Deborah Ross

Just as Les Mis was soaringly monotonous, Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away (3D) is soaringly pointless. No point to it whatsoever. I looked. I looked everywhere for a point, even under my cinema seat. (That’s how desperate I was.) But I came up empty-handed. It’s 90 minutes of sheer, total, utter pointlessness, as written and directed by Andrew Adamson (who directed the first two Shreks and the first two Chronicles of Narnia) and produced by James Cameron, who has made some good films, and Titanic. God knows what they were thinking of when they embarked on this. And boredom doesn’t even come near it. I experienced the sort of boredom that is also a seething rage spread thin. What am I doing here? When’s it going to end? Why did anyone imagine this was even a film?

I cannot tell you about all the things Steven Spielberg can and cannot do. I cannot tell you, for example, if he can make decent goblets from Quality Street wrappers or funny teeth from orange peel, as I can, but what I am able to say is this: he knows how to tell a story; where to start it, where to finish it, what to do with all those fiddly bits in the middle. And although Lincoln is a film that pays fantastically close attention to politics — not a negative per se, but unless you are on top of your American history you may occasionally find yourself scratching your head — its narrative swoop largely takes the legislative detail in its stride, plus the star is Daniel Day-Lewis, which is always a thing. He is not so much an actor, more a shape shifter.

Here is a Quentin Tarantino film that, like all Quentin Tarantino films, is a typical Quentin Tarantino film, in the style of Quentin Tarantino, in that he takes a familiar trope, nods at it, toys with it, pokes it about, swills it round his mouth, then blows the whole thing up. I wonder if he was like this as a little boy. I wonder if his mother ever said to him, ‘Quentin. I love you. You’re my son. But if you keep stringing the other kids along so exploitatively and then blowing everything up in their poor faces they aren’t going to want to play with you. I don’t know where you get it from. Now, go tidy your room, dear, before I slice off your ear and shoot out your stomach so blood splatters out the front, out the back and up the wall. Run along.

Les Misérables is one of the longest-running, most popular stage musicals in history, having been seen by 60 million people in 42 countries — sit on that, Cats! — and although I can’t comment on the live show, as I’ve never seen it, I can tell you this film, which comes in at around 140 hours, boils down to a lot of fuss and singing (of the jaw-straining variety) about a very minor parole offence. I’m telling you, if I’d ever Dreamed a Dream, whether In Time Gone By or In My Local Starbucks, that so many jaws would strain so much for so little, I’d feel completely satisfied, but otherwise? I’m not so sure. Directed by Tom Hooper, with a stellar, A-list cast — sit on that, all other casts!

Wow! Just: wow! Life of Pi may be the most ravishingly beautiful film I have ever seen. It’s stunning. It’s gorgeous. Its visual inventiveness made me want to weep for joy. It is magical realism made magical and realistic. The palette of colours is extraordinary. You will feel you are in the sea and above the clouds and as if you are on a boat with a Bengal tiger too. Wow! Just: wow! But, weirdly, while enraptured by its look, its emotions never seemed especially pressing, and as for the spiritual journey, it didn’t exactly float my own particular boat. Is it saying a belief in God always makes life a better story than one without a God? That this is why we require faith? Is it advocating a Life of Pi-ety?

Michael Haneke’s Amour is about love as we near the end of life and is so painful it isn’t a film to ‘like’ or ‘enjoy’ but is one you do have to see. It’s amazing. It is, effectively, two hours and seven minutes of watching someone die, but it is riveting, and I’m still jangling from it. Haneke has taken the ordinary — getting old; dying; happens to us all; no exceptions — and has transformed it into something so literate, powerful, terrifying, intelligent and extraordinary. I’m still jangling from it, and expect to jangle until at least next Wednesday, if not Friday week. Actually, that’s overoptimistic. This is one of those films that, I suspect, is going to stay with me for life, and I’d best get used to it.

Mother’s Milk is an adaptation of Edward St Aubyn’s novel of the same name and is about an English family who are about to lose their beloved holiday house in Provence. (Diddums, I’m minded to say, but only because I’ve never had a holiday house in Provence to lose, and am quite bitter about that.) Although I am generally a fan of this sort of in-action film — a family go away, there are tensions, they return home again — this is just too hopelessly faithful to the text. Huge chunks of it are spouted all over the shop.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master is his first film since There Will Be Blood and although it stars Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman, who give two of the most blistering performances you will see for an unspecified time period — usually, the form is to say ‘this year’, but how do I know? I’m not psychic! — it is all so enigmatic and underwritten I felt rather shut out. A ‘challenging’ film is one thing, but one that actually slams the door in your face is quite another, as well as rude. Heck, I’m mother to a teenager and can stay at home if I want to be shut out and have doors slammed in my face. It’s a pity, though.

I don’t know quite what I was thinking when I went to see this film as it is full of everything I personally hate. Low-life gangsters. Drugs. Violence. Liberal use of ‘pussy’ and the c-word, which I loathe so much I cannot say it myself. My son, when he was little, once overheard it somewhere and asked me what it meant and I said it was a sort of German bundt cake, but crispier, and for years I lived in terror he would be presented with a German bundt, but crispier, and exclaim, ‘Wow, great c-word!’ — but this isn’t about the film, is it? So, the film. Yes, it’s full of everything I personally hate but this does not, necessarily, make it a hateful film. It is well acted.

The perks of being a wallflower are few and far between, in my experience, and I’m not even convinced you can be a wallflower if you are as ravishing as, say, Emma Watson, who modelled for Burberry whenever her Harry Potter schedule would allow, which isn’t the way it usually works for wallflowers, but what do I know, really? In fact, this being a teenage coming-of-age drama, I will now hand over to a teenager, although not a willing one, as he is anxious to escape to ‘top field’ to do ‘nothing’ with ‘just people’. Still, I have bribed him with the promise of a tenner and a lifetime supply of Lynx (Africa) and so here he is, quizzing me: What is it about? And be quick, as I have to go top field to do nothing with just people.

Holy Motors is so mad, deranged, lunatic, bonkers, cuckoo and away with the fairies that, if you were on a bus, and saw it boarding, you’d pray it didn’t sit next to you, although, knowing your luck, it probably would. That said, maybe you shouldn’t be quite so prissy and stand-offish. This film is a wacky ride, as well as a crazy, insane and off-the-wall one, but it is also peculiarly involving, exhilarating and unforgettable. I am still picking it out of my teeth, as if it were yesterday’s lamb chop, unlike the film I saw last week, whatever it was. (Was it good? Did I like it?) This is written and directed by the French auteur Leos Carax, who hasn’t made a full-length film for over a decade, and is obviously a bit of a one.

Hope Springs is a comedy drama about a long-term marriage that has effectively stalled, and is one of those films that is only as good as its stars. Luckily, in this instance, the stars are Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones. Meryl, we know about. I once had dinner with Meryl, and have talked of little else since, until I realised it got on everybody’s nerves, but have gaily continued nonetheless. She is the greatest film actress of her generation, our generation, any generation. She could play my left shoe, if she put her mind to it. She may even be playing my left shoe right now. How would I know? But Mr Lee Jones? (I don’t feel matey enough to call him by his first name.) He has a face like an old-style leather football that’s been left out in the rain, year after year.

Joe Wright’s adaptation of Anna Karenina is so bold and audacious its bold audacity becomes the story, rather than the actual story itself. This is both a strength — it is always visually dazzling, inventive and surprising — and a weakness, as it is so goddamn distracting. The entire action, more or less, is set in an old decaying theatre beneath a proscenium arch with its own backstage, balconies and rat runs, and an origami-ish ability to fold in on itself, or fold out on itself to become ballroom or bedroom, and even horse-race track. According to Wright, this makes sense as high society in Tsarist Russia was all about performance, and fakery — their whole world was truly a stage — but it is also mise en scène gone totally mental.

It’s a brave soul who buys a cinema ticket at this time of year, when all the studios try to bury their rubbish, and it’s a brave soul who buys a ticket to The Watch. This is a comedy starring Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Jonah Hill and Richard Ayoade as four suburban men who take on an alien invasion in their neighbourhood. Actually, there are some good things about this film, which I will list here: * It does end, eventually. * ...nope, that’s it. And the bad things: * I did not laugh the once. I do not believe I even smiled, mildly. * This wants to be (I think) Invasion of the Body Snatchers via Ghostbusters and Attack the Block but succeeds in being nothing but its own dreadful, pitiful, tedious self.

OK, let’s get this over with quickly so we can all hurry back to watching the Olympics. I’m obsessed by the Olympics (Go, Mo, go!; Yes, Jess, yes!) and all our gold medals. It’s like we can’t stop being showered with them. In fact, I went to the corner shop just now and came back with four, after a standing ovation! So is 360 worth tearing yourself away from, say,  the synchronised swimming — or ‘designer drowning’, as it is known in our house — for or not? It certainly has magnificent credentials. It is directed by Fernando Meirelles, who also directed The Constant Gardener and City of God, one of my favourite films of all time, for what it’s worth, which may not be much.

The greatest compliment I can pay Seth MacFarlane’s Ted is that although this is essentially one of those slacker, stoner comedies, and such comedies aren’t really my thing — too old, too tired, only once had a joint and it made me feel sick then my knees went  all funny — this did make me laugh quite a bit. It’s about a teddy bear that comes alive to fulfil the dream and friendship needs of a lonely little boy. Years later, the two are still living together, in a state of extended adolescence, although it is Ted who is the bad influence. Ted has a potty-mouth. Ted has a dirty mind. Ted smokes weed. Ted likes a drink. Ted is fond of hookers, even though he has no penis.

In the late 1960s, a Mexican-American singer-songwriter is signed to a record label after two Motown producers see him performing in a seedy Detroit dive called The Sewer. He delivers two albums, which receive rave reviews (he is compared to Bob Dylan; some say he is better than Bob Dylan), but nobody buys them, so he drops from sight, and would have stayed dropped from sight, but for one remarkable twist: unbeknownst to him, particularly as he never saw any royalties, he had become a massive hit in apartheid-era South Africa, outselling both Elvis and the Rolling Stones. The artist is Sixto Rodriguez and this film, his story, is the best, most touching, most humbling documentary I’ve ever seen about a musician I’ve never heard of.