One Battle After Another, The Corpse Bride and Springsteen, Deliver Me From Nowhere

 

I almost avoided One Battle After Another when I found it was two and a half hours long. But I'm very glad I gritted my teeth as this film from director Paul Thomas Anderson is a five star belter. He is inspired by another Thomas Pynchon novel after his Inherent Vice, It turns out to be a great action movie that has very decent dialogue that rattles along so you have no time to be bored. Somewhat of a departure for lead Leonardo de Caprio as one pretty stupid idealist who has to rely on others to survive. 

The soundtrack is especially splendid, from The Shirelles 1962  hit Soldier Boy to Tom Petty's American Girl, Survivor's Eye of the Tiger, and tracks from Steely Dan, The Ramsey Lewis Trio and many others. It was transported back to 1962, I'm seventeen and listing songs played on Radio Luxemburg. All alternate with Johnny Greenwood's fine score.

Critic Nick Bradshaw tells us that after a long prologue, we get "two screen hours of pell-mell, crazy-quilt cat-and-mouse caper". And that there is so much to relish". Mark Kermode said that it is "Genuinely breathtaking", and Tom Shone in his five star review in the Sunday Times says is "feels so instantly and unmistakably a classic" and "probably Anderson's best film".  

The 20th anniversary of Tim Burton's animation The Corpse Bride was playing non stop in my local Odeon cinema. I cannot remember seeing it before and I was glad I had saved it for the big screen. I did not know that it was partly a musical especially in the first half, but that suited the story. The speaking actors are all excellent and I particularly liked the skeleton's dance. 

See my post of 31st October 2024 for "Inside Cinema Episode 51 - Beyond Aardman"

For the most pretentious title title this year to a decent biopic of Bruce Springsteen. I liked how it concentrated on the gestation of the album Nebraska that was all new to me. There are flashbacks and one tiny flash forward, but the film is mainly set  in a rented house in Colts Neck, New Jersey where Bruce hid away to write some very personal songs for the next album. It followed the hugely popular album The River that Springsteen toured with The E Street Band. But he was not expecting that a full backing band would destroy the meaning of these songs. There is enough on places like Wikipedia not to have to detail here. 

I was impressed with the Oscar worthy performance of Jeremy Allen White, an actor I had never seen before. And Jeremy Strong was also good as Jon Landau, as was Stephen Graham as Springsteen's father.  I was also amazed to find that Odessa Young,  who plays a fictional waitress in a major supporting role, was cast in the lead as Jane Fairchild in the movie Mothering Sunday.   Overall I was pleasantly surprised at how good the story was. Add in some of Bruce's best tracks and a couple of marvelous poignant moments courtesy of director Scott Cooper, and the nearly two hours was just right.