A Selection Of Reviews: "Avanti", "Shaun The Sheep", "Belle" and "Retroactive"

A frikkin' wonderful Jack Lemmon movie from Billy Wilder, the director of “Double Indemnity” and “Some Like It Hot”.

I saw this many years ago when it was randomly on tv and was totally caught up with it. While it begins as a send-up of Italian culture it plays just as much on stereotypes of Americans in the lead male protagonist.

The really nagging problem for me is that the main actress constantly claims that she is fat. She's not even remotely fat! Okay so she's supposed to be insecure then? Well yes, but other characters comment on her weight too. She's clearly supposed to be playing a chunkier character than would fit her Hollywood figure. But there's a further complication. She puts a specific number forward for her weight at one stage and it's a ridiculously small amount for someone who claims their doctor needs them to lose some pounds.

Sigh!

Okay so it's not a point to belabour. This film has some wonderful characters, consistent laughs and endless supplies of charm.

A rich American man travels to Italy to collect the body of his father. However, the local Italians aren't making it easy to keep to his hurried schedule. It's not a particularly interesting premise, yet the resulting film is brilliant.                  

A+

I'm not particularly familiar with the Shaun The Sheep tv series. However I'm very familiar with the Wallace And Gromit films (from which the character of Shaun the sheep originated).

Checking the disc I found myself on a random scene with the 'audio descriptive' sound track on. A voice explained that, “a fish flies across the room and is worn on a man's face like a mask”. The descriptive audio really struggled to explain what was going on visually and still keep up with the film. This is a film with no lines. Everything is in the visuals, the sound effects and the odd bit of writing on signs or bits of paper. And each scene is painstakingly planned out and executed.

It's odd to hear that Omid Djalili does the voice of Trumper, the animal warden, since he makes noises rather than speaking (like all the other characters). I'm a big fan of Djalili's performance in the film "The Infidel", but I'm not convinced they really needed him here for a serious of grunts, mumbles and angry sounds.

The animation is excellent, the humour is consistently brilliant and, as an outsider to the world of Shaun The Sheep I found it easy to become caught up in the action.

One rather cool moment is where we hear some baa-baa shop singing (lol). But don't hang around for the ‘Shaun The Sheep rap’ during the end credits. It was a little too “down with the kids” and rather spoilt the mood for me.

A+

A fairly by-the-numbers costume drama elevated by the excellent performances and by the novel premise surrounding the anachronistically self-aware protagonist.

Belle tells the story of an illegitimate daughter born to a rich English aristocrat. Her mother is a black slave so she also has black skin causing some degree of backlash when the father insists that she be an equal member of the family.

When she grows up, our lead protagonist recognises, more fully than any Jane Austen character, the difficulties of trying to marry for love in this era. She compares and contrasts the inequality of the sexes and classes with the inequality of between the races.

The film has some interesting points to make, but it also feels inauthentic. That our protagonist is caught up in the same honour-based culture with the same standards of what is 'fitting' and what is not, makes perfect sense. People in this era were clambering for social status and so it's only to be expected that she would insist on her status as a lady in aristocratic society and would feel ashamed of any social differences.

But for the movie to make points about the structure of the society as a whole, Belle must speak from a more modern standpoint. This probably happens in period dramas all the time, but the popularity of the Austen adaptations like the "Pride and Prejudice" tv series with Colin Firth or the movies of "Sense and Sensibility" and "Emma" we can tell rather more quickly that something is off.

There are some great moments in Belle but I wasn't really drawn into the character drama as much as I'd have liked. The film has to perform an awkward balancing act between the moral senses of the audience and of the time period being represented and in the meanwhile there's not really the sense of fun we'd expect from Austen-style adaptations. Probably because this is critiquing the entire society rather than particular sorts of people within that society. So while Austen and other authors like her poke fun at certain types of characters, this tries to respect almost everyone and seeks to understand the social structure and the way it limits and shapes the people within it.

But for all my misgivings, I enjoyed Belle a lot and found the premise very engaging. Tom Wilkinson in particular brings his A game as the old fashioned judge who is a father figure for Belle.

B+

(Above: The painting which inspired the movie)

I'm a big sci-fi fan, so when I heard that there was an unsung time travel movie I ought to check out, I rushed it onto my rental list right away.

Unfortunately the time travel scenario feels incredibly contrived. Jim Belushi plays an unstable bigoted redneck. The protagonist happens to escape into a facility where a scientist is working on time travel, which seems way too convenient. Still, the real problem is the repeated scenario isn't interesting.

To make matters worse, the ending is a waste of time. The scientist is told that he needs to destroy the time machine, yet I have no idea why. Apparently one low-life psycho reliving the same 20 minutes over and over is some kind of massive threat. I don't buy it.

This had potential and it was really annoying as it gradually dawned on me that it wouldn't ever meet that potential. What's more, Retroactive was released a few years after Groundhog Day and by comparison to that very clearly 90s film, Retroactive is utterly horribly dated as well as unoriginal.

Don't get me wrong. This isn't unwatchable. The performances are pretty good and there's violence and a few explosions thrown in. I can see why some people might quite enjoy this. I just found the ending left me cold.

C-