The Best Offer

Perfect clothes, perfect furnishings, perfect make-up, perfect looking extras, in other words perfect mise-en-scène. Populated by bunch of off-beat to downright weird characters. Virgil Oldman (Geoffrey Rush) is Italy's premier art auctioneer, always dines at the same restaurant, sitting alone facing the wall while wearing gloves. He is completely confident of his superior knowledge of art, and is not above exploiting that fact to his financial advantage from time to time. One of his two friends is an electro-mechanical genius who can repair or rebuild anything and is a babe magnet. The woman at the centre of the film, Claire Ibbetson, is an agoraphobic who no-one has seen for 10 years. She draws Oldman out of his routine with a bizarre series of phone calls and outrageous requests that no-one else would tolerate. Even some of the minor characters are outlandish.

Actually none of these characters or their situation would be possible in real world and that should cause the penny to start dropping. If they were more realistic I would class The Best Offer as a rom-com, mystery thriller. But given the combination of a magically perfect setting with larger-than-life characters I'm going out on a limb and classifying this as a modern fairytale. It is pity that there isn't a bit more humour.

Even though the film is set in Italy the cast is all English speaking. It is as if the population of Italy has been replaced by British people, though with Italian tastes and Italian clothes! Like art itself there is more style than substance here.

Ian's rating 3/5

Blancanieves

Why would someone want to see a silent movie in 2013?

The novelty factor? Curiosity? Masochism? Ludditism?

Actually the masochism was entirely due to sitting in row M at the Paramount (rows M and beyond are not suitable for people with legs). It was curiosity to see a modern "silent" movie, and to see a Spanish take on the fairytale of Snow White, that got me to part with my money. As I hinted with the quote marks, Blancanieves is not entirely silent. It has sound track of music and sound effects but no spoken dialogue. It follows the original silent movie techniques in terms of its almost square aspect ratio, black-and-white photography, over acting and intertitles. The intertitles were in English in the version shown at the Film Festival. The almost square aspect ratio and the 1920's setting sells this film as a silent movie and the over acting meshes well with the fairytale script.

In terms of 21st century mores, Snow White is one of the kinkiest of fairytales. In today's terms explain why it is OK for a teenage girl to move in with seven older men, or why it is OK to put a (presumably dead) girl's body on public display in a glass coffin, or let a random guy sexually molest her? This sort of behaviour is only acceptable in fairytales. In Blancanieves we are in 1920's Spain and Carmencita is the daughter of a widowed matador who marries the scheming Encarna (whose sexual proclivities normalise the kinkiness of the Grimm Bros plot). Carmencita's childhood and Encarna's torment of her take up rather more of the film than they should but the pace picks up a bit once the dwarves come on the scene. Here we feel we are on familiar territory but we should realise that this version of Snow White has not been following the Grimm Bros (or Disney) plots particularly closely and while Encarma's demise is satisfying, Blancanieves' fate deviates from expectation to remind us that this version of the story is for adults.

Trailer

Ian's rating 3.5/5

Jack the Giant Slayer

I guess that eventually I'd end up seeing one of the current crop of fairy tale based films or TV series.

Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters
Snow White and the Huntsman
Red Riding Hood
Beauty and the Beast
The Brothers Grimm
Once Upon a Time (currently on TV2)
Beauty and the Beast (currently on Prime)

Jack the Giant Slayer is a fairly straight telling of the English fairy tale Jack and the Beanstalk (with less theft and more heroism). The growing of the beanstalk and fight scenes are made for 3D viewing, though have plenty of impact in 2D. While the second line of the poem no longer mentions the blood of an Englishman, the actors are British and the setting of the film is unmistakably a fairy tale version of Britain.

Fee-fo-fi-fum, ask not where this idea came from.

The fairy tale, Jack and the Beanstalk, is a story with repeated tension as Jack's curiosity and greed put him in danger again and again. Twice he is saved from the blood sniffing Mr Giant by the kindly Mrs Giant, and the third time he escapes by luck. On each occasion Jack steals from the Giants. After an exciting chase Jack and his mother chop down the beanstalk killing Mr Giant and live happily ever after on the proceeds of crime.

The film is less repetitive and introduces a Disney style princess to be rescued and married and an evil Bond style scheming villain to be stopped. This removes the dubious morality of making a hero out of a recidivist thief and pads out an otherwise trivial plot giving more opportunity for dialogue and extra characters.

Feminists might object to the cutting of both the original female characters and their replacement by nubile eye candy (Eleanor Tomlinson playing Princess Isabelle). While I can't see an obvious reason why the script writer replaced Jack's mother with an uncle, nor why there are no female giants in the film, but I can see that Isobelle serves an essential function as the central character that brings all the others together. To be lusted after and rescued by Jack and Elmont, to be a pawn in Roderick's schemes, to be captured by the giants, to be doted on by her indulgent father (played by Ian McShane) and finally to be part of the happy ending.

To be picky, the mythical kingdom of Cloister makes the perfectionist in me cringe, realistically who'd name a kingdom after an architectural feature? Kingdom of Courtyard or Kingdom of Porch anyone? As we get to see more of the (often CGI) royal palace it looks less like Hampton Court Palace (where some bits were filmed) and more like a cathedral (other bits were filmed in Wells and Norwich Cathedrals). So are we looking at kingdom that has re-purposed religious buildings? Or possibly where monarchy has supplanted religion or merged with the church?

The film is aimed at both kids and adults. It seems to have relatively modest aims of entertaining kids, parents and others with a familiar fairy tale augmented with other familiar themes and populated with characters that are easy to understand. Seen in that light I think Jack the Giant Slayer is entertaining, well paced and acted without being spectacular, challenging or memorable.

Ian's rating 2/5 Anne's rating 3/5