Review: The Descendants

Alexander Payne's latest is a funny and moving masterpiece

Director: Alexander Payne

Screenwriter: Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon, Jim Rash, based on the novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings

Cast: George Clooney (Matt King), Shailene Woodley (Alex King), Amara Miller (Scottie King), Nick Krause (Sid), Beau Bridges (Cousin Hugh) and Robert Forster (Scott Thorson)

Plot: A father's life is thrown into turmoil when his wife is plunged into a coma and he has to take care of his children, right at the point that he has to make a major financial decision. On top of this, he discovers that his wife has been having an affair, and resolves to go and find the man she was sleeping with to tell him about her condition.

Running Time: 114m 54s

Certificate: 15 - Contains Strong Language

Alexander Payne is the master of the mid-life crisis. Whether it was Matthew Broderick’s disillusioned high school teacher in Election, or Jack Nicholson’s bewildered widower in About Schmidt, or Paul Giamatti’s lonely wine-snob in Sideways, Payne focuses on middle-aged men who still haven’t worked out love, life and, quite often, death.

In The Descendants, he is on familiar territory once again. George Clooney plays Matt King, a real estate lawyer, whose wife has been plunged into a coma after a boating accident, right at the point that he, the sole remaining trustee of thousands of acres of virgin Hawaiian land, has to decide who he’s going to sell it to before the trust dissolves. Stale love and wrangling about property: it’s what I’m expecting from my fifties.

Review: Coriolanus

Fiennes' solid Shakespearean directorial debut

Director: Ralph Fiennes

Screenwriter: John Logan, based on the play by William Shakespeare

Cast: Ralph Fiennes (Caius Martius Coriolanus), Vanessa Redgrave (Volumnia), Gerard Butler (Tullus Aufidius), Brian Cox (Menenius) and Jessica Chastain (Virgilia)

Plot: Having triumphed in war against Tullus Aufidius, Caius Martius is entitled Coriolanus and nominated to become Consul of Rome, a city which is starving. His dislike for the people and the cunning of other politicians drives him into exile, where he unites with Aufidius.

Running Time: 122m 53s

Certificate: 15 – Contains strong bloody violence

You have to applaud Ralph Fiennes’ apparent fearlessness in taking on his first outing as a film director. Not only has he taken on the difficult job of directing himself in the title role, but he has chosen one of Shakespeare’s most notoriously troublesome plays.

Review: Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights reaches new lows

Director: Andrea Arnold

Screenwriter: Andrea Arnold, Olivia Hetreed, based on the novel by Emily Brontë

Cast: Kaya Scodelario, James Howson, Shannon Beer, Solomon Glave and Oliver Milburn

New adaptation of Emily Brontë’s classic novel about frustrated love. When Heathcliffe (Solomon Glave/James Howson) is adopted by the Earnshaw family, he falls into a troubled romance between himself and his foster sister, Cathy (Kaya Scodelario/Shannon Beer).

Running Time: 128m 46s

Certificate: 15 - Contains strong language, once very strong, racist terms & animal killings

One wonders whether great stories can be adapted too much; if there is a point where the tale is so deeply ingrained in the public consciousness that it simply cannot survive another retelling. On the other hand, perhaps a story can survive endless tellings and retellings, or that a mark of a truly great narrative is that it does so.

Whatever one’s thoughts on those questions, Andrea Arnold’s adaptation of Wuthering Heights is a clear attempt to inject new life into the classic Emily Brontë story. More overt racial tensions have been thrown into the storyline with a black Heathcliffe (though given recent events, it may have been more relevant to keep him as a gypsy), and there is a greater emphasis on violence and brutality to both humans and animals than in many other versions of this work. Unfortunately, none of this serves to make a compelling watch.

Review: Tyrannosaur

Considine's debut serves up a gruelling watch but a worthwhile one

Director & Screenwriter: Paddy Considine

Cast: Peter Mullan, Olivia Colman & Eddie Marsan

A widower who is violent, unemployed and running out of money and a Christian woman who is suffering from terrible abuse from her husband form an unlikely friendship.

Running Time: 92m 21s

Certificate: 18 - Contains very strong language and a scene of sexual violence

Paddy Considine is one of those ever-reliable performers. With a wide array of parts in films ranging from the black revenge thriller, Dead Man’s Shoes, to the Hollywood blockbuster, The Bourne Ultimatum, to the Pegg and Frost police comedy, Hot Fuzz, Considine has turned his hand to every kind of role and has always had found success. Now, he has started to show us that he is equally unflappable as a director.

Juror's Film Festival: Vera Drake (d. Mike Leigh, 2004)

Vera Drake is an absolute masterpiece. It may seem an unappealing prospect to many, but the rewards it gives its audience are immense. This is a drama which is affecting, superbly understated and perfectly delivered in every way.

Set in 1950, the film focuses on an absolutely lovely woman, the eponymous Vera Drake, who is a devoted wife and mother and is always looking out for people around the community. She also “helps young girls out” by performing backstreet abortions, unbeknownst to her family and friends. She believes that it is the right thing to do, but eventually the law catches up with her.

TV Review: The Hour

Ahead of the second episode of The Hour, the series is turning into a missed opportunity

The first episode of The Hour was something of an oddity. At times, it had a really good feel about it. There was a clear story about the evolution of television news and about gender politics in the 1950s which was very interesting, beautifully made and very well-acted.