Cinema Review AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY Tracy Letts’s Broadway play won every prize on offer, including the Pulitzer, after its Broadway debut in 2007. My cinema companion, however, warned me that when she saw the touring production in Sydney she found it underwhelming. I’m not sure if boring is quite the right word for John Wells’s film adaptation – Letts was screenwriter – but what was boorish in the extreme was the woman who sat in front of us and noisily stuffed her face for the first fifteen minutes with potato crisps. We moved three rows back, but the crackling and
vulgar grinding still infringed, like rats in the roof. It occurred to me later that the awful woman’s lack of consideration for those around her mirrored the self-centredness of Meryl Streep’s drug-addled dowager in this stagy, overwrought black comedy – and I only say ‘black comedy’ because that is how it has been categorised by the cognoscenti. Out of step with most in the audience, who laughed regularly as the Westons tore strips off each other in the wake of the father’s suicide, I grew increasingly less interested in the unlikeable lot. The dysfunctional family
has been a preferred subject of an angst-ridden generation (especially on TV, the medium in which Wells has primarily worked), but too often its strength is simultaneously its weakness, viz, the stories are peopled by characters who are a pain in the arse. A stellar cast is involved here – besides Streep, there are Julia Roberts, Ewan McGregor, Chris Cooper, Abigail Breslin, Juliette Lewis, Benedict Cumberbatch, Sam Shepard and the fabulously reptilian Dermot Mulroney – and each woman is given virtuoso scenes in which they are allowed free rein to
impress. Gathered from hither and yon, the Westons, with the usual subterranean resentments, go to war at the dinner table and skid unstoppably downhill from there towards the revelation of a dark secret that is just what you’d expect from such a potboiler. It’s expertly done, but I wanted the maid to throttle them all – and the piggy chip woman, too. ~ John Campbell
gets the best lines in Stephen Frears’s scathing observance of how loveless religion – in this case Catholicism – can devastate lives. That Sixsmith is the more conflicted, complex
character in a two-hander with Judi Dench’s Philomena should not surprise, given that the movie is based on his book and the script co-written by Coogan himself. What delights is the chemistry – the warmth and concord – that exists between two performers who ordinarily approach a role from opposite ends of the emotional colour spectrum. Philomena, in her old age, wants to know what happened to the illegitimate son who was taken from her by the ‘sisters of little mercy’ and adopted out to an American couple fifty years ago. Sixsmith, needing a newspaper gig, agrees to help her find out, with the intention
of publishing it as a ‘human interest’ story. The flashback sequences at the Irish convent where Philomena and her child lived are harrowing, but what might so easily have tilted disastrously into selfdefeating mawkishness is kept on an even keel by gentle, episodic road-trip humour as Sixsmith’s investigations result in the pair traveling together to the US. There is as well a mystery that is being solved, step-by-step, meaning that there is no time to wallow in bathos. But by far the most compelling element is the way in which Philomena’s tested but unwavering commitment to her faith works on Sixsmith
PHILOMENA ‘I don’t believe in God, and I think he can tell.’ Having just walked out of a church choir recital, it’s Steve Coogan as Martin Sixsmith, a disgraced journalist/spin doctor, who
TUESDAY
7 JAN to
WEDNESDAY
15 JAN
as he grows evermore judgmental of those who wronged her. An outstanding film that hammers both the church and the Fourth Estate with an iron fist in a velvet glove, ends with Sixsmith, back in Ireland with Philomena, quoting TS Eliot: ‘We shall not cease from exploration / And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time’. Too true. ~ John Campbell
THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY OPENS THURSDAY
OPENS THURSDAY
SAVING MR BANKS (PG) Thu 9-Sat 11, & Mon 13-Wed 15: 11.45, 4.35, 7.10 Sun 12: 11.35, 4.30, 7.00pm THE BOOK THIEF (PG) Thu 9-Sat 11, Mon 13-Wed 15: 9.10, 4.25, 7.00pm Sun 12: 9.00, 4.25, 7.05pm ANCHORMAN 2 (M) (No free tix) Tue 7, Wed 8: 2.20, 9.15pm Thu 9-Sat 11, Mon 13-Wed 15: 9.45pm PHILOMENA (M) (No free tix) Tue 7, Wed 8: 11.30, 1.30, 6.30pm Thu 9-Wed 15: 1.20pm THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY (PG) (No free tix) Tue 7, Wed 8: 4.30, 6.40, 9.00pm Thu 9-Sat 11 & Mon 13-Wed15: 2.15, 9.35 Sun 12: 2.10, 9.40pm UNCHARTED WATERS (CTC) Sun 12: 6.30pm FROZEN (PG) (No free tix) Tue 7, Wed 8: 9.25, 11.20am Thu 9-Wed 15: 9.00, 11.10am Enjoy our licensed bar
Lavazza Espresso Coffee
SUNDAY - 6.30PM
3D: THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG (M) (No free tix) Tue 7, Wed 8: 3.30, 8.30 Thu 9-Sat 11, Mon 13 Wed 15: 3.20, 6.25pm Sun 12: 3.20, 8.30pm 2D: THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG (M) (No free tix) Tue 7, Wed 8: 1.20pm Thu 9-Wed 15: 10.55am 2D WALKING WITH DINOSAURS THE MOVIE (CTC) (No free tix) Tue 7, Wed 8: 10.15am Thu 9-Wed 15: 9.00am AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY (CTC) (No free tix) Tue 7, Wed 8: 12.00, 1.30, 6.30 Thu 9-Wed 15: 2.00, 9.30 2D: CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS 2 (G) Tue 7-Wed 8: 9.00am All sessions are correct at the time of publication. Current session times at: www.palacecinemas.com.au Gift cards are the perfect gift
Group Bookings available
108-110 Jonson Street, Byron Bay 6680 8555 | www.palacecinemas.com.au
26 January 7, 2014 The Byron Shire Echo
The sad irony that nags unheard at this wonderful movie is that all of the major studios have it in train to stream their newest productions directly into your living room the minute the last edit is done. Meaning that soon, with the sloth of online shopping and the quicksand of social media, none of us will need to leave the house to do anything – least of all become involved in the sort of life-affirming individualism encouraged by Walter Mitty’s awakening. In this, Ben Stiller doubles as director and he seems initially to be more at ease in front of the camera. Walter develops the negative prints that are submitted to LIFE magazine by its photographers scattered
around the globe. The one that will be used to provide the cover for the last issue of the venerable publication has gone missing and it’s the responsibility of Walter, a perennial daydreamer, to find it. There is a flatness, a staid quality about the film’s introductory scenes that doesn’t augur well – Walter’s unrequited love for fellow worker Cheryl (Kristen Wiig) and his downtrodden status in the office is clichéd, while his major flight of fancy, involving a cross-city fight with his tormentor Hendricks (Adam Scott), appears as just another exercise in CGI overkill. But when he travels from New York to Greenland in search of the legendary photo-journalist Sean O’Connell (Sean Penn),
<echowebsection=Cinema>
the story takes wings. The transformation happens in one exhilarating moment as Walter, imagining that Cheryl is urging him on by singing Bowie’s Space Oddity (it has never been put to better use), fearlessly leaps into a helicopter as it is taking off, freeing himself from all of his terrestrial inhibitions. Stiller has always been good as the hapless Everyman who is nonplussed by circumstance, so Mitty’s journey of personal liberation is doubly affecting because it is not that of a typical hero. The final shot, of the long-awaited cover, is heart-swelling, as is the casual intimacy with which Walter finally gets to hold Cheryl’s hand. Bewdiful. ~ John Campbell
:H[ ͎TH͍1HU FEDERAL HALL
magtno´ lita )@ 7 ; (5+,9:65 4(
Dinner from 6.30 PM Movie starts at 8 PM T 6684 9313 IHGHUDO ð OP VRFLHW\ FRP
Byron Shire Echo archives: www.echo.net.au