on Brazil and not the 'real thing'. 

The boys track down the missing millions Angelo had 'retrieved' from his corrupt boss, the mayoral candidate, plus the detailed ledger of all the corporations who have given him these massive bribes over the years.  They even finally get the better of the sadistic Police Inspector who has been on their heels every step of the way, to give this fast paced and very entertaining movie, an unexpected happy ever after finale.

Trash is written by Oscar nominated Brit screenwriter Richard Curtis ('Four Weddings and A Funeral'), and directed by fellow Brit and Triple Oscar Nominated Stephen Daldry.  It is also Daldry's fourth movie starring teenage boys ('Billy Elliot', 'The Reader' and 'Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close') and it is the electric performance of the kids that make this drama so very compelling. So much so that Daldry very generously gives the boys acting coach Christian Duurvoort a credit as his co-director.   The adults in the movie that play second fiddle to the boys are Brazilian superstar Wagner Moura as Angelo, Martin Sheen as Father Julliard and Rooney Mara as Olivia.

Despite its very Hollywood & European provenance this 'Brazilian' underdogs-beating-the-system tale has an authentic enough feel to tug at heart strings just like in 'Slumdog Millionaire'.  When a naive Olivia inquires why the boys stuck with it all, the answer is simple. It was because it was the right thing to do.

BTW, lest you should worry about some of the working conditions on the actors working in these slums are as atrocious as they looked, the production team had  2,000 cubic meters of “clean trash”  lugged in to recreate the Dump!

★★★★★★★★

Ashby

When 17-year-old Ed Wallis is given a homework assignment from his teacher to 'go talk to an old person', he has little choice than try and see if his next door neighbor will help him out.  Ed and his mother have just moved into the area to start a new life now that Ed's dad has apparently abandoned them both for good.  He does go through the motions of caring for his son, but does little beyond making empty promises during their occasional Skye calls which he never fulfills.

Ed's neighbor Ashby is not just old, but seriously odd too.  It is because that he is played by Mickey Rourke whose appearance seems to get decidedly weirder in every movie he makes nowadays. If you can just get beyond his bizarre look (which is very tough) Rourke is actually well suited for this part of a grumpy old man who takes his recent diagnosis of a fatal illness as an excuse to push his eccentricities to the extreme.  

He and Ed sort of bond, as Ed needs some kind of a father figure in his life as he such a sensitive book nerd and so regularly gets bullied at school.   He also wants to play football but lacks the initiative to get beyond the team trials and so he needs to 'man up'. Ashby on the other hand, now fading fast physically, needs someone to ferry him around town for Doctor's appointments and do odd errands.

Ashby plays at being a man of mystery and the arsenal of weapons that Ed discovers one day when snooping around his house would suggest some sort of violent past.  When Ed pushes the point about their existence,  Ashby admits that he has killed some 93 people in his 'line of work' but suddenly in a moment of unlikely self-examination he realises that his former bosses had used him to kill people who were not threats to national security at all, but just people they had personal grudges against.  Now that he is dying and has nothing to lose Ashby decides to spend his last days settling scores against his ex-employers and raising his total of kills even higher. 

Whilst this unlikely pair of 'friends' are traipsing all around town, Ed's mother is making some very bad choices in trying to have some male company of her own. This side strand of the story sits ill at ease with the rest of the action especially as 'Ma' is uncomfortably played quite straight by the comic Sarah Silverman.

Ed's only other hope of any happiness in this otherwise uneven comedy is a too-bright-for-her-own-good girl (played by Emma Roberts).  By the time she makes her mind up about Ed, it's a little too late.  We know then that he could do so much better with someone not quite so superficial. 

This is one of those movies that tries very hard at being something for everyone and in the end fails to really please anyone.  It's a mash up teen comedy, crime caper an coming of age story that is funny in parts but mostly never much more than mildly amusing. Shout out though to young Nat Wolff who plays Ed.  Not such a standout-performance as he gave in 'The Fault In Our Stars' last year, but he continues to show what a really fine actor he is even when he is not required to stretch himself much as in this instance.

★★★★★

A FIVE STAR LIFE

Irene spends her life nit-picking over every casual slight from any hotel front-desk clerk, or noting exactly how long room service takes to deliver her order before she sticks her thermometer in first the wine and then the soup. That's all before she strips the bed down completely to see how soft and clean the linen is.  She is one tough cookie but it's all in a day's work for her as she jet sets around the globe to see if the world's best hotels should retain their 5 Star rating.

Her obsession with minute detail when she is tasting all this luxury really fulfills her which is just as well as when she lands back home in Italy, her rather empty single life is juxtaposed with all the unruly chaos of the people that surround her.  There is her old flame Andrea who is now her best friend and who jolts Irene out of her complacency of the coziness of their relationship when he announces that he is about to become the father of a child with one of his recent one night stands.  Then there is her rather scatter-brained self-absorbed sister Sylvia whose marriage to her musician husband has grown stagnant which seems to be an excuse for her constantly riling Irene about being an unmarried forty-something-year-old woman. 

This inoffensive and quite charming gentle movie from Italian director  Maria Sole Tognazzi is essentially not a great deal more than a travelogue for all the rather splendid hotels that Irene spends her days dissecting. It also serves as a detailed job description for anyone wishing to take this up as a career.  Asides from that it starts with Irene content with traveling alone through work and life, and after a couple of minor diversions, its ends on exactly the same note.

Asides from the Hotels, it also stars Margherita Buy and Stefano Accorsi who had previously worked together in 'His Secret Life' & 'Saturn In Opposition'. Plus a refreshing cameo performance from Brit actor Lesley Manville that looked like it may liven up the pace of the piece somewhat but then when her character gets killed off suddenly, so does all hope of any real fun for poor Irene and us.

★★★★★

I'LL SEE YOU IN MY DREAMS

Retired school teacher Carol Peterson has been widowed 20 years but it isn't until her pet dog gets sick and has to be put down that she realizes how lonely she really is. True she has her three best girlfriends who she plays cards with and gossips when sipping countless glasses of chardonnay (with little visible effect) but she knows that is not enough. According to 'the girls' she needs to put herself back on the market even if that means subjecting herself to the indignities of speed dating with an assorted odd bunch of seniors.

Its actually when she is leaving this event that she is spotted in the parking lot by a flirtatious handsome gent who promptly asks her out lunch.  Turns out that Sam is quite the catch and ticks enough of Carol's boxes to end up in bed with her too. It is something she tries in vain to keep a secret from her nosey friends they soon discover it and immediately start to rib.

Sam is however not the only new man in her life as she has a new pool boy.  Well Lloyd is in his early 30's but to Carol who is very aware of their age difference, this young man who still lives at home with his parents and seems content to live just drift by him, he appears to be very young indeed.  They do bond though through the chardonnay, and a rat that insists on living in Carol's house, and music.  In fact he persuades Carol to take the mike at a karaoke night where she eloquently croons the song that this movie takes its title from. 

Nothing quite works out as we think it may or that Carol thinks she wants but director and co-writer Brett Haley at least allows this delightful romantic dramedy to end on a kind of positive note.

The real delight of the movie is that Carol is played by the subliminal Blythe Danner with such a remarkable performance that it is something of a real mystery why she doesn't get to play the lead more often.  She is obviously having a great deal of fun and she told the crowds at the Sundance Premiere that this was 'a role I have waited 50 years to play'.   She handles the fine line of her inter-generational friendship with the dead-pan ambition-less would-be Poet so beautifully that it never seems predatory or the slightest bit uncomfortable or icky even.

Haley is to be commended for tackling a subject that is usually totally avoided in movies i.e. the need for seniors to enjoy a regular sex life. However despite the optimism that Carol suddenly shares when Bill starts courting her, there is still a very clear message that at this age one should never realistically raise expectations above a dog for a close loving relationship. That, and a weekly card game with your wise-cracking friends.

Sam Elliot played Bill, Martin Starr was young LLoyd, and the hilarious gaggle of 'girls' were Rhea Perlman, June Squibb and Mary Kay Place.

This is a rare treat : a grown up story for grown ups.

★★★★★★★★

QUEEN & COUNTRY

Veteran British Director John Boorman returns to his roots with this new movie .....his first for several years ...picking up the story line from his  masterful Oscar multi-nominated semi-autobiographical 'Hope & Glory' about a nine year old boy living through the London Blitz . Now a decade later young Bill Rohan (aka Boorman) is 18 and is conscripted to do his two year National Service in the Army. WW2 may be over but now there is the Korean War. However instead of being drafted to fight in the Far East after their training is over, Bill and his best buddy Percy end up with Sergeant stripes on their uniforms and teaching typing and map reading to the next set of new recruits.

Their lives on the Base are not that cozy though as they are answerable to a martinet Sergeant Major whose fastidious instance of enforcing every minute rule of Army Law makes their lives hell. It doesn't actually please the Commanding Officer neither.  Percy however decides that the Sergeant Major needs to be stopped at all coats and gets involved with a rather sly Private to get his revenge once and for all. 

When the two teenage soldiers are off-duty they head to the nearby town looking for love. It looks like that this may be in the form of two local nurses, but then one night Bill spots a rather mysterious beauty and he is immediately smitten. She allows him to call her Ophelia as she is obviously a troubled and somewhat tragic figure and it is only when he accidentally discovers her real identity does he realise that this aloof aristocratic young woman is completely out of his league.

He seeks solace in the arms of Percy's nurse girlfriend and finally loses his virginity which is something that brash mouthy Percy is still shy about. He will eventually, and keeping it in the family too, as he hooks up with  Bill's older sister who has just left her husband back in Canada.

This dramedy shows a perfect slice of a idyllic middle-class life in post-war Britain culminating with the Coronation of the new Queen. Bill's family live on a picturesque fairy-tale private island in the middle of the River Thames which seems to be untouched by the ravages of the recent war or even a hint of the hardships of food/clothes rationing that was still in existence at that time.  Even as the plot unfurls to a finale and there are hints that Bill (aka Boorman) is about to venture into a life of motion pictures, it all seems a little too easy for words.

It's a very pleasant and enjoyable memoir but a tad disappointing after its excellent prequel which is still one of very best wartime dramas  from a child's prospective. It is less compelling partly due to a weaker cast with Callum Turner as Bill who bears an uncanny resemblance to Eddie Redmayne but sadly lacks his charisma, and a very quirky Caleb Landry Jones as Percy whose humor was totally misplaced and fell very flat.  However David Thewlis's rather magnificent turn as the bully Sergeant Major does make up for this in part.

Queen and Country will most definitely appeal to Anglophiles who love period dramas that the Brits excel at, and may be a small sop to those still bruising with the recent news that Downton Abbey will soon be no more.

★★★★★★★

CAKE

When Claire Bennett is asked to follow the other members of her touchy-feely support group as they express shock and sadness over the loss of Nina one of their members who jumped to her death, she ruthlessly responds with sarcasm, finishing with 'Way to go, Nina!' The annoyingly patronizing Social Worker leading the session is horrified, but it actually gets the audience in Claire's corner from the off.

Claire is in constant chronic pain as the result of a very nasty accident and its very clear that the scars she sports on her face and body are not the only ones she has.  Between swallowing handfuls of any pain killers she can blag off any of her doctors, or get illegally from Mexico, she spends her days and nights ensuring that her deep depression manifests in hating herself and making everyone around her miserable too. Besides the Support Group leader, she has also pushed away her husband and her physical therapist simply because they wanted to help her. 

Silvana her middle-aged Mexican housekeeper who waits on her hand and foot in her very comfortable LA house, is the only person that Claire can tolerate. Despite the abuse she heaps on Silvana, the Housekeeper treats her precious Mrs Bennett with genuine affection and constantly goes way beyond the call of duty. 

As the story unfolds and Claire becomes obsessed with Nina's death she starts gets visitations from the dead girl's ghost who seems set on pushing Claire into making the decision that is obviously consuming her about her own life.  The one bright spot in her life now (and in the film) is her playful encounter with Nina's husband Roy when, in a thinly veiled excuse, she inveigles an invitation into his house and then subsequently into his life too. Suddenly we see that underneath Claire's sad state of affairs there is a spirited and wicked sense of humor which shows that she has not always been the 'raving bitch' that she labels herself as now.

The back story to what caused her plight is not hard to fathom out but it comes a little late for us to still be routing for Claire as we started out in the beginning.  She was just a tad too angrily self-absorbed all the way through for us to really accept her now as a warm and tenderhearted person.

The story by Patrick Tobin (his 2nd screenplay) is really too thin for director Daniel Barnz to have made a more substantial and credible movie. It simply relies on just too many cliched plot strands which makes it tough for us to totally empathise with Claire's predicament, especially when he leaves it to the last minute to try to redeem her character. 

Jennifer Aniston gives a powerful performance that she has obviously poured her whole heart and soul into.  It's not easy to accept that this beautiful actress with her beguiling smile can play dull and depressed, but she can and she does, and her performance is equal to other actors who pipped her to the post for the Oscar nomination that she so craved.

The wonderful Adriana Barraza (Oscar nominated for 'Babel') playing Silvana took advantage of the fact that her hysterical rant when she finally turned on Claire, was one of the best scenes in the movie. Also in the cast were Mamie Gummer as the Physical Therapist, handsome Aussie Sam Worthington as Roy, and Felicity Huffman as the Social Worker.  Ms Huffman's hubby William H. Macy also popped up in a small pivotal role.

It's a small indie movie about depression that could leave you depressed if you expect it to be better than average.

★★★★★★