The Debt, Take Shelter and My Week With Marilyn

Struggling to find a decent film locally a couple of weeks ago, I took myself off to "Senior Screen", the cut price Wednesday morning showing for us oldies. I thought "The Debt" was a strange choice, but the cinema was packed with lots of us hoping for a rare, decent thriller. What we got was a slightly unsatisfying plot, that felt it must be based on a true story, but wasn't. The action alternates between 1997 where three ex Mossad agents reflect on their mission in 1966. The reflective and stilted drama of the later scenes seem to sit uneasily with the excitement of their capturing of "the surgeon of Birkenau". It doesn't help that Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson and Ciaran Hands (though all very good) look nothing like the actors who play their parts in 1966. Jessica Chastain is excellent as Mirren's younger self, and surely could have been made to look 30 years older. The suspense as the mission unfolds is quite something, but all to soon we are back to 1997. There the big twist leaves us with a gripping finale. If only Chastain had been in the final scenes, it might have been the wonderful film it was trying to be.

A movie that tries to be intelligent and original, "Take Shelter" is a decent enough attempt, but a punchier and more dynamic direction could have made it so much better. We never really know if the hallucinations suffered by Michael Shannon in the lead role are real, imagined or prophetic. But the drama plays out very well as Shannon worries he has inherited his mother's schizophrenia. The look and feel of the movie created by director Jeff Nichols is superb. But the highlight for me was Jessica Chastain as the beleaguered wife. The same actress who was so good in "The Debt" and as Celia Foote in last month's "The Help". Within the space of a few weeks, she has established herself as a brilliant performer, especially as you would not think it was the same woman in any of the three movies.

Although "My Week With Marilyn" had moderate reviews, I thought it was an excellent film. First I have to mention the screenplay by Adrian Hodges from the memoir by Colin Clark. I thought it struck just the right tone, with plenty of great quips and one liners along the way. Michelle Williams is quite staggering as a sympathetic Marilyn and Kenneth Branagh does justice to Laurence Olivier's starstruck but bullying co-star and director of  the production of  "The Prince and the Showgirl". Their off screen trauma is probably reflected in the finished movie of 1956. The period setting is good to look at and ably filmed by director Simon Curtis, whether inside Pinewood Studios or when it follows Marilyn outside. There are a number of quite wonderful cameos from a host of British acting talent. Even the three Americans who accompany Marilyn are Brits; Dougray Scott (unrecognisable as Arthur Miller), Zoe Wanamaker and Dominic Cooper are all very good. Judi Dench steals every scene in which she appears as Dame Sybil Thordike, closely followed by Toby Jones, Derek Jacobi, Simon Russell Beale and Michael Kitchen. We were, perhaps, a little distracted by the short appearance of so many classy actors. Shame about Emma Watson. But Eddie Redmayne does well as the 23 year old Colin Clark, who has wangled a postion as third director, and around whose "week" the story is told. Not quite in the same class as "The King's Speech" or "Made in Dagenham", but very, very close.