World War III
"Epic" mini-series not so much about World War III as about the event that triggers it. The United States has enacted and encouraged other nations to enact a grain embargo against the Soviet Union, this causes wide spreed hunger and unrest in the USSR and ironically also hurts the US economy. Elements with in the Soviet government conspire to send an elite squad of commandos into Alaska and threaten to disable the famed oil pipeline and further hurt the US economy, that is unless the Americans agree to lift the embargo and encourage the other participating nations to do the same.
The Soviet Squad eventually engage in a prolonged stand off with a small group of American solders, consisting largely of an Eskimo lead unit of the Alaska National Guard and a recently transferred Colonel who is "some kind of frustrated genius or something". As an unsteady stalemate holds in Alaska U.S. president Rock Hudson (a little thought of pol who recently succeeded to the office after the death of his much admired predecessor) attempts to negotiate a settlement with the Soviet Premier (who never approved of the expedition to Alaska but is being constrained by extremist elements in his government), while also attempting to keep the whole situation secret from the American public. Needless to say despite his best efforts Hudson fails and the movie ends just moments before the third world war is about to begin.
The first half is far too slow but it becomes genuinely interesting in the second; ironically the combat sequences in Alaska are less engaging then the geopolitical maneuvering in Washington, Moscow and Iceland (where the two world leaders meet for a secret conference). Reminds me a lot of Virus in its end of the world theme and largely snow covered setting.
Fair
Hugo
The operative metaphor in this films is machines, that we are all necessary components in the big human machine with parts to play. This is perhaps a bit of a strange metaphor for a film that is largely about imagination and a sense of wonder, or in short about creativity. The consistent presence of gears, and clockwork, and even an automaton does lead one to an increased awareness of just how well constructed this film is, which shouldn't be surprising considering that Scorsese is directing. Do to its children's book origins and non violent story line your not going to see many of the standard Scorsese elements and themes in this film, save for the extraordinary love of "the movies" displayed throughout.
Though the title character of Hugo (Asa Butterfield) is a young orphan who maintains the clock works at a large Pairs train station in the late 1920's, the character who is the films true center is that of Georges Melies (Ben Kingsly, actually not slumming for once). Melies is a real figure and an exceedingly important one in early cinema. Beginning in 1896 the former stage magican produced and astounding 531 films in a seventeen year period. These short, imaginative, and technologically revolutionary films are mostly lost today, but the ones that survive amply illustrate the energy, genius and sense of fun of their maker.
As the film starts out Melies is a forgotten man, running a small mechanical toy shop in the Pairs train depot. He is constantly trying to forgot the past, bitter about the demise of his movie making career as the worlds attention turned to less fanciful things at the outbreak of the first world war. The movies central thrust at first is Hugo's efforts to repair an old automation left to him by his late father. The automaton turns out to have been originally constructed by Melies, leading Hugo and his friend Isabel (Chloe Moretz) to delve into the mystery of Melies secret past and reawaken his joy in life.
The film is supplemented by a number of secondary stores concerning people who work in the train station, including Sacha Baron Cohen as the station inspector, a veteran of the war with an artificial leg who is constantly trying to catch Hugo and is the films primary source of comic relief. Emily Mortimer, Jude Law, Christopher Lee and Michael Stuhlbarg all have supporting parts. The films man attraction to many however will be its 3D, a first for a Scorsese movie, and excellently handled; in addition to the expected swooping and roller coaster shots there is a truly unique montage of Melies silent films that is like nothing you've ever seen. Hugo is a warm, play full, and at times even enchanting film in which Scorses lets lose in a new direction and a love for the magic of movies is on full display.
Great
Another Year
I love Mike Leigh films, I love the poignancy of his human renderings. I think I can safely say that no director working today is better able to convey the true essence, the inner humanity of his characters, then is this great writer/director. The stories Leigh puts on screen are of the sort that mostly go unmade, dealing as they do with the unbeautiful people, the working men and women, poor to middle class. They don't have plots in the traditional sense where everything is leading to a tightly wrapped conclusion, but rather take us into the lives of his characters over a short period of time and show us who they really are, by going deeper, beyond the surface and beyond caricature.
The time frame for this film is of course larger then most for Leigh's work; it takes place over the course of a seemingly average year in the lives of married couple Tom (Jim Broadbent) and Gerri (Ruth Sheen, wonderful) Hepple and a small circle of their friends and family. The films presentation is in four episode, each spanning only a day or so and taking place in successive seasons. The 60ish couple both work, he as a geologist and she as councilor, they have one child, a thirty year old son named Joe (Oliver Maltman) who is a solicitor specializing in helping poor people keep their homes. Tom and Gerri ('you get used to it') are still very much in love, they enjoy spending time together tending their plot of community garden, hosting visiting friends, and being one anothers confidants.
Among their friends are Ken (Peter Wright) a chum going back to their more radical days in the 1960's (the couple is still rather liberal). Ken is divorced, he smokes, he over eats and over drinks and is incredibly lonely, he's of retirement age but won't give up his job because otherwise he wouldn't know what to do with himself. Mary (Lesley Manville, also quite good) is a receptionist at the health center where Gerri works. We're given to know that Mary had one bad marriage, and and an affair with a married man whom she considers her true love and who she hasn't seen in perhaps decades. Like Ken, Mary is also very lonely though she rejects the formers advances when they meet. Once a party girl she pines for her younger days and is deeply hurt that most men no longer find her attractive, she drinks to excess. She has so little going in her life, and accomplished so little in it, that the biggest thing in her life at the start of the film are her planes to buy a car (she hasn't driven since 1984).
Mary gets the most screen time out of the friends and she is the most interesting. Manville's performance has got to be admired, she plays such a sad, pathetic figure, and she brings out her soul, her wants, her needs, her resentments and desperation. Mary develops an unhealthy infatuation with the Hepple's grown son, and reacts in an uncomfortably competitive fashion when Joe brings a new girlfriend (Karina Fernandez) to meet his parents. Toward the end we meet Tom's brother Ronney whose wife has just died and whose lone child Carl (Martin Savage) hates him. Indeed unhappiness is rife throughout this film, but so is love and life's simple pleasures, the kaleidoscope of feelings that mark any human year, or even human day. As always with Leigh's films Another Year is a carefully observed character work which finds in the subtlety of human neediness a soul piercing sense of the profound.
Great
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