Night Train to Lisbon

I am not religious but I do occasionally pray. During this film, already able to guess the time very accurately, extrapolated from many glances at my watch, trapped in the middle of a row, I prayed for it to end. Stop. Anything. The film has marshaled many well-known actors for a farrago set in Lisbon; a Lisbon I don't know, where everyone speaks in English with a funny accent. The signs were ominous from the opening scene, which had Raimond (Jeremy Irons - the only 'English' character in the film, and let off his accents) alone in his room in Switzerland playing chess with himself, moving from one side of the chessboard to the other. This had the subtlety of a red arrow on the screen, pointing at him, labelled 'lonely intellectual'. In an early scene he was dithering on the railway platform as to whether to get on the train that was pulling out. At the last minute he jumped on, so it was fortunate that the train was setting off with its doors still open!

The film has quite a starry cast - with Jeremy Irons there are Tom Courtenay, Melanie Laurent, Christpher Lee, Charlotte Rampling and Bruno Ganz, all present and correct and doing 'accents'. I had difficulty concentrating on the narrative, so it was some time before I understood that the older characters were the younger ones in another time. The film proceeded at a steady unmodulated pace with far too many mind-numbing words and explanations, and to little cinema. The music was awful, washing around in the background, neither loud enough nor silent enough. I don't know if this film is an example of Euro-soup, but it is difficult to describe the music without using the word 'soup'. Normally interesting actors were awful, particularly poor Bruno Ganz. The cinematography wasn't bad, with lovely Lisbon, with all its steps, photographed with an atmospheric, golden hue.

A reviewer quoted on Rotten Tomatoes summed up this film well, saying 'take the last train to anywhere but here." while another wrote "after barely stirring to life, Night Train to Lisbon mercifully expires." I needed a couple of strong drinks and a good night's sleep to recover from it.

Grand Central

This is a romance set in a nuclear power station and set in a resolutely working-class context. It stars two flavour-of-the-month actors, Tahar Rahim, who made his name in Jacques Audiar's A Prophet, and Léa Seydoux, who had blue hair in Blue is the Warmest Colour. At the beginning of the film unqualified Gary (Rahim) is looking for work and finds it in a nuclear power station. Karole becomes one of his colleagues there, and there is an affinity between them.

Karole is already involved and the romance becomes complicated. There are many scenes in the work place, presenting it as dangerous, and Gary is told that if he exposes himself to too much radiation he will lose his job.

I am not convinced that A nuclear plant is a particularly dangerous place because there are so many cautionary procedures, unless, of course, something goes seriously wrong, which is rare. In the film there are no managers or senior people and the film gives the impression that this working-class group of workers depend more on their wits and experience than on supervision. Even when Gary is reprimanded it is done by someone who is manifestly working-class.

The film uses electronic music, which is reasonably effective.

Rahim gives a particularly good performance, communicating youthful charm, innocence and gullibility, with an underlying toughness. I find Seydoux quite sour-faced.

I was sceptical about this depiction of  life in a nuclear plant, and I think that to fuel its drama the film used the modernistic appearance of the work, with workers performing their tasks in 'space' suits, to give a lay audience the impression that it is more dangerous and dramatic than it is.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

This is a film that will please many audiences - those looking for a summer blockbuster and those who enjoy a story that resonates with socio-political issues. It is a sequel (I didn't see the first one) set in a future where a simian virus has wiped out most of the human race and caused a sudden increase in the intelligence of apes. The few surviving humans are struggling in decrepit and broken cities, while the apes occupy rural areas. There are amazing scenes of huge communtites of apes, and of numorous apes swinging rapidly from tree to tree to tree through the forests. The early scenes with the apes are subtitled, but this segues into the later scenes where the apes speak in a sparse, croking English.

The story concerns one human enclave, lorded over by a benign and well-intentioned Dreyfus (Gary Oldman), which is running out of power and needs to repair a nearby dam. It sends an exploratory party to the dam. This is a group of callow americans straight out of TV drama, with a politically-correct regulation female, Ellie (Keri Russell) and a regulation negro, Foster (John Eyes) and they set off up the mountain in an English motor-car, a Landrover. The group is captured by the apes and we have the scene, which I have seen in other films, where they are taken to the heart of the ape community and the apes argue about what to do with them. The apes are led by the thoughtful and well-intentioned Ceasar (Andy Serkis), who listens to the group's leader, Malcolm (Jason Clarke) and allows him to go to the dam. During this scene there is a tense moment when it is revealed that one of the group has secretly brought a gun. It is striking that both the human and simian sides have well-intentioned and thoughtful leaders. When I watched the film I didn't know how the apes were rendered so I'm interested to see in writing this that they were actors.

There is contention on both sides: on the human side there are those who say "they are just animals, we must shoot them", and on the simian side there are those who say "humans locked us in cages and did experiments on us!" and some of them still have the scars to prove it. Ceasar and Dreyfus try to calm things down and maintain an uneasy coexistance, but the gun incident sowed mistrust which spread through both communities leading to deterioration on both sides and finally to disaster. Ceasar is challenged by the agressive and human-hating Koba and Dreyfus is dragged down by those seeking a more war-like posture. The apes are well-characterised, and we need to be able to recognize different apes to follow the story.

It is not hard to see the parallels between this story and many situations in the present world and in human history. The film could also be re-imagined as a cowboys 'n' Indians film with the Indians replaced by apes.

There is plenty of spectacle and the cinematography is very good, with images in a dark, grungy, sepia-ish brown, and plenty of spectacle. I saw the 3D version of the film and the 3D effects are well-controlled not too in-your-face.

There are a few moment when the narrative wobbles in the direction of cliched sentimentality, particularly when there is a baby ape that triggers the maternal instinct in Ellie.

This is an intelligent, enjoyable and thoughtful film that I do not hesitate to recommend.