An awesome and ridiculous film that leaves you thrilled beyond the point of your natural endurance
2012
Theatre
The show has suddenly become quite wonderful, and the galvanising factor is the terrific stage debut of Melanie C
Blood Brothers
Music
The British pop music industry may be eating itself but if Muse are the pick of what it can offer the world in 2010 then British music is in rude health indeed
Muse
I was smitten by both Gilberts enormous luxuriant moustache and the intelligence and nuance of this highly entertaining play
I totally recommend Babbo to anyone who is looking for really good and traditional Italian food
Always been a fan but never seen them live. I was ecstatic to be part of this epic event. WOW!
London,
Charlotte O'Sullivan's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Tamara Jenkins.
Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Laura Linney, Philip Bosco
Description: Jon Savage and his sister Wendy are virtual strangers. He is a neurotic drama professor, idly swatting away the trivial questions of his students, while she is trying to generate interest in a subversive, semi-autobiographical play about her childhood entitled Wake Me When It's Over. When their cantankerous father Lenny (Philip Bosco) finally succumbs to dementia, Jon and Wendy contemplate moving him to a care facility. As guilt threatens to cloud their judgment, Jon surveys with situation with his usual, brutal honesty: "We're taking better care of the old man than he ever did of us."
Country: US. 2006. 114mins
Annie Hall for the noughties: Oscar nominee Laura Linney & Philip Seymour Hoffman
A sister calls her brother in the middle of the night: their father is in trouble and they have to go to his rescue. The brother refuses to get excited. As he very reasonably points out: "We are not in a Sam Shepard play."
Witty and knowing, this second feature by Tamara Jenkins (of Down and Out in Beverly Hills fame) is the kind of adult comedy that Woody Allen used to make. Wannabe writer Wendy Savage (Laura Linney) is an Annie Hall for the Noughties: neurotic, unreliable, gauche, pretentious, manipulative and very possibly talentless.
Yet her desperate, unflagging attempt to deal with her father's frailties - the irascible old man has no home and dementia - is so human you can't turn away. Even Wendy's little-girl hair-do makes sense by the end.
Jenkins clearly enjoys wrong-footing her audience. When we first meet Savage pere (Philip Bosco), we suspect he's going to be an anti-hero in the mould of Mrs Werthan in Driving Miss Daisy, or Norman in On Golden Pond. In fact, while his pain and confusion are often palpable, he is never made likeable.
As in last year's Away From Her (in which Julie Christie played a woman with Alzheimer's), the focus is on the spaces inhabited by the old and bewildered, rather than their well-springs of warmth and wisdom.
We can practically smell the cleaning products in the big, expensive home Wendy tries to get her dad into. Our own limbs cringe at the pokiness of the room he's eventually forced to call his own.
The script has its wayward moments: the very last scenes are horribly schmaltzy and very Hollywood. And Jenkins's direction is patchy - dreamily off-kilter at first, the visuals become increasingly pedestrian. Still, these are quibbles.
Philip Seymour Hoffman is piercingly dishevelled as Wendy's professor brother, Jon. His gift for slapstick is often under-used; here, in a neck brace, he has us in stitches. Linney, rightly, has been nominated for an Oscar.
She's the kind of actress who's always good, never vain. Even by her intense standards, though, she nails this part. Indeed, it will be hard to watch her in anything else - she is Wendy Savage.
It's hard to believe such an unglamorous part in such a low-budget film will bag the big prize. But for Wendy's sake - and on behalf of all the raddled flakes like her - you hope it happens.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
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