We first saw the film ‘About a Boy’ in 2009, so it seemed like a good idea to watch it again. I remembered that Hugh Grant played a young man, and that the story was about him and a twelve-year-old boy. But that was as far as my memory went.
Grant’s character Will is a young man who likes to be alone, and is mostly self-sufficient in a technological 21st century way. He’s not a hermit, exactly, but believes that, contrary to John Donne’s famous quotation, he is quite happy to live as an island. He enjoys a steady stream of casual romantic relationships, which he breaks off as soon as the woman concerned starts to become too serious.
Will tries to organise his life into half-hour segments, and keeps insisting that he’s very busy. He lives on the royalties from a popular Christmas song that his father wrote many years earlier, and watches a lot of television. He’s unmotivated, and frankly selfish - but also likeable and (deep down) kind-hearted, in a way that Hugh Grant portrays extremely well.
One day Will realises that his ideal short-term partner is a single mother. So, with the dubious aim of infiltrating a group of single parents (mostly mothers) he invents a two-year-old son called Ned. He finds one of the mothers quite attractive, and arranges to meet her, not expecting that she will turn up with twelve-year-old Marcus (Nicholas Hoult), the son of her neighbour (and friend).
By this stage in the film we have also met Marcus, in a separate storyline. He and his mother are radical - almost hippy - vegetarians, and Marcus has never worn trainers, or listened to modern music. He finds school education boring, and is increasingly bullied. His clothes are old-fashioned and geeky, his mother still walks him to school, and he has a strange habit of singing aloud without realising he is doing so.
Marcus also has the burden of knowing that his mother suffers from depressive incidents. He’s old for his years, and an incident that could have been tragic forces Will to become involved with Marcus. Marcus realises that, far from wanting to live alone, he needs more than one person around him. If there are just two people who are everything to each other, he decides, then there’s nobody left if one of them falls out of the picture. So he tries, for a while, to persuade Will to date his mother…
There’s a lot of low-key humour in the film, which contrasts well with the serious themes of bullying, abusive relationships, and clinical depression. Grant is ideal for Will’s character; his facial expressions and sense of timing are excellent. I was less sure about Nicholas Hoult as Marcus, at first, but his character grew on me; perhaps the actor was somewhat typecast at the time (as it would seem from the ‘making of’ documentary that is one of the extras) but he was only twelve when the film was made. He doesn’t have particularly good screen chemistry with anyone, but that suits the role he is playing perfectly.
The other characters are less significant. Marcus’s mother Fiona (Toni Collette) didn’t seem entirely believable to me; but she represents a particular type of person quite well. And since we’re seeing people from Will’s point of view, perhaps this was deliberate. The women are divided into those he finds attractive, and those he doesn’t, in a somewhat caricatured way.
It’s more thoughtful than the average comedy, but more amusing than many films that look at deeper themes. There’s some bad language but mostly used as expletives when someone is surprised or stressed; we didn’t find it excessive. There’s a lot of discussion about sex in general, but without specifics; and there are no scenes of intimacy or nudity at all. The rating of 12 (PG-13 in the United States) is appropriate, given that Marcus himself is 12, although I doubt if anyone under the age of about 14 or 15 would be interested in it.
Recommended.
The film was based on the book ‘About a Boy’ by Nick Hornby.
Review copyright 2019 Sue's DVD Reviews
We have planned to re-watch some of the DVDs that we last saw around ten years ago. Last night we decided to see ‘First Do No Harm’, which we first saw in May 2009. Meryl Streep stars, so we knew the first time around that it would be worth watching, despite being a free DVD from a relative’s weekend paper.
We remembered, when we put the film on last night, that it was based on a true story. It was made for TV in 1997 as a drama documentary, but it’s so well made, and so moving, that we were totally caught up in the story.
Meryl Streep is Lori, a mother of three children, and happily married to Dave (Fred Ward). They have a teenage daughter, a son of about twelve, and a younger son, Robbie (brilliantly portrayed by Seth Adkins). We see them as a normal, happy American family who have just acquired a horse.
Then Robbie has an unexpected fall at school. Nobody worries too much, but later that day he has a kind of seizure. He’s taken to hospital, and diagnosed with epilepsy. Apparently there was quite a stigma attached to this illness - I still don’t know why - but he is in a private hospital, at first, with helpful doctors who discuss the options with his parents.
Initially Robbie is put on the most commonly used drug but the side effects are terrible, so the hospital switches to something else. Then the parents discover that there’s a problem with the medical insurance; Robbie is moved to a state hospital, where the doctor in charge is not at all warm or friendly.
It’s a terrible indictment on US medical care, and we weren’t very impressed with what we saw in either of the hospitals, although the nurses were all excellent. We were shocked at the way the doctors seemed to be in charge, not giving Robbie’s parents all the relevant information, and expecting them to sign forms for quite dangerous treatment.
Lori is convinced there must be another way… and after extensive reading, she finds anecdotal evidence of the ketogenic diet. This was known as early as the 1920s but was not widely acknowledged. The last part of the film involves Lori’s fight against the medical authorities, trying to take Robbie to this treatment rather than agreeing to brain surgery.
It’s a powerful film, partly due to the subject matter, but also because the main actors are excellent. Seth Adkins was only ten when this film was made but already a professional and competent actor. Robbie is supposed to be younger than that (perhaps six) and changes from being a lively, friendly boy to an angry and boisterous one. He has increasing seizures of different kinds, and at times is shown as unable to do anything much, due to the cocktail of drugs. At no point did the acting seem forced or unrealistic.
It’s a very intense story; I didn’t watch some of the rapid action in the hospital scenes, but for most of the film I was almost glued to the screen, unaware of time and rooting for Robbie.
The only jarring note - so to speak - is a screechy rendition of ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ while Lori is researching epilepsy, day after day, in the library. While the sentiments of the song work well, and a musical interlude makes sense to cover the time spent, where there is no dialogue and no action, the later part of the song was quite painful and distracting.
However it’s a minor gripe in an excellent, thought-provoking and educational film.
The UK rating is PG, which seems right to me; other than mild innuendoes there's nothing that would cause the most prudish to cringe. However it's rated PG-13 in the US, probably due to the intense and possibly disturbing nature of the story. I would not want to show it to anyone under the age of about eleven or twelve for that reason.
Highly recommended, particularly to anyone with any experience of epilepsy, or who would like to know more about the ketogenic diet as a possible treatment.
Review copyright 2019 Sue's DVD Reviews
We were fairly tired, and wanted something light-hearted and undemanding to watch. We hadn’t seen ‘Yours, Mine & Ours’ for about ten years. Having checked my previous review, I am puzzled as last time we apparently saw the original 1968 version with Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda. Perhaps we saw it at someone else’s house and then bought the more recent version for ourselves.
The story appears to be the same, although if we previously saw a different version, that would explain why it didn’t feel at all familiar. Dennis Quaid is the rather militant admiral Frank in this version, which was produced in 2006.
Frank was widowed a few years before the story opens, and runs his family - with eight children - in a highly structured naval fashion. They move regularly, and are rather fed up of constant changes, with new accommodation and schools to get used to.
Frank is contrasted with the bohemian designer Helen (Rene Russo) who is also widowed, and has ten children: six of them adopted. Her household is somewhat crazy, but there’s a lot more affection and fun than appears to be the case in Frank’s home.
It turns out that Frank and Helen were high school sweethearts, although they had lost touch many years earlier. They bump into each other when they are both out on dates with other people, and they get together at a high school reunion cruise.
The bulk of the film follows events when the two families move in together, to an abandoned lighthouse which needs a great deal of renovation. There are inevitable clashes. Frank produces schedules and structure, Helen encourages free expression and creativity. The children don’t want new step-siblings but their battles - some of them quite amusing, with cleverly choreographed slapstick scenes - only serve to draw their parents closer to each other, albeit worried about the future.
It’s predictable in an overall sense, of course, but it’s nicely done. It manages to feel a tad dated despite the teenagers having cell phones, but most of the humour is timeless. Some of it is a tad extreme, which is probably why this film has a PG rather than U rating. I didn’t notice any profanities, and there are no scenes of nudity or adult intimacy, other than a little kissing now and then.
There’s nothing deep in this film, and the extras aren’t particularly interesting, but it made a good evening’s undemanding viewing, with a few places where we laughed out loud. We didn't get to know any of the children individually and I had forgotten all their names by the time the film ended; there are four teenagers, and some young twins who are perhaps five, as well as all ages in between.
Recommended if you want to see something light-hearted - and unless you are very particular, there’s nothing unsuitable for children.
Review copyright 2019 Sue's DVD Reviews
We first watched the film ‘Heaven can wait’ in 2007, and recalled finding it mildly amusing. We had entirely forgotten the storyline, other than knowing it was about someone who was due to go to Heaven…
A rather young-looking Warren Beatty stars as Joe Pendleton. He is a talented sportsman, who is an important team member in his local American football team. He keeps fit, eats well, and plays the saxophone for fun. His trainer Max (Jack Warden) sees a great future ahead of him.
Then, when Joe is out cycling, he is involved in a horrific road accident. We don’t see any details, just hear something in a tunnel; the next moment he is walking in some clouds. He is supposed to board an aeroplane at the end of a queue, and is being told what to do by a rather nervous - and officious - man who says he is Joe’s ‘escort’ to the afterlife.
But Joe does not want to go. He is convinced he is dreaming. So his case is referred upwards to the more experienced Mr Jordan (James Mason). It turns out that an error has been made, and - after much discussion and negotiation - Joe is allowed to continue living, in the body of someone else. He appears to everyone else as a ruthless millionaire tycoon, whose wife and secretary have plotted to murder him.
There’s an inevitable love interest in the British environmental campaigner Betty Logan (a rather young Julie Christie). Joe also reverses some of the decisions he supposedly made in the past. He confuses his household staff by becoming politer, by changing his habits, and - eventually - by buying up an entire American Football team, as he is determined to play despite his different body…
It’s light-hearted, and we would probably have appreciated it more if we had any understanding of how American Football works. There are several scenes revolving around this game, but we had not the faintest idea what was going on, or what the relevance was. Still, we got the general idea. It’s quite a clever idea having someone inhabit the body (but not the mind) of someone else, and there are some mildly amusing scenes when Joe is apparently out of character, or when his staff see him apparently talking to himself, when he is conversing with Mr Jordan (invisible to everyone else).
We had entirely forgotten that it’s not a modern film. Betty Logan speaks in the kind of BBC English that used to be inherent in films from the 1940s and 1950s, and the style in general feels old-fashioned, at least fifty or sixty years out of date (as it’s in colour we assumed it couldn’t be much older than 1960). That’s not to say that it’s a bad thing - there were some excellent films made in that era.
So we were a tad surprised to find, after we had finished watching, that it was made as recently as 1978 - and then shocked to realise that’s still forty years ago! Warren Beatty must have been forty years old, but managed to pass easily for an athlete in his twenties.
The pace is quite good, once we accepted the decidedly dated style of the film. Other than the American Football scenes, we quite enjoyed it. The rating is given as A in the UK; apparently this is a precursor to the modern PG. There’s some mild bad language, some bedroom scenes (although fully clothed and with nothing other than a cuddle happening), and some deaths, though they all happen off stage. I cannot imagine that anyone under the age of about thirteen would be at all interested in this anyway.
It made a good evening’s viewing, though I wouldn’t recommend it particularly highly. But perhaps we’ll watch it again in another twelve years. It's worth watching if you want something reasonably light, but a bit different, and may be more fun if you understand American football.
Review copyright 2019 Sue's DVD Reviews
My husband watched the film ‘Downsizing’ on a transatlantic flight. He liked it so much that he put it on his wishlist, and was given it last Christmas. Our adult son was staying for a couple of weeks so we decided to watch it last night.
The blurb on the back gives an outline of the story - that scientists, trying to find ways to reduce environmental damage and to use less of the earth’s resources, discovered a way to reduce the size of animals and people, to a fraction of their original sizes.
It’s rather slow to get started. We see scientists discovering how to make this idea work, for the first time. Then we see the lecture where eminent scientists describe their discoveries, and also show a group of ‘small’ people, no more than 5 inches high, who are living in a community. It sounds idyllic.
Time moves forward, and increasing numbers of people decide to take this option. They sell up their properties and possessions, because in ‘Leisureland’ money goes a lot further. People living in small apartments as regular people can buy mansions once they’re small. There’s said to be no crime, and no need to work unless people wish to. Big and small folk interact in mostly friendly ways; we see dinners and conferences where they chat, and share ideas, and as time progresses the idea of downsizing becomes well-known all over the world.
The main protagonist of the story, once the scene is set - and it’s a bit of a long-winded opening - is Paul (Matt Damon). He is an occupational therapist who is happily married to Audrey (Kristen Wiig) but they’re living in quite a small apartment. She would love to move to a bigger place, but they can’t get a mortgage. So she’s more and more tempted by the promises of luxurious living in Leisureland, and persuades her husband to opt for downsizing.
So they sell up and make their farewells, and travel to the hospital where the procedures take place. It starts to feel quite worrying by this stage. They have to sign all kinds of disclaimers, and we learn that while in most cases the procedure goes well, it can cause severe injury, even death. Moreover, the procedure is permanent. There is absolutely no going back.
I knew something bad was going to happen, and indeed, it does. Far from being hilarious, as the blurb on the back of the DVD stated, or even humorous, the film becomes desperately sad at this stage. It never really recovers from it. It is a slow-moving film throughout, too. There are scenes from parties that go on and on; scenes of nature that are quite pretty, but, again, continue for far too long. The medical parts were all longer than they should have been, as well. An hour into the film, nothing much had happened.
It got a bit more interesting after that, and the story certainly raises some interesting issues. It provides much to think about too, although the idea of downsizing people in this way is so ludicrous (I hope…) that it’s technically satirical rather than dystopian or sci-fi. But there wasn’t any humour in it. There was just deep sadness. At Paul’s predicament - he soon regrets what he has done - and in the essential humanity that means there are slums outside Leisureland despite all the initial promises. There are also people downsized against their will. Later in the film, we learn of the possibility of people, large and small, being wiped out entirely.
Other than being far too long (we all agreed the film itself should have been downsized significantly when it was edited) it was well produced. Matt Damon is excellent in his role. Had we known in advance that it was meant to be a futuristic and very sad film, I think I would have appreciated it more. I suppose there were one or two mildly amusing moments; but they mostly involved misunderstandings and poor English from a wonderful but also very distressing Vietnamese refugee with a prosthetic leg (brilliantly played by Hong Chau).
The 15 rating (R in the more cautious United States) is mainly due to rather an excess of bad language - a particular ‘strong’ word is repeated several times near the end. There is some side-view nudity too, but only in a medical setting. There is also some recreational drug usage, although it did not add anything to the film. As the subject matter is so heavy, I wouldn't suggest that anyone younger than fifteen or sixteen should see it anyway.
I think I’m glad I watched this film, as it certainly gave much to think about. But I doubt if I’ll want to see it again.
Review copyright 2019 Sue's DVD Reviews
It’s ten years since we saw the now classic film ‘Calendar Girls’. We remembered liking it, and of course we remembered the basic outline of the story. But we had forgotten all the detail, so it was more than time to see it again.
The opening scenes show a respectable village, with a thriving Women’s Institute. At every meeting the group sings the song ‘Jerusalem’, accompanied on the piano. The women involved take part in village fairs, and cake-baking contests, and other traditional WI activities.
But two women, good friends, stand out a little from the crowd. They don't really fit in, and they find some of the ceremonies and practises a tad ridiculous. Julie Walters plays Annie, who is worried because her beloved husband is very ill. And Helen Mirren plays Chris, who is something of a rebel. She doesn’t bake, or do anything traditionally associated with the WI. She only belongs to the group as a way to socialise.
Annie’s husband dies, and she wants to do something constructive to raise money for a sofa for the local hospital. A calendar is suggested. The rather dull WI chair has proposed a thematic calendar with local churches. Chris spots a playboy type calendar in a local garage, and suggests that perhaps some of the WI could do something similar, albeit more tastefully. This was the part of the story we remembered and is the main focus of the film.
There’s a lot of humour; Helen Mirren and Julie Walters work well together, with excellent give-and-take. Both are talented actresses, and these roles are very different from others where they are perhaps better known. Despite the sad catalyst for the calendar, the women who agree to be photographed have a lot of fun together. The photographer helps them by suggesting suitable poses, and it all works well. Then they must publicise it, and try to sell at least a thousand in order to break even…
The acting is excellent, the timing is great, and the script is superb. There are some poignant moments early in the story, and also when Chris’s teenage son becomes embarrassed at what’s going on. Then her husband is very tolerant but their business selling flowers is starting to suffer. There were places where we chuckled, several places where we smiled, and more than one place where I felt quite choked up.
All in all we thought it an excellent film. It’s the kind of thing which would perhaps be considered ridiculous… except for the fact that it was based on a true story. One of the ‘extras’ includes interviews with some of the original ‘Calendar Girls’, which we thought was very interesting, and added to the enjoyment of the film.
Definitely recommended. The rating is 12A in the UK, PG-13 in the US. Given that there’s partial nudity (though entirely non-sexual) and some minor bad language, that seems about right. It’s unlikely to be of interest to children or younger teens anyway.
Review copyright 2019 Sue's DVD Reviews
It's been ten years since we watched the film ‘Marvin’s Room’. Although I recalled very little about the story, I knew we had liked it when we first saw it. It has rather an all-star cast: Meryl Streep and Diane Keaton play two sisters who have not been in touch for close to twenty years. Leonardo DiCaprio plays the moody teenage Hank, and Robert De Niro is Dr Wally. Even I have heard of these four actors.
We meet the sisters separately; indeed it’s not obvious at first that they are sisters. Diane Keaton is Bessie, who has devoted the last twenty years of her life to looking after her invalid father, Marvin (Hume Cronyn). He had a stroke which left him bedridden and unable to speak, and nobody expected him to stay alive all this time.
Marvin’s sister Ruth (Gwen Verdon) lives with them, and helps with his care, but she’s becoming elderly and absent-minded, and is also seriously addicted to soap operas on television. Ruth provides some gentle humour, which works very well alongside the more poignant and darker main storyline. But Bessie has been getting very tired recently. She assumes she has a vitamin deficiency, but Dr Wally wants to run some tests. And the news is not good…
Meanwhile Lee (Meryl Streep) has been training as a beautician while raising her two sons as a single mother. Charlie, the younger son (Hal Scardino) is a likeable nerdy type, but his older brother Hank is very angry, and we meet him when he tears up some family photos and sets light to them…
When Bessie gets in touch with Lee, she and the boys embark on the long journey to visit her, to see if they are able to help with her treatment. Lee and Hank keep aggravating each other; she seems to have little idea how to communicate with a teenager.
The bulk of the story, then, is about what happens when the sisters are reunited, with Bessie meeting her nephews for the first time. This visit is the catalyst for many things, and we found it a gripping film. The acting is excellent - as one would expect with such a talented cast. The pace just right, and the story heart-wrenching in places. I felt the ending was a tad too abrupt; there are hints at what is going to happen in the future, but it’s not as clear as I would have liked.
The rating is 12; I can’t imagine anyone younger would be interested anyway. There’s no serious violence, no nudity or intimacies, and not a lot of bad language, although there is some (including one or two 'strong' words). However some of the plot and a few of the scenes could be very disturbing to a sensitive child.
All in all, it was a thought-provoking, very well made film and I would recommend it highly.
Review copyright 2019 Sue's DVD Reviews
