Posts Tagged ‘Jack O’Connell’

Back to Black

Director: Sam Taylor-Johnson

Cast: Marisa Abela, Jack O’Connell, Eddie Marsan, Lesley Manville, Bronson Webb, Sam Buchanan

Running time: 2 hours and 2 minutes

Film Rating: 8 out of 10

UIP Universal release – Film Preview – Suncoast – Thank to UIP Pictures for the invite to the Preview.

Contemporary biopics are difficult to pull off successfully. Often the artist or pop star is still fresh in the collective cultural memory and the British jazz and soul singer Amy Winehouse is no exception.

Director Sam Taylor-Johnson (Fifty Shades of Grey) does a sterling job of creating a contemporary cinematic biopic of Amy Winehouse, the legendary and hugely talented singer who become a music sensation with such songs as Rehab, Back to Black and Love is a losing Game in her latest film Back to Black starring British actress Marisa Abela in the title role opposite a superb Jack O’Connell (Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Ferrari, Unbroken) as Amy’s low life drug addict boyfriend Blake who proves to be the pop singer’s downfall.

Set almost entirely in North London, Back to Black has a great supporting cast including Oscar nominee Lesley Manville (The Phantom Thread) as her grandmother Cynthia and Eddie Marsan (Wrath of Man, The Gentleman) as her devoting father Mitch Winehouse.

As Amy’s career takes off thanks to her music manager Nick Shymansky played by Sam Buchanan, the singer’s talent is offset by her unbridled alcoholism and her refusal to play by the rules of traditional music marketing, which could have made her into a superstar.

At the heart of Back to Black, in which director Sam Taylor-Johnson emphasizes is the immense talent that Amy Winehouse had, whose voice was unbelievable and her soulful husky songs would lead her to win a Grammy Award in 2008 for Best Female Pop Vocal performance.

Both Marisa Abela and Jack O’Connell are brilliant as the tortured toxic couple Amy and Blake whose crazy drug fuelled romance and brief marriage echoed such similar tragic partnerships as Nirvana’s lead singer Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love and Sex Pistols anarchist frontman Sid Vicious and his girlfriend Nancy Spungen.

Back to Black could have been edited in parts, yet the film is saved by Amy Winehouse’s unforgettable music which makes Back to Black worth seeing especially if you are a big fan. Amy’s famous response when she won the Grammy is “This is for Camden Town!”

Unfortunately Amy Winehouse joined the 27 club like Kurt Cobain but her music is what endures and lives on like a flash of brilliance amid the murky years of the early 2000’s in which the director paints London as a dreary city filled with smoky pubs and hardworking North Londoners amidst a British music scene which was recovering from the stupendous Spice Girls hype of the late 1990’s.

As musical biopics go this film is worth watching as a tale about a musical genius whose talent was decimated by her unbridled addiction. The best line in Back to Black is when the police arrest a stark naked Blake, Amy’s husband and asks if there are any drugs in the house? Blake replies “No, we have taken them all.”

Back to Black gets a solid rating of 8 out of 10 and is a commendable musical film from Focus Features who generally never deliver poor quality. Highly recommended viewing.

Ferrari

Director: Michael Mann

Cast: Adam Driver, Penelope Cruz, Shailene Woodley, Sarah Gadon, Patrick Dempsey, Jack O’Connell, Agnese Brighitini, Leonardo Caimi, Gabriel Leone

Running Time: 2 hours and 10 minutes

Film Rating: 8 out of 10

Film Editor Pietro Scalia deserves an Oscar nomination for Best Editing for director Michael Mann’s latest biopic about the founder of luxury car brand Ferrari, Enzo Ferrari superbly played with complete brutal dexterity by Oscar nominee Adam Driver (Marriage Story, BlackKklansman) who deserves to be nominated for Best Actor for Ferrari.

Counterbalancing Enzo Ferrari’s sleek business operation of manufacturing sports cars and racing cars is Enzo’s wife Laura Ferrari expertly played with the right degree of bitterness and scorn by Oscar winner Penelope Cruz (Vicky Cristina Barcelona). The scenes between Enzo and Laura are electrifying and required two really talented actors to make this complex marriage which was more like a business arrangement believable and toxic.

Enzo Ferrari has a mistress and a child from another woman, Lina Landi played by Shailene Woodley (The Descendants), whose insistence that Enzo recognizes the paternity of the little boy is just one of the problems that skilled tough business man Enzo has to figure out as he needs his international drivers to win the formidable and highly dangerous Italian race Mille Miglia which occurred with relentless loss of life.

American director Michael Mann kept a low profile in the 2010’s after huge critically acclaimed successes with Collateral, Public Enemies and Miami Vice. So its great news that Michael Mann has returned to the director’s chair with Ferrari a stylish, brutal and atmospheric film about the founder of Ferrari capturing in minute detail the Italian society of 1957 filled with machismo, racing drivers that would die like flies and most of all the glamour that Italian car brands like Ferrari and Maserati brought back to Italy after the gloom of the post War years of the late 1940’s which gave birth to the film movement Italian Neo-realism.

In actual fact Michael Mann incorporates some of those Neo-realist film techniques into Ferrari particularly Enzo’s scenes with the fickle but pushy Italian press and those scenes in the Barber shop and on the Italian street.

Ferrari’s international cast includes Patrick Dempsey as racing car driver Piero Taruffi, British actor Jack O’Connell as racing car driver Peter Collins along with Italian stars Gabriel Leone as Alfonso de Portago and Leonardo Caimi as Brusoni.

The emotional crux of Ferrari is the difficult and complex relationship between Enzo and his volatile wife Laura, beautifully played out on screen by Driver and Cruz. Laura held all the financial power for Ferrari while Enzo dreamed big but needed to take the luxury car manufacturing company to a new international market with an urgent cash injection.

From the devastating car crashes to the glamour around fast cars and luxury, Ferrari is a fascinating and authentic tale of an ambitious, hardnosed businessman that would not be known outside the Italian world.

Enzo Ferrari created those red sleek sports cars which are now synonymous with speed, luxury and affluence. As a film, Ferrari plays on that primal fascination that men have with competitive driving often at the cost of looking after their own families, a deadly passion which has to be sought to protect their egos, reputation and virility.

Ferrari is a highly recommended biopic, beautifully directed by Michael Mann and expertly acted by the two main leads with sumptuous cinematography and cutting edge editing.

Michael Mann returns to form in Ferrari which gets a film rating of 8 out of 10 and is definitely worth seeing for those that enjoyed such excellent films as Ford v Ferrari and All the Money in the World.

Read more about Enzo Ferrari here – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enzo_Ferrari

Lady Chatterley’s Lover

Director: Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre

Cast: Emma Corrin, Jack O’Donnell, Matthew Duckett, Joely Richardson, Faye Marsay, Ella Hunt

Running Time: 2 hours and 6 minutes

Please note this film is only available on Netflix

When celebrated British novelist D. H. Lawrence first published his controversial novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover in 1928, almost 100 years ago, it was immediately banned for indecency and immorality. The novel was only unbanned in 1960.

This new steamy film adaptation of the infamous novel is directed by French director Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre and stars The Crown actress Emma Corrin as Lady Chatterley and Jack O’Connell (Unbroken, Tulip Fever) as the rough and toned gamekeeper Oliver Mellors, a typical Derbyshire working class man.

Set in England between the World Wars, Lady Chatterley’s Lover tells the story of a young woman who marries into Landed gentry her husband Clifford Chatterley wonderfully played by Matthew Duckett. After the First World War, Lord Chatterley returns to his country estate, wealthy but crippled, left a paraplegic from being severely injured in the war. Obviously his injuries include him not being able to produce an heir to his estate, which is always vital for the continuance of the estate.

As this young and wealthy couple navigate their new situation, Clifford basically gives Connie permission to have an affair with another man, although he did not expect her to fall so passionately in love with the groundsman Mellors played with a brutish physicality by O’Connell who delivers his best onscreen work yet.

From the way the affair begins, The Mustang director Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre already hints to the audience that this is going to be steamy and explicit, as the sexually frustrated Lady Chatterley expertly played by Emma Corrin first glimpses Mellors stark naked in an outdoor shower. Voyeurism and desire make for an enticing mix.

Lady Chatterley breaks all the social laws that govern strict separation between the classes in 1920’s Britain, particularly between the Landed gentry and the working class and finds an unlikely ally in Clifford Chatterley’s carer Mrs Bolton superbly played by Joely Richardson (The Patriot, Event Horizon, Red Sparrow).

As Clifford Chatterley becomes increasingly frustrated, his wife Lady Chatterley becomes increasingly fulfilled as she embarks on a passionate affair with Mellors often having trysts in the open or in his shed, close to where the other estate workers live. Naturally gossip amongst the servants ensue and soon Clifford is humiliated while Lady Chatterley departs for Venice realizing that she has to make a critical choice.

What makes Lady Chatterley’s Lover so significant is that as a romantic story it charts the sexual awakening of a young woman in which she makes the pivotal decisions, whether to stay with her husband or leave, whether to forgo her reputation and find independent love or to conform in a vicious upper class social world in which married woman have little room for manoeuvre.

Lady Chatterley’s Lover is beautifully filmed and extremely well-acted and brilliantly charts a forbidden love affair of a woman that would become the Gamekeeper’s Girl. Sexually explicit and gloriously elegant, Lady Chatterley’s Lover gets a film rating of 8 out of 10 and is highly recommended viewing.

Tulip Fever

Director: Justin Chadwick

Cast: Alicia Vikander, Christoph Waltz, Dane DeHaan, Cara Delevingne, Judi Dench, Jack O’Connell, Kevin McKidd, Holliday Grainger, Tom Hollander, Zach Galifianakis, Joanna Scanlan, David Harewood, Sebastian Armesto, Matthew Morrison, Douglas Hodge

British director Justin Chadwick (The Other Boleyn Girl, Mandela: The Long Walk to Freedom, The First Grader) tackles a cinematic version of Deborah Moggarch’s novel Tulip Fever with the literary assistance of Anna Karenina screenwriter Tom Stoppard.

Assembling an international cast including Oscar winner Christoph Waltz (Django Unchained) and fellow Oscar winner Alicia Vikander (The Danish Girl), Tulip Fever is set in Amsterdam in 1623 at the height of the Tulip trade which flourished in the Netherlands and was in essence the first stock market which blossomed illicitly behind Tavern doors and co-opted by solicitous nuns who grew the beautiful flowers in sacred abbeys away from the hustle of Dutch city life.

With sumptuous costumes by Michael O’Connor and suitably dark production design by Simon Elliott, Tulip Fever focuses on the young orphan Sophia Sandvoort superbly played by Vikander who is forced to marry the wealthy yet childless Burgermeester (local mayor) Cornelious Sandvoort played by Waltz.

Like all Dutch noblemen, Sandvoort commissions a young and impoverished painter to paint the couple’s portrait, a 17^th century trend which made Rembrandt famous. In steps the exuberant and excitable Jan van Loos played by Dane DeHaan (Valerian, Kill Your Darlings).

Soon van Loos falls for the ravishing Sophia and deception is conceived mainly for her to escape from her pompous husband who really wants to impregnate her with his preferably male heir.

In a parallel narrative, Sophia’s devoted maid, Maria played by British actress Holliday Grainger (Jane Eyre, The Finest Hours, Cinderella) has fallen for the charming if not smelly fishmonger Willem Bok played by Jack O’Connell (Unbroken) who aspire to get married and have six children together.

In a bizarre twist both Bok and van Loos, two young men desperately trying to increase their liquidity embark on making money on the booming tulip trade, in which the precious bulbs fluctuated in price depending on their rarity and natural beauty of the elusive flower.

Oscar winner Judi Dench (Shakespeare in Love) plays the Abbess who has to sternly guide the young men in the flourishing yet turbulent tulip trade while the Netherlands was expanding its colonial empire to the Dutch East Indies and South Africa.

Despite the slightly convoluted plot and frenetic story line, Tulip Fever is an enjoyable and raunchy period drama held together by amazing performances by the four main leads which serves as a Dutch version of Twelfth Night.

Audiences that enjoyed Girl with a Pearl Earring and Shakespeare in Love, will undoubtedly love Tulip Fever, which provides a fascinating cinematic perspective on the brief but flourishing Tulip trade which made the Netherlands one of the riches countries in Europe especially in the 17^th century, establishing their own national stability and making them the money lenders of Europe.

With all the deceit, obsession and money trading, Tulip Fever is a riotous period drama and gets a film rating of 7 out of 10.

Tulip Fever is recommended viewing as a historical drama with a uniquely Dutch twist.

Money Monster

Director: Jodie Foster

Cast: Julia Roberts, George Clooney, Jack O’Connell, Dominic West, Caitriona Balfe, Giancarlo Esposito, Christopher Denham

Young British actor Jack O’Connell certainly seems to be handpicked by Oscar winner female actresses turned directors to star in their films. First it was O’Connell’s brilliant portrayal of Olympic athlete Louis Zamperini turned prisoner of war in the World War two epic Unbroken directed by Angelina Jolie and now he is cast as the disgruntled young investor Kyle Budwell in Jodie Foster’s live action hostage drama, Money Monster set on Wall Street, New York city.

Echoing a similar vibe to the brilliant Spike Lee film, Inside Man, in which Jodie Foster starred, Money Monster is a gripping tale of TV show which is taken hostage by the unhinged yet scared Budwell, who holds the show’s vain TV host Lee Gates hostage. Gates is wonderfully played by Oscar winner George Clooney (Syriana) who literally has to put his life in the hands of the Money Monster show producer Patty Fenn, a sharp and sassy performance by Oscar winner Julia Roberts.

The fact that Money Monster has Julia Roberts and George Clooney as the two main leads is testament to the film’s star power yet rising star Jack O’Connell holds his own as the desperate and slightly idiotic Budwell who has literally bitten off more than he can chew, when he creates a live hostage drama so that the show, Money Monster can ascertain the real truth behind an investment company Ibis mysteriously losing $800 million which is initially blamed on a glitch due to a trading algorithm.

As Money Monster develops, it soon emerges, that the slimy CEO of the murky multi-national Ibis, Walt Camby wonderfully played by Dominic West, last seen in the brilliant series The Affair, has done some dodgy stock manipulation as well as orchestrating some labour unrest at a platinum mine in South Africa. No surprise there.

Money Monster is a taut, watchable thriller and whilst the plot is at times contrived, it is a fascinating indictment on the power of broadcast media especially in the public’s hunger to witness a dramatic spectacle unfold, made more pertinent as the conflict being televised relates to the incomprehensible world of international high finance, where a chosen few are entrusted with the financial futures of millions of shareholders in these precarious economic times.

As a director Jodie Foster highlights the immediacy of Live Television while skilfully blending in the less than glamorous, but flawed characters behind the scenes which generate such flashy media content. Clooney and Roberts are particularly well cast as TV host and producer while O’Connell once again demonstrates that his star is on the rise.

Money Monster is highly recommended viewing, extremely watchable, unpredictable and very entertaining.

THE  68th BAFTA AWARDS /

THE BRITISH ACADEMY FILM AWARDS

Took place on Sunday 8th February 2015 in London

BAFTA WINNERS IN THE FILM CATEGORY:

Best Film: Boyhood

Best Director: Richard Linklater – Boyhood

Best Actor: Eddie Redmayne – The Theory of Everything 

Best Actress: Julianne Moore – Still Alice

Best Supporting Actor: J. K. Simmons – Whiplash

Best Supporting Actress: Patricia Arquette – Boyhood

Rising Star Award: Jack O’Connell

Best British Film: The Theory of Everything directed by James Marsh

Best Original Screenplay: Wes Anderson & Hugo Guinness – The Grand Budapest Hotel

Best Adapted Screenplay: Anthony McCarten – The Theory of Everything

Best Costume Design: The Grand Budapest Hotel – Milena Canonero

Best Foreign Language Film: Ida – Pawel Pawlikowski (Poland)

Source: 68th BAFTA Awards

300: Rise of an Empire

Director: Noam Murro

Starring: Eva Green, Sullivan Stapleton, Rodrigo Santoro, Lena Headey, Callan Mulvey, Jack O’Connell, David Wenham

300: Rise of an Empire lacks the visual punch of the original 300 directed by Zach Snyder which made himself and its star Gerard Butler enormously famous. In this follow up sequel, 300 Rise of an Empire looks at the fortunes of the God King Xerxes, a fabulously gold clad Rodrigo Santoro as he attempts to invade the Greek Isles and its major city states. It shows the ruthless of the invading Persians in nautical battles which took place almost simultaneously to the battle of Thermopylae when 300 Spartans saved Greece by becoming martyrs. In 300: Rise of an Empire, audiences can expect a necrophiliac lustful and sexy naval commander Artemisia wonderfully overplayed by Eva Green (The Dreamers, Casino Royale) getting off on decapitations and drowning of her own sailors as she viciously commands the Persian fleet ordering them to defeat the Greek ships at all costs. The Greeks in this case are represented by muscle bound Themistocles who just happened to be the daring soldier that killed Xerxes father King Darius with a fateful arrow that changed the course of these two ancient civilizations.

Lena Headey (now famous in the HBO Series Game of Thrones) reprises her role as Queen Gorgo of the Spartans who not only narrates the entire ancient diatribe but also features as a plot device for avenging the death of Leonidas in 300 against the invading Persians. What makes 300: Rise of an Empire worth watching is brutal sex scene bordering on sadomasochism between Artemisa and Themistocles on board a Persian vessel reminding audiences of the tangible psychological link between sex and death.

Unfortunately the blood visuals and excessive gore featured in 3D in this sequel detracts stylistically from what could have been a really fascinating narrative about ancient civilizations battling it out on turbulent Mediterranean seas. Australian actor Sullivan Stapleton could not rival Gerard Butler in screen presence with the only redeeming feature being the audacious Eva Green making the most of her bloodthirsty and vengeful role as the kinky and sadistic Artemisia, a tragic Greek woman who has turned on her own nation after her family was brutally slaughtered.

Ancient history buffs will enjoy 300: Rise of an Empire but this is an unworthy sequel to the fabulously dazzling and original film and will land up being regarded as mere popcorn viewing. 300 Rise of an Empire is fun, sexy and slightly disturbing but not fantastic and definitely not worth it in 3D especially as Israeli director Noam Murro chose gore and bloodlust over historical accuracy. Callan Mulvey and Jack O’Connell also star as father and son team Scyllias and Calisto valiantly fighting the Persians and providing a less than emotional subplot to the real Aegean drama of the nautical battle between Persians and Ancient Greeks.