Fans of Lasse Hallstrom's Chocolat should flock to Spanish writer/director Isabel Coixet's lovely adaptation of Penelope Fitzgerald's novel The Bookshop, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1978 (and which the author won the next year for Offshore).
Set in a coastal East England village in 1959, The Bookshop centers on Emily Mortimer's headstrong bibliophile Florence Green who – just like Penelope Fitzgerald and the underrated Coixet for that matter – is a passionate woman ahead of her time.
Determined to open a bookshop in the village's historic Old House to not only honor her late husband (who loved to read as much as he loved her) but also follow through on a dream she'd had since she learned the trade as a girl, as the film begins, Florence puts her plan in motion.
With her banker and solicitor dragging their heels, Florence butts heads with the community's old guard, especially the village's wealthy Queen bee Violet Gamart (played by Coixet's Elegy and Learning to Drive star Patricia Clarkson). Violet, we discover, aspires to turn the Old House into an arts center.
On the surface two like-minded proponents of arts and culture, it isn't hard to imagine that under different circumstances Violet and Florence might've been friends. However, in a subtle commentary on the way that women in a male dominated society are forced to compete with one another and doubly so with the added prejudices of class and status, as soon as she senses that Florence won't bend to her will, Violet vows to block her at every turn.
Refusing to budge, the fiercely patient Florence instead uses Violet's threats to derail her as the fuel she needs to drive home her goal. Settling into the Old House, our unflappable heroine soon gains both a new assistant in hardworking schoolgirl Christine (Honor Kneafsey) as well as a loyal customer in the form of the town's much gossiped about bookworm and hermit, Edmund Brundish (Bill Nighy), who places orders with Florence by way of written correspondence.
With their burgeoning relationship strengthened by the building blocks of shared experience and taste, Florence finds an unlikely ally in the reserved man, eventually asking him if he believes in Vladimir Nabokov's newly published Lolita as much as she does to purchase a large quantity of stock for the shop.
Making the most of Nighy's deadpan delivery to drive home the meaning of a few key lines rather than employ him merely for ornamental comedic distraction, when Nighy's Brundish tells Florence he supports her plan for Lolita and adds "they won't understand it but that's for the best. Understanding makes the mind lazy," it serves once again as a nice metaphor for the town.
A beautifully understated picture with fine performances as well as painterly cinematography (by Jean-Claude Larrieu) so crisp you can almost feel the drops of water from the sea coming through the breeze in the trees, The Bookshop is a solid if at times slightly pedestrian adaptation of Fitzgerald's novel.
Yet even if the plot arc on its own is a bit static, Coixet's interpretation of it makes things exciting as you can view her Bookshop as a feminist allegory about "a woman with a vision" (as she wrote in the press notes) who must contend with pushback, obstacles, and condescension while working twice as hard to get half as far.
Additionally touching on issues of censorship while of course, celebrating the love of the written word – especially in print – Coixet's small film is filled with big ideas.
Stressing the importance of legacy while passing on the torch to the next generation or inspiring those her wake, just like Florence argued that nobody feels alone in a bookshop, Coixet knows everyone has a dream. And in her intelligent (if slight) feature, she and the always terrific Mortimer might just encourage you to take Florence's lead and pursue your own passion as well – Violet Gamarts be damned.
Despite being born and raised in the era of “Free to Be You and Me,” following World War II, I never felt free to be German. Seemingly unable to escape my heritage because it is the country from which my last name is derived-- as a child if you were to ask me about my ethnic background, I'd list the other four nationalities first, drop an octave and then apologetically whisper “and German.”
It made little difference that my relatives had all arrived via Ellis Island and were not a part of Hitler's Germany-- for just like now we find so many people of Middle Eastern descent being typecast as villains in Hollywood films. For every year without fail and usually in the attempt to lure more Oscar nominations, studios release a plethora of World War II pictures filled with nefarious Germans, swastikas galore, and more points of view from the unspeakably horrific global war.
And while with greater education and cinematic offerings we’ve begun to catch new aspects of the war from foreign films like Black Book, Downfall, The Counterfeiters, and Nowhere in Africa—regardless of their origin, the films instantly makes the small amount of German blood in me boil and the results find me feeling irrationally guilty.
Last winter was no exception as once more theaters were filled with titles concerning World War II that ranged from The Boy in the Striped Pajamas to The Reader to Defiance to the long-delayed Bryan Singer venture Valkyrie produced by and starring United Artists’ new studio head Tom Cruise.
Although as Oscar host Hugh Jackman even joked, basically nobody checked out The Reader (much to the surprise of everyone when Kate Winslet took home both a Golden Globe and Academy award for her little-seen role), the reaction to Pajamas was extremely mixed, and Defiance opened under everyone’s radar after the holiday season. Yet despite its controversy and ever-changing release date that once had been scheduled for Valentines Day of 2009, in the end it was the senselessly pre-judged and ridiculed Valkyrie that scored a major “V for Victory" both for United Artists and World War II movies as it became “one of the biggest grossing box office adult movies* of the past holiday season,” as the press release acknowledges. (* Yes, I didn't think the word order of "adult movies" was a great choice either.)
Although public perception had drastically improved for some of the previously questionable antics of Tom Cruise following his hysterical cameo in Ben Stiller’s Tropic Thunder which may have helped turn the tide for a film that was receiving negative buzz way before it opened.
Whatever the case may be, in my view the movie is a success on a number of levels. Sophisticated and highly intellectual, the work which tells the true story of a brilliantly engineered plan headed up by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg (Cruise) and several other high ranking German soldiers to assassinate Adolf Hitler in 1944 engages you deeply into its suspenseful plot. This is all done via the painstakingly historical efforts put forth by Singer and screenwriters Christopher McQuarrie (Oscar winner for The Usual Suspects) and his co-writer Nathan Alexander.
Despite the fact that there were fifteen recorded attempts to take out Hitler, it was the amazingly methodical and meticulous organization of von Stauffenberg, a tight-knit group of officers and a network that expanded to seven hundred others that made Operation Valkyrie the closest the Germans ever got to putting an end once and for all to the madness of Hitler’s Nazi tyranny.
Curiously and despite the fact that it's a natural plot for Hollywood fodder, the story is long overdue for cinematic treatment and it’s one that as the Blu-ray for the release informs us, McQuarrie literally chanced upon while in Germany years ago researching something else entirely. When he noticed a small memorial of four soldiers including von Stauffenberg, he discovered that Germany’s involvement in the war was not quite as “black-and-white” as it has been portrayed for decades on the silver screen.
As the living grandson of the real von Stauffenberg explains, his grandfather like other men were proud to soldiers and serve their country and did not consider themselves to be part of the Nazi regime. Following an attack on von Stauffenberg’s 10th Panzer Division serving in Tunisia which left him seriously wounded (including the loss of one eye, a hand and other fingers), upon his return to his family and home in Berlin, he’s soon ushered into the ongoing plot and secret meetings among other disillusioned and disgusted German soldiers to eliminate Hitler.
However and despite a tense failed attempt to simply execute via a bomb in a move spearheaded by Major-General Henning von Tresckow (Kenneth Branagh)-- with von Stauffenberg’s level-headed assurance that there must be a plan to follow Hitler's demise, they realize that it’s a far more complex proposition than simply just walking up and shooting him at close range the way most had no doubt fantasized.
In addition to von Stauffenberg and von Tresckow, we meet several key players including General Frierich Olbricht (Bill Nighy), Ludwig Beck (Terence Stamp), and General Friedrich Fromm (Tom Wilkinson) and more including some like Fromm who are fearful of what would happen if it goes horribly wrong.
Although once von Stauffenberg realizes that the best way to stage a coup and seriously deconstruct the military stronghold to immobilize the SS so that he and the others can work to set things right once the Fuhrer falls, the smartest yet most dangerous move is to use Hitler’s own Operation Valkyrie contingency plan against him.
Bravely rewriting it, setting new details into play and forming alliances with a string of like-minded soldiers-- von Stauffenberg never makes a misstep even when he’s face-to-face with Hitler himself and has to receive his signature on the new document.
Likewise, Bryan Singer doesn't miss the opportunity to use his penchant for suspense to punch up the execution of Alexander and McQuarrie’s dialogue driven script (inspired by HBO’s Conspiracy, ironically starring Kenneth Branagh). In doing so, he makes every scene a truly intense action sequence even when a pen and not a sword is used and this approach is precisely what made Valkyrie one of the most thoroughly gripping and fresh takes on the World War II genre in a long time.
Although initially, I must admit that seeing Cruise playing von Stauffenberg with the same intensity and style he injects into a majority of his interchangeable American hero films was a bit disconcerting. Moreover, I was also taken aback by Singer’s extremely odd decision to have his cast go with their natural accents (mostly British with the exception of Cruise’s contemporary American fast-talking rhythm) as opposed to striving for some sort of more balanced sound for the ensemble.
While the X-Men and Usual Suspects director explained in the production notes that adopting accents would most likely have distracted from the plot as a whole and he felt more inclined to just make the piece “engaging” rather than docu-drama like--given its meticulous attention to detail in filming for example some of the firing squad sequences exactly where they happened makes this deviation from authenticity increasingly hard to ignore.
Yet despite this choice, the film is a tremendous achievement and one that triumphs wholeheartedly in finally shedding light on this inspiring effort by soldiers determined that by not trying to counter the Nazi regime, the world would assume that Germany was simply Hitler’s Germany and not the country in which they loved and were proud to serve.
Loaded with bonus features including a second digital copy disc of the film to transfer to your compatible Apple or PC portable devices--per usual for Fox and MGM Blu-ray releases-- the clarity in sound and picture is first rate and manages to make it even more exciting than it was in the theatre. This is especially true considering that do to the intricacies of the script, we’re able to focus more on the many characterizations of the rather large ensemble involved when we have the chance to watch at our own pace and better digest information.
While Journey of the Valkyrie and two commentary tracks are included (including one with childhood friends and Usual Suspects colleagues Singer and McQuarrie and star/producer Tom Cruise and the other with writers) along with other featurettes that reveal just how much Cruise and some cast members looked damn near identical to the men they portrayed (see below)—the two standouts on the Blu-ray include a historical mini-documentary hosted by von Stauffeberg’s grandson called The Road to Resistance and a Q&A conversation hosted by Annette Insdorf with Singer and Cruise.
At last a film that illustrates the multiple layers of the war and educates viewers who may have easily jumped to the conclusion that Germany equals Hitler and Soldier equals Nazi as depicted in countless films—while some may still nit-pick on the accuracies of certain portions including von Stauffenberg’s motive or the film’s absence of an exact plan for how the new leaders would’ve found a way to stop the devastation—it’s a stellar and involving work.
Passionately made by Singer who recalls in a conversation with Insdorf that when he was growing up Jewish and obsessed with the war his two best friends just so happened to have been German born German Americans here in the states—Valkyrie honors the brave and intricate plan and similarly those involved. In other words, it reminds us once again of the important lesson that there’s so many sides to every story. And on a more personal note, after walking out of a WWII picture for the first time in my life, I finally felt not just "free to be" but very proud to be a German American.
When a young black youth is gunned down in the busy streets of London, the easiest thing in the world initially is to pass off his untimely demise with the most convenient of stereotypes that it more than likely had something to do with drugs. The same goes on the exact same morning when a beautiful twenty-something environmental researcher falls underneath the tracks amidst the hustle and bustle of commuters traveling by tube as the police simply assume she pulled an Anna Karenina in a gruesome suicide.
However, the plot thickens when we realize that not only had the two seemingly unrelated individuals chatted together briefly that morning on a cellular phone but also when the female victim is identified as Sonia Baker-- an employee working for David Morrissey's rising Labour Party M.P. Stephen Collins.
Shaken by the news--when Collins becomes visually upset during a Parliament press conference, soon London realizes there's much more to the story. And as the journalists of The Herald join the media feeding frenzy, the married father of two-- Collins-- publicly admits to an extramarital affair with the deceased Baker.
Although again, some are quick to just label it a tragic tale of a woman sleeping with the boss, The Herald's talented reporter Cal MacAffrey (John Simm) realizes that it its core, there's something deeper at play than simply a romance gone wrong, based not only on an intuitive hunch but also because he knows Collins personally.
Having served as his campaign manager nearly a decade earlier and helping him get elected to the powerful position he's in-- holding sway in major legislation regarding the environment-- the two estranged friends begin to bond once again in sympathy as Cal and the rest of the staffers start digging for dirt and discovering that it's leading them down some very dangerous and disturbing paths.
With the full support of their cynical, arrogant, yet top-notch editor (the irreplaceable Bill Nighy) behind Cal, his fellow journalist (the lovely Kelly Macdonald), and their new freelance recruit (a hilarious scene-stealing, very young James McAvoy), the group gets to work in Cracker writer Paul Abbott's BAFTA award-winning six-part miniseries that stands as one of the finest achievements in the miniseries format ever produced for the small screen.
This stunning achievement was helmed by The Girl in the Cafe director David Yates (who'd collaborated with Macdonald and Nighy in that lovely HBO Golden Globe winning tale of politics and romance) before he'd go on to work as the newest director in the Harry Potter franchise-- directing both Phoenix and the upcoming Half-Blood Prince. And this time, he ties together politics, love and a great ensemble cast once again working from Paul Abbott's richly detailed, highly complex, and emotionally compelling screenplay.
Simply put, it's sophisticated, televised brain food that hooks you from the start and since it's filled with so many twists, subplots, character surprises, red herrings, dead-ends, new leads, coincidences and conspiracies, it only benefits from the DVD format where you can add English subtitles to understand the somewhat challenging UK accents, rewind scenes filled with multiple character arguments and emotional tugs of war, and-- most importantly-- devour it much faster than having to wait for the next weekly installment.
Despite the admitted grainy image of the gritty, dimly lit, largely hand-held documentary production style as the picture quality isn't as sharp as it should be for a newer release nor is the stereo sound-- the technical flaws are instantly usurped by its overwhelmingly substantive, addictive, top-notch and highly satisfying storyline that sends you down so many paths you begin to realize (much like David Fincher's Zodiac) just how much cops and reporters have in common.
And once again, State of Play is further proof in illustrating the stellar superiority of the BBC in terms of bringing the highest in quality to their network projects at a company where they value the writing so much that the writer's name shares the same bill as the title of the show.
Additionally Morrissey's dashing good looks offered those-- like me-- who'd only seen him in HBO's Stephen Frears drama The Deal as Gordon Brown a chance to shine as a leading man. Likewise, MacAvoy, Macdonald, Nighy and Polly Walker are uniformly excellent. However, the real revelation aside from wishing we could have our very own American version of Paul Abbott writing for our much-needed poor evening television lineups is the empathetic, fierce, and brave turn by John Simm.
A terrific actor who easily manages to walk an emotional fine-line throughout as his ethical dilemmas and involvement in the case are jeopardized when he falls harder for Collins' wife-- he moves seamlessly from scene to scene whether he has to be in lover mode, journalist mode, investigator mode, or betrayed friend mode.
Although the film has been available on DVD for quite some time-- with Universal Pictures' recent truncated feature length version starring Russell Crowe (the pure idea of which reminds me of headlines and tabloids as opposed to the full story contained within the Yates work)-- it's fortunately gaining a second life on DVD.
A highly recommended miniseries that reminds us just how valued our newspapers truly are-- State of Play is one work that I know I'll be studying again soon the second time around to try and fully appreciate all of the intricate twists and turns as they fly by like the speed of the London underground or a printing press before “it's stopped” and reset so that the truth can be revealed as a front page exclusive that continues on in five additional pieces.
These days, meeting people is hard. We seldom look at one another in elevators as I should know having been stuck in one last Fall and we begin silently questioning one another’s agenda when we’re chatted up in public, and as we age and become busier with our own relationships and families, people begin to drift further and further apart from the friends we always held so dear. As hard as it is to meet people, it’s even harder to meet someone you spark with—someone who just gets you or with whom you click with instantaneously or at the very least, someone with whom you’re never quite sure what to expect and can’t wait to hear what they’ll say or do next. After a decade on the dating scene with enough horror stories and humorous anecdotes to fuel a week’s worth of material, I continually try not to be too cynical since I’m always trying to hope for the best in others and in my romantic belief that while there are no perfect partners and it’s damn near impossible to imagine a single person fitting all of one’s needs for an entire lifetime since you’ll both change and evolve, we can’t do without that thought that “this time, it will be different.”
Moving away from just a true romance, the film becomes more political with each successive minute after they land in Reykjavik and Lawrence, who we assume had gotten into government with an Atticus Finch or Capraesque wish to change the world and help mankind is becoming more and more disenchanted and disheartened by the proceedings that are making his quest to help fight global poverty overshadowed by matters of economics and defense. Couple this with Gina’s newfound passion for speaking out and reading all of the research that the defeated Lawrence brings home which recounts the 30,000 children dying unnecessarily each day from extreme poverty and the two begin to see their budding and sincere relationship tested by political actions and decisions in a land that feels as isolated and introverted as the characters themselves.
In this inventive spoof of American buddy cop films, the Shaun of the Dead duo (Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright) reunite for Hot Fuzz bringing their distinctive blend of hyper cuts, ironic dialogue matched with contradictory images and witty banter to a film that I liked even more than their previous one.
Pegg stars as Nicholas Angell, the literal "Goody Two Shoes" London police officer (the song even plays during his introduction) whose arrest record is 400% higher than any other officer in the entire department. In the simplest terms, the prodigy with the badge is not only a criminal’s worst nightmare but that of his coworkers as well and, tired of looking like slackers, they give him a promotion and send him off to a country department in Sanford, a town with low crime but increasingly deadly accidents that Nicholas quickly believes to be foul play, making him unpopular in his new community.
Of course, this isn’t helped by the fact that on his first night there, he arrests what seems to be half the town for various offenses, only to realize that one of the men he apprehended is to be his new partner, the eager and hilarious Danny Butterman (Nick Frost), son of the Inspector who plies his partner with questions about carnage and danger.
In a humorous play on the homoerotic subtext of cop films made in the states, Butterman invites Angell in for a night of drinking together on the sofa during a cozy double feature of Point Break and Bad Boys II that seems all the more entertaining after discovering on IMDb that early drafts of Hot Fuzz had given Angell a love interest who was cut from the shooting script but lots of her original dialogue was given instead to Butterman “often without any changes.”
Featuring great bits by Martin Freeman, Bill Nighy, Steve Coogan and two nearly unrecognizable cameos by Cate Blanchett and Peter Jackson, the film also offers up two juicy roles for Timothy Dalton as a sadistic grocery store owner and Jim Broadbent as the Inspector unsure of how to deal with his new employee, other than making sure he enforces the swear box policy. A movie that, like Mike Judge’s Office Space, is sure to draw an even bigger following on DVD, Hot Fuzz is best shared with friends, especially those up on their 80’s and 90’s American cop movies.
Walking Movie Encyclopedia at Film Intuition; 3-Time National Award Winning Scribe; Film Reviewer; "Watch With Jen" Podcast Host; Screenwriter; Movie Discussion Host; BA in Film Studies & Communication.
