What’s new in cinemas this week
Hello and welcome to this week’s film review wrap of the big movies landing in cinemas this week.
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Day-Lewis is a figure on a larger scale than his co-stars in this drama
Anemone ★★½
M 126 minutes. In cinemas from Thursday
What the poet Robert Graves said about Shakespeare applies to Daniel Day-Lewis as an actor: he really is very good, in spite of all the people who say he is very good. Any given Day-Lewis performance tends to be radically unlike anything we could have anticipated, certainly unlike any stock notion of “great acting”.
Directed by Day-Lewis’ son Ronan Day-Lewis, Anemone is another lateral move, surprising in several ways. The first surprise is that it exists at all, since the better part of a decade ago Day-Lewis senior gave the impression he was retiring from acting completely (he now says this was blown out of proportion).
The second surprise is that father and son wrote the screenplay together, although neither has much experience in this department. Indeed, the elder Day-Lewis has no previous credits at all behind the camera – and while Ronan Day-Lewis has made music videos and short films, he’s mainly known as a painter and multimedia artist.
Less surprisingly, the result is awkward, even amateurish in many ways, though not without moments of intensity. While the story appears to be pure fiction, family is a central theme: Day-Lewis senior stars as Ray, a silver-haired hermit with a glint in his eye who’s lived alone for decades in a shack in the woods of northern England, where he’s sought out by his more subdued brother Jem (Sean Bean).
Gradually their shared backstory emerges, mostly through monologues by Ray, who isn’t thrilled to see his brother but seems to hope talking will relieve some of his guilt. We learn that both brothers are ex-soldiers who were involved in the Troubles in Northern Ireland in the 1980s.
We also learn that Ray abandoned his wife Nessa (Samantha Morton, persuasive as always) just before the birth of their son Brian (Samuel Bottomley), and that Jem subsequently moved in with Nessa, raising Brian as his own.
Not much happens in the present tense of Anemone, which often resembles a vastly over-extended student short – especially in its studied visual flourishes, such as a recurring drone shot of trees swaying in the wind, as if we were looking down at a turbulent green ocean.
Some more openly surreal touches don’t work at all, despite the polish supplied by cinematographer Ben Fordesman (Love Lies Bleeding). Likewise, the writing often seems aimed more at immediate shock value than anything else, as in a grotesque story told by Ray about his supposed revenge on a priest who abused him as a boy.
What does work is the acting, although the cast aren’t all operating in the same register. Where Bean and Morton are life-size, Day-Lewis as Ray is a figure on a larger scale: taunting, even monstrous, racked by visible pain, yet in between his bursts of anger weirdly seductive.
From the moment Jem enters his long-lost brother’s domain, it’s clear that nothing about Ray can be taken at face value. Still, he’s an object of constant fascination, precisely because there’s no guessing what he might say or do next.
Passion and pain on a suburban scale
Reminders of Him ★★★
M 114 minutes. In cinemas Thursday
Colleen Hoover strikes again. Hollywood is ardently embracing the work of Hoover, the American novelist who made her breakthrough using social media and was on The New York Times bestseller list before the conventional publishing houses realised how far she had come with her canny blend of romance and family discord.
This is the third Hoover adaptation to make it to the screen in 18 months.
It deals with grief, guilt, anger and redemption – Hoover has never shied away from the grandest of passions and pains – but she has a knack for stripping them down to suburban dimensions. It Ends With Us – the first of the adaptations and so far, the only one to become a box-office hit – was different.
A soft-focus study of high-end living, it blunted its message about the evils of domestic abuse with the glossiness of its delivery, but Reminders of Him, is more in touch with reality, taking us to the outer suburbs of Laramie, Wyoming, where much of the action takes place in a dilapidated apartment block and a local bar.
AP
Kenna Rowan (Maika Monroe) has just returned after seven years in prison on charges involving the car accident that killed her fiancé, Scotty. She’s hoping to make peace with his parents, who blame her for the crash. And she desperately wants to see the baby born to her while she was serving her sentence. Scotty was the father and his parents have been awarded custody.
Hoover co-wrote the script, which unfolds at a pace designed to make the most of every plot point. It also preserves the interior monologue that formed part of the novel’s narration by giving Kenna a hefty journal that she totes around in a backpack, guarding it so zealously it might well be a detachable body part.
She discovers the bar on her first night, dropping in against her better judgment because it’s on the site of what used to be her favourite bookshop, and as soon as she and the bar’s sexy manager, Ledger (Tyriq Withers), make eye contact it’s clear romance is in the air.
Next come the obstacles – methodically lined up in Hoover’s customary manner, to delay the inevitable happy ending. And the first one is seemingly insurmountable. It’s only when Kenna hears Ledger’s name that she identifies him as her dead fiance’s best friend. They did not meet when she and Scotty were together because Ledger was away from home, pursuing his career as a professional footballer.
Now he’s back, living across the street from Scotty’s parents, Grace (Lauren Graham) and Patrick (Bradley Whitford), and performing the role of a surrogate father to Kenna’s young daughter, Diem (Zoe Kosovic). And when he discovers who Kenna is, he does everything he can to stop her seeing Diem and upsetting her tranquil existence.
The last Hoover adaptation, Regretting You, was a flop because it failed to distil Hoover’s convoluted plot into an emotional cocktail potent enough to justify its weepy finish. This one, which is also out to inspire tears, has a better chance.
When first introduced, Kenna is less than engaging. She has a petulant, driven air that doesn’t invite empathy but as the odds against her increase and she starts forming friendships with her neighbours and workmates, some of whom are also down on their luck, Monroe’s performance becomes more relaxed and sympathetic.
Even so, the clichés are abundant and in the end, the film offers little to entice you to leave streaming behind for a night at the cinema.
What’s new in cinemas this week
Hello and welcome to this week’s film review wrap of the big movies landing in cinemas this week.
If you want to stay in touch with all the latest movie news from across the globe, as well as reviews, please be sure to sign up to our newsletter.
Must-see movies, interviews and all the latest from the world of film delivered to your inbox.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: www.smh.com.au
