bill nighy – NZ Film Freak

Emma

Emma movie 2020 poster

Director: Autumn de Wilde
Writer: Eleanor Catton (Based on Jane Austen’s novel, Emma)
Released: February 2020
Starring: Anya Taylor-Joy, Johnny Flynn, Josh O’Connor, Callum Turner, Mia Goth, Miranda Hart and Bill Nighy
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I took a little too long to get around to writing this review! So I’ll try to remember my first impressions…

I am a Jane Austen fan – despite reading all of zero of her books. But I do own the complete book series, which I might get around to reading one day.

It was actually the 2005 movie Pride & Prejudice featuring Kiera Knightley that got me hooked, followed with the 2007 movie The Jane Austen Book Club. Both movies have stuck with me ever since.

That’s why the movie Emma appealed to me so much. Also, the hilarity of Miranda Hart in the trailer.

Emma movie miranda hart

Thanks to The Jane Austen Book Club, I knew the rough storyline already – that Emma was a match-maker who was too oblivious to notice her one true love was standing before her the whole time.

This version of the story certainly keeps the quirkiness and humour that I understand the book has, but the colour and dramatic stage play essence that director Autumn de Wilde brought to her debut film was brilliant.

I would have laid money on it that the director was Wes Anderson because of the similarity between Emma and The Grand Budapest Hotel. Identical in terms of pastel colours and swift camerawork.

Emma movie

I thought this was the debut movie for Anya Taylor-Joy who played Emma as well. But then I realised that I had seen her before; she’s in Split/Glass!

The only downside of Emma was that the funniest moments were in the trailer. The pacing was also a lot slower than I expected.

Nevertheless, the costumes were spectacular and the characters were all bright and bold!

Jodie’s rating: 5/10

About Time

Director: Richard Curtis
Writer: Richard Curtis
Released: June 2013
Starring: Domhnall Gleeson, Rachel McAdams, Bill Nighy, Tom Hollander, Margot Robbie
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From the brain behind The Boat that Rocked, Notting Hill, Love Actually and Bridget Jones comes a warm and fuzzy, all-nice, all-good, hot chocolate and cuddles on a rainy day kind of story. It’s called About Time. (If you loved Driving Lessons, I think you’d enjoy this film.)

I love coming-of-age films, there’s nothing better than seeing bog-standard, everyday man-on-the-street kind of characters on the tellie accomplishing the extraordinary and telling you that everything will be alright in the end.

About Time is one of the best feel-good comedy/dramas out there, partly because it’s to do with time travel. It’s about an innocent and quiet boy called Tim Lake (Domhnall Gleeson) who at the humble age of 21 is told by his father (Bill Nighy) that, like every man in his family, he can travel back in time.

While his grandfathers before him used time travel to make more money, and his father went back to read as many books as he could, Tim decides to use time travel to improve his love life. He soon begins to learn some harsh lessons.

Tim: Lesson Number One: All the time traveling in the world can’t make someone love you.

After a few of life’s trip-ups, a twist of fate and a lot of laughs, Tim finds Mary (Rachel McAdams) and goes about to win her heart. But that’s not the end of the adventure, as life intervenes and reminds Tim that he may be able to time travel, but he’s still going to experience hard times.

Tim: There’s a song by Baz Luhrmann called Sunscreen. He says worrying about the future is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life will always be things that never crossed your worried mind.

To match the emotion and tone of this film is a fantastic soundtrack, including Nick Cave’s Into My Arms and At the River by Groove Armada. It’s a great soundtrack, which supports Tim’s emotional journey throughout the backdrops of London and Cornwall.

I would watch anything Bill Nighy is in, and Domhnall Gleeson is pretty cool too. But I adore Rachel McAdams, I’m so pleased she was cast. Although she is so annoyingly beautiful, which they didn’t do a good job of hiding! I don’t think the bookworm character of Mary was supposed to be quite so attractive…

Mum: Mary! Good Lord, you’re pretty.
Mary: Oh, no. It’s just… I’ve got a lot of mascara and lipstick on.
Mum: Let’s have a look… Oh, yes. Good. It’s very bad for a girl to be too pretty. It stops her developing a sense of humor. Or a personality.

I love how, despite Tim’s efforts, things still don’t work out perfectly every time. Because life always interferes – just like with everyone else. It rains on the wedding, family members get hurt, people die, and things don’t always happen in an ideal order. In fact, life or fate is a character of its own in this film.

About Time is full of solid advice, the ‘what-ifs’ explained, and the strength of family. You will laugh, you will cry, and you’ll want to hug your favourite people a little harder.

Tim: And in the end I think I’ve learned the final lesson from my travels in time… I now don’t travel back at all, not even for the day. I just try to live every day as if I’ve deliberately come back to this one day, to enjoy it, as if it was the full final day of my extraordinary, ordinary life.

It’s a beautiful script and despite its slow pace, was executed into a film brilliantly. It’s one of my favourite films and perfect for a family movie night. But you will cry. So, you’ve be warned.

Jodie’s rating: 8/10

Their Finest

Director: Lone Scherfig
Writer: Based on Their Finest Hour and a Half by Lissa Evens. Screenplay by Gaby Chiappe
Released: April 2017
Starring: Gemma Arterton, Sam Claflin, Bill Nighy, Jack Huston, Helen McCrory, Eddie Marsan, Jake Lacy, Rachael Stirling and Richard E. Grant
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Well. That was a pretty enormous disappointment.

After seeing the trailer, I thought, ‘this is my kind of film’. During 1940, a female protagonist, Catrin (Emma Arterton) proves herself to be a talented screenwriter for propaganda films (created to inform, and to lift the spirits of the public). Bill Nighy – a fabulous actor – plays an egotistical has-been actor called Ambrose, and everyone looks beautiful.

‘Brilliant’, I thought, ‘a coming-of-age drama based around film and writing – both things I love – with a sprinkle of comedy and a touch of tragedy against a wartime backdrop.’

How wrong I was.

The first part is entertaining enough, Catrin is living with her husband who is basically a failed artist and not earning much money. She lands this great writing job where she writes the ‘slop’, or female dialogue.

Tom Buckley (Sam Clafin): Don’t confuse facts with truth… Film is real life with the boring bits cut out.

She soon becomes more successful in a male-dominated world, and warms to a fellow writer. Among this, everyone is dodging London bombings. At the end of every raid, someone else she knows has died.

The story carries the standard structure of any drama. But unfortunately my suspension of disbelief is totally destroyed during the ‘absolute low’. Without giving too much away, after a particularly devastating bombing, the protagonist loses everything.

Afterwards, the story is supposed to take a turn for the better, with a happy ending. However, the protagonist doesn’t ‘win’ at the end, and the story falls off a cliff. I’ve seem this film described as a ‘bittersweet, uplifting romance-drama’. It’s not. It’s an unnecessarily devastating war film.

I was disappointed to say the least. Why tear our hero down so far? Where’s the inspiration in that? This was supposed to be a story about an underdog who succeeded despite the war, despite being a woman in a man’s world, despite being downtrodden and disrespected. (Her lack of ability to stand up for herself is frustrating to say the least.)

In fact, it’s a story about an underdog who, with a lot of hard work, succeeds professionally and personally despite everything – until the rug is pulled from under her and she ends up worse-off than ever. Who the hell wants to watch a film like that? It just made me feel bad.

I enjoyed how the story was about a writer, who in some scenes is shown to be rewriting how her day turned out, or rewriting a conversation she had where she wished she said something differently (something I sometimes do!). I also liked the exploration into why people love films.

Tom Buckley: Why do people like films? It’s because stories are structured. They have a shape, a purpose, a meaning; and when things go bad they’re still a part of a plan; there’s still a point to them. Unlike life.

I like how she had professional success and that she was proud of herself, but overall, I walked away with the message ‘give it a go despite the odds. Try really hard. But you’ll fail and end up with no one and nothing anyway’.

What the hell, Bill Nighy. I trusted you.

Jodie’s rating: 4/10

Jack the Giant Slayer

Director: Bryan Singer
Written: Darren Lemke and David Dobkin
Released: March 2013
Starring: Nicholas Hoult, Eleanor Tomlinson, Stanley Tucci, Ian McShane, Bill Nighy and Ewan McGregor
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What an exciting cast! Bill Nighy, Stanley Tucci and Ewan McGregor! *drool*

I first saw the advert on the back of the bus, and quite frankly I thought it looked a little.. Lame.

I mean starting from Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland, we have had remake after remake of these fairytales and fables; The Wizard of Oz, Mirror, Mirror, Snow White and the Huntsman…

jack_the_giant_killer_slayer — Yay! Ewan!

So to see Jack and the Beanstalk being remade was not a surprise, and I expected it to have similar disappointments with all of the other remakes.

Namely the fact that the violence has to be toned down so that it can be suitable for the younger audience. Despite the storyline being 100 times better if it went the full hog and making it an M.

JACK THE GIANT SLAYER — Oh hey, Ewan. What cha doin’ on the cliff there…

I was right. But it didn’t stop the story being enjoyable.

I do think the writers tried to cram a big storyline into a short amount of time – the intro seemed extremely rushed.

The special effects are amazing! Very well done. Getting the proportions convincing between the giants and the humans must have taken a bit of thought. Although, I still maintain that the giants should have had horses… Like, huge horses. That would have been cool.

Oh, and all the giants were male… I thought that was a bit odd.

Also, if I was designing where the giants lived, I would have made it way more fantastical, not just the average 16th century environment but quadruple the size.

Toward the end you will think you know exactly what will happen because it looks SO obvious leading up to it. However, I am happy to say that the writers did not take the easy way out. The ending isn’t as obvious and typical as one would expect.

This is a pleasantly entertaining film. Not hilarious or deep and meaningful. Just lightly entertaining. Nothing more than you would probably expect.

Jodie’s rating: 6.5/10

Shaun of the Dead

Shaun of the Dead Poster

Director: Edgar Wright
Writers: Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg
Released: April 2004
Starring: Simon Pegg, Kate Ashfield, Lucy Davis, Nick Frost, Dylan Moran, Bill Nighy, Penelope Wilton
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The best black comedy of all time.

I have a weakness for zombie apocalypse movies anyway. However, this film has taken every zombie cliche` in the book and ends up pointing fun at themselves, which is hilarious!

The creators called it a “Rom Zom Com” aka a “Romantic Zombie Comedy” and the “perfect date film” because it has a heart line of a romantic comedy that happens to be set in a time where zombies are attacking the world.

It starts out with Shaun (Simon Pegg) and Shaun’s girlfriend Lizz (Kate Ashfield) at a bar on yet another date at the Winchester Pub, as Lizz bickers about how they never do anything different. The shot slowly widens to show, Lizz’s friends David and Di (Dylan Moran and Lucy Davis) and Shaun’s foul-mouthed best friend, Ed (Nick Frost). Of course, what better to change the monotonous situation than have their lives bombarded with the living dead!?

That’s what I like about the Wright-Pegg-Frost trio. Their ideas are crazy!
Yet they always work.

These zombies are the classic, lazy walker-types where unless you got trapped or are a really slow walker, you would probably not get caught, unlike the kind that is on the TV series The Walking Dead where they run when they are desperate. But these zombies imitate the world we live in – we wake up, go to work, come home again, miserable. So it does have a bit of a wake-up call feeling to it.

Edgar Wright’s signature fast pans, quick cuts and cut always were present which definitely suited the shocking humour and gruesome occurrences.

Another of my favourite things about this film is the parallels between the start and the ending. Such as the trolley boy collecting stray trolleys in the car park of a shopping centre with little enthusiasm. By the end, the remaining zombies are trained and take over the chore in an equally unenthusiastic way… I don’t know. I just find it amusing…

This is the best black comedy because, unlike some others I’ve seen of the same genre *cough* Zombieland *cough*, the comedy element runs through the entire film, not just random crucial parts. Shaun of the Dead make fun of the terrifying situation at every turn.

This is a must-have item in every film-watcher’s collection.

Jodie’s rating: 8/10

The Boat that Rocked

Director: Richard Curtis
Writers: Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Hilary Bevan Jones
Released: 2009
Starring: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighy, Rhys Ifans, Nick Frost, Kenneth Branagh, Emma Thompson
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If you love groovylicious music and cool fashion from the 1960s, then you are going to LOVE this film!

It’s a film about the pirate radio stars during the sixties who played rockin’ music, whilst trying to keep the government off their backs who didn’t like the kind of influence the radio stations had.

It’s the kind of film where its characters are used to target the typical main-stream movie audience who are in their twenties, but it’s ‘historical’ enough to capture the reminiscing kids of the sixties, yet, unique enough to entice the indie teens, and overall AWESOMENESS to be absolutely: Way. Cool.

It’s an exciting film about each radio host’s personal triumphs as well as the overall capturing story of essentially giving the middle finger to society. The contrast between the conservative government workers versus the wild rock and roll supporters from the boats in the North Sea was drawn which was great to see two sides.

You can also see the same sort of contrast being drawn between the children and their parents. The children being the rebellious worshippers of the DJs who hide radios in their bedrooms, and the parents being the BBC listeners who frown upon the culture of pop and rock and roll music.

The humour was a bit hit-and-miss for me occasionally, but that’s probably because I have a dry sense of humour… As in, I find Napoleon Dynamite hilarious. The majority of the audience would enjoy it very much, I’m sure.

Fantastic music OBVIOUSLY, which compelled me to buy the double-disc album which was incredible! Think of your favourite artist from the sixties, and it’ll be on there… Except for The Beatles… That was a bit of a disappointment, actually…

A loud, crazy, colourful and hilarious depiction of the sixties’ uprising which was almost successful. I felt quite upset at the end when I saw the ship sink and I went into a deep daydream of how the Government should have let the ships be, how it could have been, how they should never have made laws against them and how spectacular the sixties was… and the WAY COOL music… The ending was a bit of a downer, but accurate nevertheless. (Reinforcing my ‘Golden Age Thinking’ as explained in Midnight in Paris)

The Boat That Rocked is an entertaining film where anybody could pick out a favourite bit, moment or character, making it a movie that’s easy to talk about. It is a perfectly orchestrated story with fewer stereotypes than I expected.

The wardrobe was absolutely stupendous (I wish there was a “The Boat That Rocked Shop”) and the cut-aways to the everyday listeners was probably one of my favourite bits, because it gave you a huge scope of the world they lived in – since it could have been very isolated to the life on the boat.

This isn’t just a film worth watching, this is a film worth buying and then replaying. You will finish watching the film and feel an urge to carry a stereo around with you, liberating the boring and monotonous people of the 2000s with epic sounds of the sixties.

You will feel the need to stick it to the man and be rebellious… But you’ll probably just put the film on repeat instead, and that’s cool too.

If American Graffiti represents America in the 60s, The Boat that Rocked represents the UK in the 60s.

Jodie’s rating: 8/10