1408, Hallam Foe and Atonement

The children are all back to school and the summer season of blockbusters is over. Thank goodness we can now settle down to an autumn of more intelligent movies. These three all had modest budgets, and two were amazingly British.

The exception was "1408", a ghost story that was taken to a whole new level. The special effects were pretty scary, the best of all was when John Cusack loses his hearing and the film presses the mute button. It felt like when your ears pop during an aircraft descent. And the ending was left as ambiguous as it could. good stuff.

"Hallam Foe" was exceptional for just a small British (Scottish) film. I had to go to Milton Keynes to see it and even there it only lasted a week. That is why Stephen Poliakoff only puts his films on television. He says only a man and his dog would see them at the cinema, and that was true of Hallam Foe. Which is a shame, as the photography of the Scottish countryside and Edinburgh rooftops was superb. Jamie Bell deserves awards for his performance. The story was original with good dialogue and a pace fast enough to carry a slow plot.

I was so looking forward to "Atonement". The book by Ian McEwan was one of the best I have ever read. But I did wonder how it would translate to the big screen. And then I heard the cast and thought how exactly right that was and I was right. They did not let the film down. Nor did the script, the location photography (especially that in the street outside the cafe where Cecilia and Robbie say goodbye before he goes off to fight in France), the costumes and the music. What did, in my opinion, were the gaps between the dialogue in the first half. There nothing happens. Is it meant to be artistic? If so, it failed, as the pace is already as slow as it could be. It just did not need slowing even further. I wanted to scream "get on with it". The director gets it right in the second half where pictures of Dunkirk and a London hospital are full of action. I think I knew the story and the ending too well to be too critical, but that is probably why I am.