cinema review THE INVISIBLE WOMAN Envy and the slavish adoration of fabrications concocted on a media assembly line might encourage us in the twentyfirst century to believe that we created the cult of celebrity, but it has been around for many a year. Charles Dickens, if certainly not of the hollow variety now rampant, was himself a celebrity who was as mobbed by the plebs as he was lauded by lettered elites for his peerless writing and storytelling. As director of this languid, gently incisive film, Ralph Fiennes introduces us first to the teenage actress with whom Dickens became
so totally enamoured. It is some years after his death and, though now married with a child of her own, the beautiful Nellie (Felicity Jones) remains troubled by her relationship with the great novelist – he still casts a shadow over her life. We then flash back to their meeting, when she was a not-sosuccessful slapper who toured the provinces performing with her mother (Kristin Scott Thomas) and two sisters. Dickens (played by Fiennes), already a living legend, had all but separated from his wife Catherine and found
Nellie, who was twenty-seven years younger, irresistible. Fiennes is careful to remain nonjudgmental, preferring to eke out the mystery of love itself when two people fall under its spell. Social mores are noted – Nellie’s mother, wishing for a financially more secure future for her daughter, turns a blind eye to the affair, while Dickens himself rails against public whisperings but, when in France with Nellie, calls himself by another name. The inspiration behind Dickens’s mighty works is captured poignantly in a silent nocturnal scene in
which he sees firsthand the deprivations of a poorhouse, but the movie never labours the point. Fiennes is not unexpectedly outstanding, but Jones’s performance is breathtaking in its subtlety and depth (it reminded me of Abbie Cornish’s in Bright Star.) Emphatically showing that caressing and touching hands can be as erotic as your standard grunting bonk, Fiennes inexorably, invisibly weaves an affair of the heart into the rich tapestry of Great Expectations. Wonderful. ~ John Campbell
spotted Great Dane having a dump on the floor of a posh Manhattan apartment. This unattractive, unappealing and grindingly unfunny chick-flick
is not in the same league as Bridesmaids when it comes to coarse stupidity – in fact it is quite restrained on that front – but it is every bit as lame and conformist. And, need it be stressed, doggedly lowbrow. Cameron Diaz – she still has the legs, but the trout mouth’s forced smile and eyes coated with makeup are giving her a look that is closer to worn out than far out – is Carly, a power-suited NYC lawyer who has, unknowingly, been screwing a married man, Mark (Nilolaj CosterWalau – a sort of poor man’s Aaron Eckhart). Given that we all have an idea of where the movie is meant to be heading
with its theme of wronged women uniting to dish out payback, the story takes an age to get going. When Mark’s wife Kate (Leslie Mann) finally does find out that hubby has been doing the dirty on her, her reaction is so pathetically squeally that, try as I might, I could muster no sense of outrage on her behalf – the character and Mann’s presentation of it is irritating beyond all reason. The third woman to have succumbed to Mark’s charms is Amber (Kate Upton), a young lady with spectacular breasts, whose part it is to play the dumb blonde. I thought her more pleasing than the other two,
for she was at least natural. Nick Cassavetes’s direction is mechanical, with clumsy cutaways and a lazy over-reliance on collages that feature the girls drinking, bonding and laughing a lot under some innocuous pop song. Worst
flight – notwithstanding the harried look on Liam’s dial. Sure enough… he gets a text from a mystery passenger who threatens to kill somebody in twenty minutes if money is not deposited into an account that he has supplied. Early indicators suggest that we might be heading into Snakes on a Plane territory (I’d love to see that again, just for its glorious idiocy) as Liam is led to the end of his tether by a conspirator who is always one step ahead of him. His manic attempts to find the villain result in Liam’s being considered a terrorist by the air force and everybody else on the plane – except for Julianne and the beautiful stewardess (Michelle Dockery,
who appears weirdly out of place after her spellbinding presence at Downton Abbey). There are the usual number of suspects – the only one of whom you know it can’t be is the Muslim doctor, for that would be too obvious… unless the writers intend applying Maxwell Smart’s ‘old reverse psychology trick’. The plot is convoluted and the declamatory dialogue at times awful, but the tension is well constructed and Neeson, Moore and Dockery, aided by an excellent support cast – Corey Stoll notably so as an off-duty NYPD officer – are untroubled in holding the story together as it hurtles towards its fantastic climax. ~ John Campbell
THE OTHER WOMAN
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BAD NEIGHOURS (MA15+) (No free tix) Fri 2-Sun 3: 2:00, 9:00pm FADING GIGOLO (M) (No free tix) Thu 1-Wed 7: 11:40am, 4:40, 7:00pm
THE OTHER WOMAN (M) Tue 29, Wed 30: 2:00, 4:10, 9:30pm Thu 1-Wed 7: 9:20am, 4:30, 6:45pm THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL (M) Tue 29, Wed 30: 2:30, 4:40, 6:50, 9:15pm Thu 1-Wed 7: 12:20, 2:30, 6:40, 8:50pm
2D THE AMAZING SPIDERMAN 2 (M) Tue 29, Wed 30: 4:20, 9:00pm Thu 1-Wed 7: 9:30, 4:10, 9:05pm
DIVERGENT (M) Tue 29, Wed 30: 6:30pm Thu, Mon 5-Wed 7: 1:40, 9:00pm Fri 2-Sun 3: 1:40pm 2D THE LEGO MOVIE (PG) Tue 29, Wed 30: 9:15, 11:50am Thu 1, Mon 5-Wed 7: 9:30, 11:40am Fri 2-Sun 3: 9:30am MUPPETS MOST WANTED (G) Tue 29, Wed 30: 9:15, 11:25am
3D THE AMAZING SPIDERMAN 2 (M) Tue 29, Wed 30: 11:40am THE INVISIBLE WOMAN (M) Tue 29, Wed 30: 9:30am, 1:45pm, 7:15pm Thu 1, Mon 5-Wed 7: 1:50pm Fri 2-Sun 3: 11:40am Enjoy our licensed bar
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20 April 29, 2014 The Byron Shire Echo
of all, the ending is nasty in the extreme, featuring scenes of gratuitous and entirely uncalled for violence, adding ugliness to a film that is both dull and predictable. ~ John Campbell
NON STOP Craggy old Liam Neeson does it tough in the movies these days, doesn’t he? Invariably widowed or divorced, in this case as US Air Marshal Bill Marks, the poor bugger has also lost an eight-year-old daughter to leukemia and, still devastated, has developed a penchant for hard liquor. He is one of the army of plainclothes security guards that the US government has employed since 9/11 to keep the airways safe for travellers, though whether the rest of them get a seat in first class is doubtful at best. Sipping on a gin and tonic with a lovely stranger (Julianne Moore) sitting next to him, everything looks hunky dory on just another New York–London
Travelling Flicks Rated PG
It is stating the obvious, but the script of any rom-com is really scraping the bottom of the barrel if it needs to rely for a laugh on the sight of a
7PM Soup, Tea & Cake 7.30 PM Railtrail update & short Great Ride and feature film. Film: $15/13 conc. travellingflicks.com
Saturday May 3 A+I HALL BANGALOW
Byron Shire Echo archives: www.echo.net.au