"The Last Station" on BLU RAY – A Review Of The 2011 Film by Michael Hoffman

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"…You're What I Came To Find…" - The Last Station on BLU RAY

In the last two decades of his life – the author of "War And Peace" and "Anna Karenina" - wasn’t just the most famous writer in the world – Leo Tolstoy was the inspiration for an entire movement that advocated pacifism, vegetarianism and love as the core of its commune philosophy. Tolstoy also rejected Church dictate, private property and was even seen by some as a living saint. And in 1919 his fame was such that he actually became one of the world’s first modern-day celebrities - filmed on Pathe Cameras everywhere he went - with crews and press teams relentlessly stalking his home for photos and footage of the great man. And although he neither sought out publicity nor was comfortable with it – his ego as Demigod enjoyed it too – putting huge pressure of his home life and volatile marriage.

The statistics surrounding the lifelong union of Leo and Sofya Tolstoy are incredible (played to perfection by Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren). Married when she was 18, she bore him 13 children and they were still sexually passionate into their 80s. But forces like the leader of the worldwide Tolstoyan movement Vladamir Chertkov (Paul Giamatti), his devoted Doctor Dushan (John Sessions) and even his daughter Sasha (Anne-Marie Duff) all wanted him to give his legacy to posterity. This effectively meant forfeiting the copyright to his written works – giving the lot to the people and not his family.

Seeing how her ageing husband was being flattered for political ends while her family’s fortune was being simultaneously shafted - Countess Sofya thought otherwise - battling constantly with him and his army of devoted followers. After all - she had hand-written “War And Peace” six times for him – spent her entire life devoted to the man – only at the end to see his life’s accomplishments be used by reformist zealots ("They read him but they don't understand a word…").

Entering into this cauldron of personal warfare and political intrigue comes a young virginal Moscow idealist of 26 - Valentin Bulgakov (James McAvoy) - who becomes Tolstoy’s Private Secretary for the last year of his life. Valentin’s stay at the Tolstoy Estate of Yasnaya Polyana and the nearby Tolstoyan commune of Telyatinki introduces him to temper tantrums, ideological debate at garden parties, endless scribbling and even love in the shape of the feisty Masha (a fabulous turn by Irish Actress Kerry Condon – the jockey Rosie in the TV series "Luck" – her dialogue above titles this review). But soon Valentin is more than in love – he’s conflicted. Should he keep on spying for the ruthless and obsessed Chertkov or should he leave the great man in peace. It all culminates in driving the old author into despair - until one day Tolstoy can take no more and leaves on a train. But ill health brings him to…

"The Last Station" was adapted by Writer and Director Michael Hoffman from Jay Parini's 1989 novel of the same name (itself based on Valentin’s diaries). With such a juicy story and a well-written script – big names and big talent were drawn to it.

But none of this would amount to naught if it weren’t for the central story of their 'love' – the difficulty of living in it and the impossibility of doing without it. Mirren’s Sofya is all spiky rage, steely determination and drama Queen swoons while Plummer’s bearded Tolstoy looks benevolently on her - adoring his long-suffering wife one moment - repulsed by her need and annoyed by her courage the next. Both characters are big shoes to fill – and with fantastic word battles – they give utterly convincing performances of trapped people – giggling in young bedroom tenderness one night then spitting ideological venom at each other the following morning on the porch.

There are also fabulous conversations between Plummer and McAvoy as they walk on lilac-scented evenings about 'actual life' instead of philosophy and the scheming Giamatti character fills ever scene with a self-righteous knowing that he is so good at. Throw in acting heavyweights like John Sessions, Anne-Marie Duff, Kerry Condon and the spot-on James McAvoy (married in real life to Anne-Marie Duff) and you’re in for an emotional ride as well as an engaging historical tale. This is sumptuous, well-crafted, intelligent filmmaking (and even funny too in places) and quite why either Mirren or Plummer didn’t get Oscars for their lead roles is frankly a bit of a mystery…

Filmed in Germany with huge production values "The Last Station" is also a gorgeous watch on BLU RAY. Defaulted to 2.35:1 – there are bars top and bottom of the screen - but even stretching to Full Aspect – it’s looks beautiful throughout – especially on close ups of clothes, steam trains and in the idyllic countryside communes.

One of the two Extras includes a truly superb 45-minute Making Of called "Conversations On…" which features extensive interviews with Director and Screenplay Writer Michael Hoffman, the original author Jay Parini, Producers Jens Meurer and Bonnie Arnold and all the leads (the work process, favourite scenes, discussion of Tolstoy and the period). There's even Anthony Quinn’s agent who owned the book rights for decades (he had hoped to do the part). Audio is 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio and the Subtitle is English.

In the end it’s a fascinating story – and an insight into the world of arguably the world’s first global pop star – only with a beard, arteritis, a cranky wife and a troop of peasants in tow waving their cloth caps instead of their Dolce and Gabbana handbags.

A top job done by all (especially Michael Hoffman) – "The Last Station" is a movie journey well worth the huff and puff…

"My First Mister" by CHRISTINE LAHTO - A Review Of Her 2001 Film On DVD and Download...

"…Reviewing My Options..." 

Jennifer Wilson sticks a safety pin in her palm to draw blood onto a typically morose diatribe on parchment paper as she watches a cheery Partridge Family re-run on television (David Cassidy singing "I think I love you..."). Her bedroom would make The Addams Family proud. Plastic skeletons hang from the mirror, black and silver skull murals adorn the wardrobe, decapitated girly toy dolls stabbed with safety pins and needles sit beside naked shop mannequins covered in black eyeliner and blood. This is the kind of doom-filled bedroom "Game of Thrones" set designers would wander around looking for good ideas.

Jay is miserable to a degree that is hilarious and pathological (the lovely and talented Leelee Sobieski). She's alienated everyone at school with how she acts and looks (tattoos, piercings, hoodies, everything in black), hasn't had a boyfriend, her mother's a hyperactive re-married wreck and her wig-wearing step-father seems absent to the world from the waist up (fabulous work by Carol Kane and Michael McKean). Jay looks at people through binoculars - backwards - because they seem more fun that way. She also enjoys lying on graves feeling the 'energy' of women who have passed and sees her beloved dead grandmother sat opposite her at the dinner table as mother serves up yet more leftover Brisket. Jay throws a paper-glider from her bedroom window each day to the uncaring World outside with her latest eulogy statement. She even self-inflicts on her arms when she's in real pain. You could say the young Californian lady has her 'issues'...

One day Jay heads into where the real money is at - the Century City shopping mall in Los Angeles. Having been chucked out of every clothing store for looking like Edward Scissorhands on a Goth tip and scaring the Bejayzuss out of the customers - she ends up outside a high end clothing store called Rutherfords. Inside she sees the cardigan wearing, oversized-slacks owning Randall unsuccessfully trying to dress an armless female mannequin in the store window. For some reason Jay takes a shine to this slightly odd and sad man. However it turns out Randall Harris is not such a drip - he's witty, just as quick with the retort and although he's a guarded soul too - Randall is older, wiser and somehow more kindly (a fantastically effecting Albert Brooks).

So in a moment of olive branch and spurred on by her obvious intelligence and initiative - Manager Randall offers the crazy-looking brat a storeroom job colour-coding the men's shirts. It isn't long before Randall's goodness starts to rid her of those dark-world trappings and from underneath all that black make-up emerges something pretty - even loveable and fun. Soon they're hanging out, visiting her drinking haunts, having laughs, playing records in stores and both slowly opening up to a world of possibilities that isn't so isolated and alone anymore. They may even be slightly in love, as she gets jealous of older women and their attention to Randall. Jay even hooks up with her pot-smoking freewheeling Dad again (typically funny and great work from John Goodman) and things seem good for a while...

A relationship between a pretty seventeen year-old and a rotund 49 year-old male with a moustache, curly hair and no dress sense might descend into farce and even become pervy - or simply be on screen for the sake of audience shock value. But long-time Actress and Director Christine Lahti is careful to keep their time together on an even keel. But better than that - there's a genuine chemistry of affection between actors Sobieski and Brooks that fills every scene with a tenderness and admiration that is rare. These are two lost souls helping each other come out of their darkness and loneliness - and each scene they're together in bristles with that lovely hopefulness that probably made the Director want to make the movie in the first place.

The burgeoning love between them is never consummated (not that kind of tale) but Jay soon discovers that Randall Harris is keeping a secret about a wife that left decades back, a son he never knew and a medical condition he's kept hidden from everyone (the woman who visits at the shop is a nurse - Mary Kay Place as Patty). And on it goes to Jay desperately trying to get back to a hospital in time with a young man in tow (Desmond Harrington) who is just as moody and morose as she is...

I loved Christine Lahti in "Housekeeping" (a 1987 film that's long forgotten and criminally so) and I figured her "My First Mister" would be touching - and it is. "You communicate with articles not humans..." Jay says to neurotic Randall in a probing moment. She honestly calls him "anal dude" in another and he doesn't mind because deep down he knows she's right. He jokes back in the early part of their relationship "We'll keep her in the store on a temporary basis in case she tries suicide!" - while he later confesses on his home porch "I'm afraid of everything...going to bed...waking up..." Astutely and beautifully observed by Jill Franklyn (the Writer) - there's a dance of truth and expression between the two lead characters that is both profound and warm and not easy to get right.

Perhaps because of its slightly naff title this 2001 film never seemed to get noticed - and to this day (2014) the HD version is only available on a download (there's no BLU RAY). But this is one little tattoo on the buttocks I suggest you get down and dirty with...

A tender and life-affirming movie - maybe one day "My First Mister" will make it onto the new format. I will look forward greatly to that...

"Blackthorn" on BLU RAY – A Review Of The 2011 Film Starring Sam Sheppard

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"…Sometimes It's Beautiful…" - Blackthorn on BLU RAY

Heroic leaders of the Wild Bunch and The Train Robbers Syndicate – Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid were eventually hounded into South America where both died in a shoot out with the military at San Vicente in 1908. But recent excavations for their bones have revealed that neither set of remains is there. Enter Director MATEO GIL and Writer MIGUEL BAROS and their superb 2011 film "Blackthorn" - 'reinterpreting' the lives of those men of folklore and Wild West legends. 

It’s now 1927 and James Blackthorn (the older Butch Cassidy played to grizzly perfection by the hugely watchable Sam Sheppard) lives a simple life as a horse-breeder in a tiny farmstead in the Bolivian Mountains - occasionally visited by his local lover/maid Yana (great work by Magaly Solier). He writes letters to his nephew Ryan in America signed by Uncle Butch telling the lad they will soon be joined at last and live out a good life together.

But on the way back from a horse trade/card game in a nearby town – a desperate Spaniard called Eduardo Apodaca robs him of $6000. The man from Madrid claims he only shot at Blackthorn’s horse because he himself is being hunted – but not for fame to prove the legend still lives – but for $50,000 hidden in a mine – the fruits of a greedy land boss who’s fleeced the locals of everything. The charming Eduardo promises he’ll pay back Blackthorn everything he’s lost – and the two outlaws form a wary and unlikely alliance out of necessity as they try to evade a posse of 12 Chilean horsemen who know the terrain and seem relentless in their pursuit.

Cleverly flashing back to the younger Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid between 1900 and 1908 - what happened to them and their feisty lady in tow Etta Place - slowly begins to unfold. The young Butch and Sundance are played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Games Of Thrones) and Padraic Delaney with Etta portrayed by the exquisitely beautiful Dominique McElligott (the camera adores this woman – the stunning looks of Olivia Wilde meets the playfulness of Taylor Schilling).  Thrown into this heady mix is Stephen Rea as Irishman MacKinley who once had the famous duo in his custodial grasp only to be made a fool of for the rest of his life (fabulous work by Rea as the older drunk and embittered version). And on it goes to a gun-battle with desperados in the scorching white arid expanse of the Salt Flats where Eduardo may not have been entirely honest with Blackthorn…

Handsome male and female leads in Frontier garb, horses galloping across grassy plains, campfires in the moonlight, water dripping onto gravel mountain paths, dirty faces in dusty shacks, women wearing Pollera pleated-skirts, Manta woollen shawls and round bowlers hats while they holster guns in rot-gut Chicha bars along railway tracks… As you can imagine "Blackthorn" is a looker on BLU RAY. Defaulted to 16 x 9 – it also fills the full screen beautifully - grittily realistic and as the Spaniard says looking out over canyons - "Sometimes it's beautiful…" Audio is 5.1 English DTS-HD, there are no subtitles and disappointingly there are no extras either.

Rewatching it on BLU RAY for a second time "Blackthorn" proves a far more rewarding Western fix than I'd first thought and in some ways is better than the more vaunted "True Grit". Mount up your mule, fix your rimmed hat, stick a cigar in your mouth, scratch your whiskers, get your ukulele out and start singing "Damn your eyes…" out loud all the way home to your ye-ha ranch.

Hell - you know you want to 'pardner'…

"Anuvahood" On BLU RAY – A Review Of The 2011 Adam Deacon Film

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"…You Feel Me Blood…" – Anuvahood on BLU RAY

If you’re not British - or at least versed in some kind of London street talk – you’re probably going to need a translator standing beside you to navigate through Adam Deacon’s fantastic  "Anuvahood". 

But your educated guy may be laughing so hard – you’ll probably need to ask that poor Eton sucker to sit down before he does himself an injury. "Anuvahood" is funny – I mean balls-to-the-wall and laugh-out-loud FUNNY – and it takes no prisoners when it’s being harsh or hard. The laughs aren’t forced either - but born out of real stuff and real people and life as it is. 

Wannabe London rapper Kenneth (Adam Deacon) who insists on being called "K" has written his mix CD "Feel The Pain" and stuck it in the local Record Shop (who aren’t interested) while he tries in vain to hold down a menial job in the local "Laimsbury's" (pun intended on Sainsbury's) despite the slagging of the motor-mouth Manager. But most of the time "K" is hanging out with his reluctant crew of Black, Asian and Chinese punks on the benches of his estate (Omar, Bookie and a new Spanish recruit Enrique) – talking the talk at one hundred miles an hour.

"K" endlessly brags about becoming "big things" in the Music World and being the 'main man' on the Estate - talking back to himself in the bedroom-mirror of his council-flat like he's The Asian Tony Soprano. Downstairs his drippy Dad (makes Spitfire Models and gets excited by Spaghetti Hoops) and his less-than-enamoured mouthy Mum are hours away from having their all their possessions taken away unless "K" comes up with promised money (great work by Linda Robson and Richard Blackwood). Even his kid brother and sister of 6 and 7 think "K" is "a waste of space" and a "Dickhead". Meanwhile out in the courtyard of the housing blocks the local muscle-bound bully Tyrone ("On The Throne") acts like a Lenny Henry/Mike Tyson combo on Speed – giggling and delighting in humiliating and robbing the kids of their mobiles, money, translation books and anything else that matters (a stunning turn by Richie Campbell - the face to the left of the BLU RAY box - Deacon to the right).

The dialogue is so rapid and so funny that it’s hard at times to keep up – and the set pieces where they hopelessly try to chat up hotties or sell Skank to the local nutjobs will have you screaming with laughter – our boys all reversed baseball caps, brand sneakers, bling chains and Nike stripes shaved into their hair. They gyrate and bob and weave and everyone is "for real blood", "are you feeling me fam", "fix me up bro" and "she is the ping!" There are of course plenty of other phrases and words that aren’t quite an evening out with The Oxford/Cambridge University Debating Society. And this is a world where the women are stronger and smarter than the men – and hookers get punched out by vexed girlfriends who find them on the job with their 'man' doing naughty things with Baby Oil and HP Sauce.

Written by ADAM DEACON and MICHEAL WU – "Anuvahood" comes at you like a hurricane - always with close-ups on sweaty faces with bulging veins and mad haircuts and clipped eyebrows and gold earrings – all trying to look like their James Cagney in Islington. And the dialogue is literally amazing. There must have a huge amount of improvisation to get it this fresh – and it’s why the film feels so earthed in reality.

The BLU RAY picture is defaulted to Full Screen and looks amazing. Rap tunes by Tinie Tempah, Boy Better Know, Wiley and Dizzee Rascal punctuate the film and there’s great “Making Of” Extras including West End Premier footage, the "Hype Hype Thing" video by Boy Better Know and Deleted Scenes. The lone subtitle is English For The Hard Of Hearing (can you imagine translating this into other languages).

Directed by ADAM DEACON and DANIEL TOLAND - this funky little British movie seemed to come out of nowhere in 2011 – fresh, loud and as snotty as a thieving hoodie in the men’s grooming department of Tescos.

Get this brilliant London "Boyz N The Hood" parody into your life as soon as possible and "smash it up my guy". You know I'm talking 'bout you bro…