Triangle, An Education and A Christmas Carol

I expected more from director Christopher Smith after his splendid Severance, but his new film Triangle was a disappointment, especially after some great reviews. The first half was OK, but setting Groundhog Day on a boat with added scary bits just did not work. I found it too repetitive and the ending was really poor. There were twists and some shocks along the way, the script was fine and Mellisa George did well in the lead role. An opportunity missed.

From the opening bars of Floyd Cramer's brilliant On the Rebound (who was the genius who chose this intro?), I settled back in my seat in eager anticipation. And what a movie was in store. The best I have seen in years. Everything was perfect. When the heroine is in her first year in sixth form in 1961, the same year as was I, there would always have been a connection. But when one American film critic in his twenties said he was overcome by emotion and happiness, it is a film for all. Where to start. Probably Nick Hornby, who wrote the wonderful screenplay, one of the authors whose books I always buy, from Fever Pitch to 31 Songs and A Long Way Down. Then the cast, all fabulous. Carey Mulligan was brilliant in the central role of Jenny, Alfred Molina equally so as her father and Olivia Williams as her teacher. All three should win Oscars. Peter Sarsgaard is fine as the creepy David, and his friends played by Dominic Cooper and Rosamund Pike would in any other movie sweep up awards. The director, Lone Scherfig, captures perfectly the tone of pre-Beatles 1961. Jenny finds it all boring, but that is not how I remember. The coffee bar she goes to with her school friends had no jukebox. But ours did. Perhaps it is that first year sixth thing, I remember the following year as being so much more interesting. Jenny finds excitement in another world. Her relationship with an older man was never going anywhere, but even if it was a con, and you fell in love, or thought you did, sometimes it is worth it to be the subject of such a relationship. Maybe you pay emotionally at the time, but looking back, you would not have missed it for the world.

What is Robert Zemeckis up to? His experimentation with motion capture become ever more boring. The Polar Express was a novelty, Beowulf tiresome and now the hugely disappointing A Christmas Carol. I think it must be that he cannot write a screenplay. I could forgive him for the originality of The Polar Express, but his adaptation of Dickens is a complete disaster. And it's November for heaven's sake!