10 Prettiest Ladies in a 2009 Film

My archives of eye candy lists by year are here, if you want to inspect my taste in guys and gals holistically!

10. Léa Seydoux, Inglourious Basterds 

09. Anna Kendrick, Up in the Air

10 Most Attractive Ladies in a 2010 Film

The prettiest ladies in a 2011 film list, here. As ever, the list is constrained to only movies I've watched.

10. Ellen Page, Inception

I think Christopher Nolan is partial to actors and actresses with brown hair, but I'm not sure... Incidentally, I think 'Ariadne', Page's character, is the only well-written female in a Chris Nolan film. (This is partly why Dunkirk was so good; there were no women in it for him to invent just to kill off).

My BBFC game (level 2).

Simon won the first level, congrats geezer!

Now I've made it a bit more taxing. As with the previous round, don't cheat and go on the BBFC website, that sucks the fun out of it. :P But by all means google the plot synopsis as that could help (altho some search engines show you the rating when you do that, hmmm).

My 10 Favourite Performances of 2014.

I realised after I posted my favourite performances of 2015 list that I've been severely lax at doing these of recent years. So, I'm making up for lost time and completing the backlog now!

10. Jessica Chastain, A Most Violent Year

It's a mark of a versatile actress who can tackle roles from ditzy housewife, a single-minded C.I.A. agent, and a daughter nursing abandonment issues at father gone into space. Jessica does her Juilliard credentials proud in A Most Violent Year as the daughter of a gangster who, whilst appearing placid and law-abiding, isn't afraid to bare her teeth when her family is threatened. Her borderline elegant/common wardrobe, brassy Brooklyn accent and Lady Macbeth-style tete a tete's with husband Oscar Isaac are just some of the signals that Anna Morales is not a woman to be crossed. It's miles away from her performance as an altogether more serene matriarch in Terrence Malick's borefest, but Ms. Chastain shows in A Most Violent Year that she's yet to give a bad performance.

09. Simon Bird, The Inbetweeners 2 

The four leads are all comedy gold as their hapless characters take on Australia, but Bird gets extra kudos because he walked the line between believable and pathetic most convincingly. Whilst I do find Jay and Neil absolutely hilarious, and to some extent, recognise their traits in people, they are essentially caricatures. Will's brand of nerdy-misfit who wants to transcend the social box he's been shoehorned into is something I can sympathise with all too well, and it's the mark of an astute performer that they can seize such a loserish role and slowly transform him into something of a winner in his own way. Bird's line-readings in the scene where he tries to ingratiate himself with a bunch of insufferable Gap Year poshos is both embarrassing and relatable. 

Also, the shit-on-his-face scene. Ahahahahaha.

08.  Keira Knightley, The Imitation Game

As intelligent crossword solver Joan Clarke, Keira Knightley plays Alan Turing's trump card, confidant, and potential love interest. Joan's love for Alan Turing is unrequited on account of Turing's sexuality, and Knightley's poignant performance renders The Imitation Game an emotional watch as well as a cerebral one.

We view Alan, otherwise so aloof and focused, through her gaze as more than  a puzzle-solving machine (it's clear pretty early on that she has an intellectual crush on Alan) and it is really in the employment of Keira as a foil that Alan becomes a full-bodied person, rather than Cumberbatch's turn. The scene in which Cumberbatch's Turing breaks off their engagement and comes out to her, but she says she wants to marry him anyway, is really very moving indeed; I tore up when she said, 'We love each other in our own way'.

I used to be a Keira Knightley basher, deeming her more of a looker than an actor. With my re-assessment of her spirited, charming performance as Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice, as well as that excellent stylised turn in Anna Karenina and now this, oh, how I am eating my words. 

07. Bae Doona, A Girl at My Door 

This underrated South Korean gem has to take the prize for 'Softest 18 rated movie Emma has seen'. It was rated 18 for one scene, which, without giving too much away, really wasn't that traumatic at all, especially given what was shown in the 15-rated and altogether more gritty Precious.

Aaaaaanyway, BBFC foibles aside, Bae Doona's turn as hard-drinking police officer Young-Nam who rescues abused schoolgirl Do-Hee from bullying schoolmates, and later, an alcoholic stepfather who treats her like a punchbag when he's had a few, is a fantastic blend of empathy, girl power, and, as Do-Hee grows attached to the police officer, frustration. The rapport Doona has with Kim Sae-ron is sweet and we are never in doubt that the policewoman's intentions with the girl are completely innocent, even when the disgruntled stepfather and backwards townspeople try to spin her sexuality and caring for the girl as dirty.  Doona's performance illustrates the sad fact of life that when one tries to be a good person, others will try to spin it into something seedy. But Doona instils her character with real backbone. Not for nothing is she a policewoman; she won't take unfounded rumours lying down.

As a sidenote, due to the limited budget of the film, the leads Bae Doona and Kim Sae-ron waived their acting fees. I think that's really commendable, and they did well; despite a few soapy elements, A Girl at My Door was an unexpectedly strong movie.

06. Marion Cotillard, Two Days, One Night

Marion Cotillard's raw depiction of a unstable woman who has the humiliating task of knocking on her co-workers' doors, begging them to forgo their bonuses so se can keep her job, makes for painful watching at times. But the protagonists' honesty and intensity is so convincing, it draws you in like a magnet. 

Sandra's journey through visiting her neighbours who receive her request with yeses, nos, or 'get the f_ck outs' has her yo-yoing between despair, to hope, back down to wanting to give up, before deliverance is dangled tantalisingly in front of her. It's a difficult voyage at the best of times, but factor in Sandra has recently had a depressive turn, and things seem 100 times more difficult. 

When the chips are down, the audience could completely sympathise with Sandra for sacking it all off. But Cotillard knows her character deserves better than that, and the determination and sheer force of will (ironically, force of  will was something the character she played in The Dark Knight Rises exhibited too) drive her to the next co-workers' house. Cotillard is superb; I think Two Days, One Night is her best performance to date.

05. J.K. Simmons, Whiplash 

Make no mistake about it, Whiplash is my favourite film of 2014. I bloody loved it. On the whole, I enjoy films about musicians suffering for the sake of their craft (Amadeus is in my top 10), and Whiplash is no exception to the rule. Andrew Neiman, played by Miles Teller, is a talented drummer, but who's skills need a bit of honing. In comes the terrifying Terrence Fletcher (Simmons), an instructor who takes no prisoners. He doesn't care if Neiman dies in the process of giving the perfect concert - he's giving that perfect concert.

The love/hate dynamic between Teller and Simmons is what makes Whiplash so great; their chemistry is electrifying. It helps that writer/director Damien Chazelle generously dishes the best lines to Simmons, but his caustic, curt deliveries of them are next-level. I certainly wouldn't want him as my instructor!

04. Jake Gyllenhaal, Nightcrawler

Just how was this masterwork of an acting turn ignored at the Oscars???? Jake Gyllenhaal's twitchy performance as petty criminal-cum-accidental-footage-filmer is my second favourite performance of his after Brokeback Mountain, though it's considerably less savoury a role. 

With an emaciated frame (presumably, Louis doesn't eat much because he can't afford to), he grafts his way into the world of filming crime scenes, but, unlike other news channel cameramen, isn't afraid to casually break a few laws to get the ideal shot. As he starts to gain clout due to the uniqueness of his work, he blackmails News Channel Chief Rene Russo into dating him and becomes yet more deplorable in his unorthodox methods of obtaining good shots.

Nightcrawler is a neo-noir with heavy satirical elements, so that, as much as you're repulsed by Bloom and his antics, Gyllenhaal imbues his character with an almost laughable sense of delusions of grandeur. In his mind, he's telling the truth when he brags 'I run a successful news business'.

03. Jonah Hill, 22 Jump Street

MY MAN JONAH, YOOOOOOO. Spoiler alert: I bloody love Jonah Hill and think he is a comedic genius. Exhibit A: The Wolf of Wall Street. Exhibit B: his self-parodying in This is the End. But most of all, most of all, the Jump Street franchise. His odd-couple pairing with Channing Tatum is sensational, and, other films may valiantly try to imitate their chemistry, but it remains one of a kind, the blueprint.

Particular acting highlights of 22 Jump Street include that unexpected moment of malaise when sexy college girl Maya who he's just bedded tells him she doesn't even know if she likes him when she's sober, to which Schmidt tries to hide how wounded he is, lying 'oh yeah, that doesn't hurt at all'. His  wondrous delivery of 'it's like a giant cube of Ice!!!' when he and Jenko visit their Chief's new digs is fantastically meta.

Then of course there's that unforgettable poetry freestyle, 'Cynthia! Cyn-thi-a! Jesus died for our sin-thi-as! Jesus cried, runaway bride. Julia Roberts! Julia Rob... hurts! Cynthia! Ooh, Cynthia. You're dead. You are dead. Bop boop beep bop bop boop bop. You're dead. That's for Cynthia... who's dead' not to mention his butting in on Ice Cube's swag when they take down the baddies. Cube says, 'We Jump Street. And we about to Jump in your ass', to which Hill coattails in with '.... right in the crack!'. It's so uncool, it's cool. My man Jonah.

02. Shailene Woodley, The Fault in Our Stars

I was surprised with just how much I loved cancer drama The Fault In Our Stars. I didn't care for the book that much, thinking it rather meandering and manipulative, and the protagonist Hazel Grace Lancaster a bit pretentious with the amount she kept droning on about that ONE book over and over.

But the film was a completely different kettle of fish. Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort were brilliant together, and rather than find their romance forced, which I did in the novel, I was completely sold. Woodley in particular was a revelation. Sporting very little makeup and a breathing tube attached to her face at all time, she's a far cry from the polished romantic leads I'm so used to watching, but infinitely more engaging. I loved her character's graduation from initially thinking Elgort's dreamboat a bit of a preening knob, before slowly letting her walls down around him, whilst all the while being precariously aware that time was running out for one of them.

And the pathos, oh god, the pathos. I bawled through The Fault in Our Stars like a baby. And it was because I cared so much for Hazel Grace, a character who I'd found irritating in the book. Every time she had a health scare, I sobbed. When she and Gus told each other how much they loved each other, I sobbed. Every time Hazel acted out at her parents for something slightly insensitive they said, I sobbed. Woodley's performance deserved so much more kudos; rather than escalating into histrionics, as is the convention in terminal illness weepies, she's nuanced, but still retains Hazel's playful, spunkier edge. I bought her romance with Elgort down to a T.

Towards the end of the film, I was sobbing every time Gus so much as looked at Hazel.

The Fault in Our Stars is a shining example of why romance will forever be my favourite genre. And Shailene Woodley was a perfect romantic heroine. 

01. Rosamund Pike, Gone Girl 

'I wasn't expecting that one!' said no-one ever. Given how every time I'm filled with murderous rage, I liken myself to Amy Elliot Dunne, and how I consider Gone Girl not just a film but a self-help manual, it's no surprise that I completely idolise Rosamund Pike for her role in bringing the most calculated villainess in movie history to life. But just because she played an awesome character doesn't mean I was bound to like her acting. Playing literary heroes of mine is a double-edged sword; sometimes I can judge you much more harshly if you're bad because I don't feel you've done my beloved character justice (e.g., Emma Watson as Hermione Granger).

Director David Fincher, who is no stranger to meticulously scouting for lead actors in his films until he's satisfied (he made Rooney Mara jump through hoops for the role of Lisbeth Salander, another fierce woman who gets revenge on her terms and her terms only), was swayed in Rosamund Pike's direction, on hearing she was an only child. Whilst that surely wasn't the only ingredient that swung things in her favour, I imagine having the pride and the burden of being an only child is something that Pike knows only too well, and was able to channel into her performance. Rosamund, like her cinematic self in Gone Girl who attended Ivy League Unis, also has a distinguished educational background, having read English at Oxford. As with my #9 choice in this list (Bird attended Cambridge), experiencing Oxbridge schooling certain hasn't done these actors any harm in taking potentially dislikable roles and making them unlikely anti-heroes.

Pike herself in an interview admitted she knew what a fantastic gift had been given to her. She said,  of Amy, 'it's every aspect of being a woman. You get to express the thing that's alluring, and the thing that's repellent. You get to create a facade and you get to strip it down'. 

And oh, how she does that. At the start of the film, the Amy we witness in her diary entries is sparky, intellectual, sassy and drop-dead gorgeous. It's no surprise that Ben Affleck's Nick should be drawn to her immediately, flirting with her at a mutual friends' party, and later heading back to her place for a bit of casual cunnilingus. As she recovers from a post-orgasm high, she tells him, 'I like you a lot, Nick Dunne'. Not long after their playful sparring, they are wed.

But then trouble kicks in. Both lose their jobs in the recession and are forced to re-root to Missouri to be with Nick's dying mother. Amy feels her husband pulling away, and he even begins raising his hand to her. Things escalate and she not only doubts her husband loves her, but that he hates her, that he wants her dead.

But does she? That's what we are told in Amy's diary entries, which jars with what Nick has to say, and when the Big Reveal

of David Fincher's delicious movie reveals something altogether different. And that's when Amy's Cool Girl Monologue comes in, one of my favourite speeches in movie history. Rosamund Pike's line-reading her is superb; the bile that Amy has nursing for years all spilling out into the mother of all movie speeches. The audience realise that they've had the rug pulled out from under them.

Pre-Gone Girl, Rosamund Pike had basically played pretty air-headed blondes (Pride and Prejudice, An Education). Admittedly, some of these airheads were hiding intelligence behind their glamorous veneer, such as in Made in Dagenham. But none had the bite of Amy Elliot Dunne, a Janus-like psychopath. Some critics had their qualms about a British actress with a track record of playing 'nice girls'  taking on such a complex, un-nice, role. But actually, playing airy society girls certainly helped Pike in her performance as 'Diary Amy', full of repartee and quick retorts, whilst not being so intelligent as to threaten Affleck's Nick's sense of manliness. 

But after the Big Reveal, when we see her true colours, Pike gets to unleash a side of herself she's rarely got to exhibit in movies. The Real Amy is far more terrifying than you could have dreamed of, even more so because you were so reeled in by vulnerable wife Amy. Her extensive revenge plan at Nick was a giant 'fuck you' at the man she felt mistreated her. It takes a special kind of performer to make Amy's entitled 'how dare Nick not appreciate what a Goddess he have for a wife?' attitude something not just I, but a majority of women can root for.

I'm not saying all women would go to the extremes Amy did, but women definitely do have the capacity to create what Pike described as a 'facade' in order to make themselves more fragrant to men, and when things go to shit, we can bare our teeth like the best of them. That is what Regal Rosamund encapsulated entirely in her turn in Gone Girl. 

The line-reading, the looks, the body language. The manipulation. 

What an actress. What a turn. 

Take a bow, Rosamund Pike.

--

Breakdown by BBFC rating
18: 2
15: 6
12A: 2

Dudes: 4
Dames: 6

Film review: THE DARK KNIGHT RISES (Christopher Nolan, 2012)

After eight years of relative inactivity in the streets of Gotham, mainly thanks to a Harvey Dent act – constructed in false honour of Harvey Two-face from The Dark Knight, Bruce Wayne is a recluse in his manor, hobbling around with a walking stick and never showing his face. However, he’s kicked back into life – quite literally – by Selina Kyle, a swish, sassy cat burglar who’s also not bad to look at. 

It soon transpires she’s working for a greater evil, Bane, a hulking badass who was born in a prison known as “hell on earth”. Walking around with a hugely creepy gas mask in front of his face and casually disposing of anyone who gets into his way, Bane christens himself “Gotham’s reckoning.” But Bruce Wayne, never one to take attack to his beloved city lying down, fancies letting Batman reckon with him.

Nolan’s final instalment of his epic Batman trilogy is the most ambitious of the three, and no shortage of love nor money has gone into creating it. Action sequences which would be hard to direct at the best of times are made ten times more so with the almost unmanageable size of the quantity of extras employed – the American football game stands out in particular here. 

There are one-on-one fight scenes, as well as thousands-on-thousands, and some of the martial arts sequences (particularly involving Selina Kyle aka Catwoman) are thrillingly choreographed. But the real challenge didn’t lie in any part of the action, but bringing the trilogy to a close in both an emotionally satisfying way, and one that did justice to the massive Batman franchise. Other critics have been left wanting by the ending, the direction of the film (at 164 minutes, it will test your bladder), as well as the sprawling nature of the screenplay.

Indeed, Nolan co-write this film with his brother Jonathan, and at times, the dialogue (between Batman and Bane in particular) feels twice as portentous as that of Inception, and, considering I sure-as-hell was no fan of Inception, that’s certainly saying something. Another aspect of the film that has bugged some people is that the majority of time, it was difficult to decipher what Bane was actually saying due to the mask in front of his face. 

This was infuriating and confusing, definitely, but overall, I was quite impressed with how it contributed to the eerie, ominous sense of the film. Then there are the plot holes. Usually when I watch a film, I choose to suspend belief and just go with it, but there were a few subtle things that even I couldn’t ignore – for example – how policemen who had been trapped under rubble for months were suddenly as sprightly and energetic as ever. I won’t reveal any others at the risk of spoiling the plot, but plot holes are so rife in the film that some wags have taken to giving TDKR the moniker “The Plot Holes Rises.”

But all this pales in comparison in the grand scheme of things, when the end product is so epic. Chris Nolan recruited the majority of the cast of Inception for The Dark Knight Rises, so he must really enjoy working with them. 

Of the Inception crew, Marion Cotillard impressed me the least here. There were times when her facial expressions were borderline Drama GCSE, and considering the amazingly accurate depiction of Edith Piaf she has given before, we all know she can do a lot better. 

Michael Caine was very good, as he has been throughout the trilogy, and he has a few heart-rending scenes in which he tells Bruce how much he means to him. But my favourite performance of the Inception bunch is Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who plays a John Blake, cop, who, like Wayne, is an orphan, and thus sees him as a kindred spirit. Blake is very resourceful and comes to Batman’s aid at various points throughout the film and makes for a commendable supporting hero. And as the baddy, Tom Hardy is absolutely terrifying. He had a thankless task, having to follow-up Heath Ledger's terrifying Joker as the Batman villain, but he gives Bane genuine malice when the character could have easily become a hilarious caricature and for that, Laurels should be given to Hardy (boom boom :p).

Christian Bale, surely one of the most versatile actors in Hollywood, takes the lead role again wonderfully. It doesn’t quite match up to his work in The Fighter, The Machinist or my personal favourite, All the Little Animals (remember that film? lol), but in a role that is so easy to get wrong, he gets pretty much everything right. 

However, every scene he shared with Anne Hathaway’s Catwoman was stolen from her, for she was sensational. I had my qualms about seeing wholesome Princess Mia from The Princess Diaries playing such a sexy, amoral role, but Hathaway nails it. Her fight scenes are electrifying, and she deserves further plaudits when you consider she’s doing them in six-inch stiletto heels. Like a real cat, Hathaway slinks about the film like she owns it, and as a result, it really feels like she does. There’s also an engaging turn from English Rose Juno Temple as Catwoman’s friend and possible lover. Temple doesn’t do much, but it’s a proud moment to see her in such a huge blockbuster.

So engrossing that I did not check my phone once throughout the viewing of The Dark Knight Rises, I honestly couldn’t recommend it enough. It definitely has flaws, and several blog entries could be dedicated to the inconsistencies alone. But the overall good in the film – and boy, there is a lot of it – more than counterbalances it. 

Christopher Nolan has really done himself proud here, and for this alone, I am willing to forgive him for Inception (incidentally, Hans Zimmer’s score at points really do sound Inceptionish throughout the film (528491 from Inception sounds like it was played in every scene in TDKR), but we’ll allow). His brooding direction has given Batman what was seriously lacking in the previous cringeworthy George Clooney-starring Batman Forever films – soul. 

Much like Bruce Wayne, I haven’t been fulfilling my film critic duties much this year. But The Dark Knight Rises is my very own Bane, in that sense. The passion for cinema is back, all thanks to this film. 

And at the end of the day, there is no bigger compliment I can pay a film than that.

8/10

It's an effing disgrace, but...

I *still* haven't seen this film: -

Yeah, I know. A massive slap on the wrists due for me!

"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”

It’s a clear case of quantity over quality this week; I watched a fair few movies, but most of them were unbearably, unforgivably, pants.

The Grudge III (Toby Wilkins, 2009)

Poorly acted and scripted, and about as terrifying as doing my laundry without any fabric softener. Then again, the only reason I watched it was because it has Beau Mirchoff (he plays Wisteria Lane hottie Danny Bolen in Desperate Housewives) and he was criminally underused.

Julie and Julia (Nora Ephron, 2009)

A sweet enough idea but the film sadly turns out to be a little drab. I found all the hoo-ha over Streep’s performance nonsensical as she did nothing but sport a crappy accent (she did much better work in It’s Complicated). Amy Adams was at her charming best and I found her half of the film semi-engaging, particularly when she gets her blog up and running.

Laura (Otto Preminger, 1944)

The only film I saw this week that I would deem excellent. Gene Tierney plays the eponymous female who, at the beginning of the film, is being presumed dead. As the film develops, a very tangled web of jealousy, love and possession are uncovered. The cast are collectively brilliant, in particular Tierney and Dana Andrews.

Furthermore, the scene in which Laura returns to her house is one of the most finely orchestrated I’ve scene; the camera seems to widen to allow the full shot of the detective sleeping there, and the sound, which features a brief second of nothing but a clock ticking, captures the suspense perfectly. Great movie.

Marion Cotillard's first photoshoot for Lady Dior.

I think I love?

Co-tee-Ar!

A gold star to whoever can guess which film this Marion Cotillard still is from.

Clue: it's in my top 100.

Beautiful!