Review: Frances Ha

When I first saw the trailers and reviews for Frances Ha (2012) I was pretty excited. This was a new black and white comedy film, set in New York - and I envisaged it as possibly a modern-day Manhattan, but with a eccentric female protagonist in the lead. Perhaps a bit more artsy and more openly serious than Woody Allen's style, but hopefully somewhere in that ball-park. 

The film follows Frances, a woman in her late twenties, as she moves from place to place across New York and further a field over a indeterminable period of time. She starts off living with her best friend Sophie, as she attempts to become a professional dancer. However, when Sophie decides to move to a more expensive apartment it causes a rupture in their friendship, and Frances is left drifting from rented place to rented place, whilst it becomes clearer and clearer that she's not going to be taken on by the dance company. As the year progresses their friendship is tested further and further, as Frances bumbles along alone, broke but still hoping to become a dancer. 

Though I applaud Frances Ha for being about a more realistic woman - a woman who is going though a horrible drifting period of not having a secure job or home and for whom the most important things in her life are her friendship and her career - I can't honestly say I found it funny. 

There were a few moments, a few lines here and there which I noticed - such as 'Ahoy sexy' which  I love - but otherwise I found very little to laugh about in it. To me it felt more sad and slow. I think part of it is recognising that feeling of being stalled in your life, when everyone seems to be doing fine and you're still scrambling away trying to find a foothold - a job, a home, something to say at the dinner table. Yet at the same time, Frances living in New York basically hopping from apartment to apartment, is so far removed from my own experience it seems almost alien at the same at time as being a little familiar - but that's just my person opinion. 

There also quite a few moments, random moments, that I assumed were meant to highlight her everyday life, but didn't seem to add much to the plot. So, she is had an old chair that wouldn't fit in her storage container and had to leave it on the pavement with a sign to take it for free? Yes it reiterates the fact she has no permanent home of her own, but it surely could have been incorporated into another scene with dialogue. The only one of these scenes I really enjoyed was one of her dancing down the street, enjoying the moment, doing what she loves. I love a good dance scene too.

There's also a scene where she has to run to ATM because she has promised to pay for her date's dinner. I liked that scene, I had to go on a similar quest for an ATM once. However, I wasn't impressed when said Frances fell over running back to the restaurant. I felt this was a bit of a cheap attempt at physical humour. You can't even say it was meant to happen to get her to her date's flat. It seemed like that would've have happened scraped elbow or no scraped elbow.

I like parts of Frances Ha - the black and white, Frances, the friendship - but somehow the whole just feels dour, and most of all I really don't find it that funny. Frances is a funny character but the circumstances she is living in are not, and it pulls her and us down into a basically a quiet, drama about everyday life.

In summary: I really wanted to like Frances Ha but in the end I just didn't find it funny. Whether its because I just didn't get the jokes, I don't know. Otherwise, not a bad film about an uncomfortable period in a young woman's life, though it does meander, and the action unrolls slowly and indulgently. 

Top 5: Unexpected Actors to Spot in Woody Allen films

Over the last couple of years I've watched and read about quite a lot of Woody Allen's work, and have kept being surprised and amused to spot famous actors I'd never have expected to see in his films - actors who would've have been starting out in their careers back then, but are famous for other things now. 

[1] Helena Bonham Carter - Mighty Aphrodite (1995)

Perhaps most famous now for her regular appearances in Tim Burton's films, as well as her work in period films, in this Manhattan tale with a Greek chorus twist, Bonham-Carter plays Allen's on-screen wife Amanda - and gives a wonderfully subtle and believable performance.

[2] John C Reilly - Shadows and Fog (1991)

Well-known now for his silly comedies and great dramatic performances in films like Chicago, you can spot a very young John C Reilly - this is his fifth credit as an actor on IMDb - in this black and white thriller as a cop in a police station. You have to watch careful though, as its easy to miss it!

[3] Liam Neeson - Husbands and Wives (1992)

Liam Neeson seems to have recently gained a reputation as an action star and general badass thanks to the film Taken - which is why its so amusing to see actor play a romantic lover in this documentary-style comedy about marriage. And no, don't expect that phone scene in this movie...

[4] Mayim Bialik - Don't Drink the Water (1994)

Mayim Bialik is of course most famous for playing Amy, the geeky girlfriend of Sheldon in The Big Bang Theory. But as a young actress she also in this television movie based on Allen's play, alongside geek icon Michael J Fox aka Marty McFly! 

[5] Anthony Head, Alexander Armstrong and Charles Dance - Scoop (2006)

This fun crime caper comedy set in England is a lighthearted Allen gem, that I'm sad more people haven't seen - partly because a load of British actors manage to turn up in a variety of small and major roles throughout. However, my favourite cameos came from these three actors. In one scene, and only one scene we have Anthony Head, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and comedian Alexander Armstrong, from Pointless, playing a bobby and a detective. Then there's also Charles Dance, who is currently playing Tywin Lannister in Game of Thrones of course, who turns up as practical newspaper editor.

Review: The Crazies

I had no idea what to review this week. Which is ironic since I've watched several movies over the last few days. Three Woody Allen films, one Roland Emmerich disaster film and The Crazies (2010), which is the film I'm reviewing today.

The Crazies is directed by Breck Eisner, who also did that fun action movie Sahara back in 2005 and who, according to IMDb is going to be directing the new The Karate Kid 2 - which based on my experience of the other two films is probably going out to be something that's solidly done but nothing special.

Because unfortunately, I did not find The Crazies particularly special. The plot is as follows...a plane containing a biological weapon has come down and contaminated the drinking water of a rural farming town in America. This causes the residents who drink the water to become sick to go crazy and start killing people, including their families. The military of course turn up to deal with the problem, separating the town's Sheriff David (Timothy Olyphant) and our hero, from his wife Judy (Radha Mitchell) believing her to be sick. However David thinks they made a mistake. Judy is pregnant and that he believes has given her a fever. So, along with his deputy Russell (Joe Anderson) , he decides to go back and save her.

I think the main problem with this film is that it feels too familiar - when I first saw the case I was expecting a zombie scenario, and even though the killers were definitely not zombies, there were lots of similarities. 

Honestly, I felt they could've been a bit more creative with it. The writers could've come up with any disease they wanted under the heading of 'biological warfare' but instead we just had crazy people, made crazy by drinking water - and isn't an infected water source rather a cliche in movies? 

The disease was explained pretty vaguely anyway. We only knew what the main characters knew, after 48 hours you started going crazy. The symptoms were never fully explained or realised, and though there seemed to be hints of physical transformation later, it wasn't really explained either. 

Nonetheless, the film looked good and some stand out spots. I personally thought Russell was a lovely loyal character who brought some warmth to the film. Meanwhile a certain scene with a pitchfork was particularly menacing, and I thought the shots of endless farmland not only looked great, but really made you realise how isolated the heroes were, how far from civilisation. 

In summary: A well-made, but run-of-the-mill horror/thriller that will entertain, but probably not surprise most horror fans, especially not zombie fans. 

Scene 67: Five Films in Fifty Words Review

So after a unintended long absence from writing this blog I have returned. And in my absence I have not only managed to shot a short film based on one of my own scripts and write a spec script, but I have managed to watch about nine or ten Woody Allen films.

Now I guess I could review one of those films tonight, but I thought, why not try something a little different to celebrate coming back to my blog, so I'm going to review five Woody Allen films in  fifty words each. Here it goes...


[1] Manhattan (1979) 

I felt this film went over my head a little. However, the opening narration is brilliant and the whole film is shot beautifully by Gordon Willis in black and white, with some stand-out compostions of the scenes. Including a scene in Isaac's flat and the walk through the planetieurm.

[2] Hollywood Ending (2002)

Film has a great concept - a once famous director is given one last shot at getting back into movies again when he suddenly goes blind. What does he do? Keep shooting the film anyway. The romance feels rather weak and the ending rushed, but good fun all the same. 

[3] A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (1982)

Set in the countryside, this film is full of gorgeous shots of nature and a lovely montage of the cast doing summer things. A Shakespearian like comedy of love, that looks at interesting human conundrums about sex and love - and it has a flying bicycle. 

[4] Everyone Says I Love You (1996) 

A wild ride through one year with a family entangled in different kinds of love. This musical is not only funny, but full of stars, including a singing Tim Roth! The action moves between New York, Paris and Venice - and ends with a fantastic gravity-defying dance scene.

[5] To Rome With Love (2012)

An anthology of story threads all set in Rome. The location is lovely and sun filled, and the stories all amusing, though slightly silly. My favourite was the most straight forward tale - a trip down memory lane, with Alec Baldwin playing an architect thinking back to his student days.

Scene 57: Review of Annie Hall

I have been collecting a bunch of 'rom-com' DVDs recently and last week, whilst I was on holiday, I spent an evening watching two of them - Made of Honour (2008) and Annie Hall (1977). Now I'm going to review Made of Honour and another rom-com later next week, but today I thought I'd concentrate on Annie Hall. 

Annie Hall was a revelation. I hadn't expect it to be.  Why should it? It's been around for years, its not new. Its Woody Allen, a classic. The film's style was even recently was parodied in an episode of The Simpsons called Love is A Many Splintered Thing. 

And yet...  Annie Hall was new, it was different, it was refreshing!

My surprise was probably partly down to my assumption that it would follow the normal rom-com pattern, that it would be conventional. After all, this is only my second taste of Woody Allen's style after Midnight in Paris (2011) - which is meant to be his most accessible film. 

So, of course I was somewhat confused at the fact that we had this jumping and switching as Woody Allen's character Alvy narrated and explained some of his past and talked about his previous wives. However I began to realise then, and in retrospect, that the film was being told in a stream of conscious like style, at least in my opinion. To me the whole film is Alvy's memories as he tells us the audience, about Annie and about himself. It's like a novel, a Virginia Woolf one, but less linear. 

This is one of the many reasons its so unusual compared to most romances or even most movies, which follow the good old beginning, middle and end - with perhaps the odd one playing the 'tease the ending' trick and then telling the whole film in flashback, for example Bradley Cooper on the edge of a balcony at the beginning of Limitless. 

Diane Keaton is not only beautiful in her bohemian outfits - that tie, waistcoat and hat combination which is probably a classic image now - but also a very real person. In fact both Alvy and Annie are wonderfully written characters, though of course Alvy has that nervous, intelligent and slightly neurotic quality that I guess is typical of his leading characters. 

I guess in the end the thing that I found most refreshing about, because I keep saying it, is how real and grounded it feels compared to other rom-coms I have personally watched. It's not just the story or the characters though, its the way it looks too. There is definitely a hint of the quirky in the film, especially from Annie, but otherwise the places and the people look and seem mundane. 

Perhaps it's because of the era it was shot in and the cameras that were used, but the slightly dull look to the film also gives this impression that this is reality - despite the fact its Alvy's memories. Modern Hollywood films do tend to have what I call a 'glossy' look, where the clothes are all stylish and the houses all look tidy, and clean, and well decorated. This sort of gloss, in the extreme, was summed up in what Danny Leigh once said about This is 40 (2012), when he pointed out that the house seemed unnaturally clean all the time and yet this was a family home, with kids in the house. 

In Annie Hall, the houses look nice, but they also look like homes - in one scene Alvy almost knocks over some washing up stacked in the drying rack, and I distinctly remember a bare light bulb in Annie's apartment reflecting the old white walls. 

I could go into more, but I feel like I need to re-watch the film, and that I need to watch more films to confirm that my theories on this films originality are right - I am an amateur reviewer after! 

Also, I'd like to recommended that you just watch this film yourself, because for me its the sort of film that you just need to discover for yourself. Because its made quite an impact on me, at least I think it has, as after I the film finished I started writing a Woody Allen style monologue! 

Anyway, I'll be posting up my scripted scene of the week in a separate post, so look out for that. If you have any opinions on Annie Hall or Woody Allen's work, please comment below.