Larry Oliver Film Reviews

  The last Jane Austen adaptation I watched was Pride and Prejudice and Zombies . But Emma scripted by New Zealander Eleanor Catton and directed by the American photographer and pop video maker, Autumn de Wilde, proves that you don’t have to mess with Austen to give an audience a good time. De Wilde understands both visual pleasure and physical comedy and employs them in abundance. Emma is the first Jane Austen adaptation I have wanted to re-watch almost immediately. Alas, after a month it which grossed £7 million at the box office, it is finishing its run in the UK. By comparison, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies made just $1 million here. Proof, if ever you needed it, that bonnets and the living dead don’t go well together. Most Americans know the novel as the inspiration for director Amy Heckerling’s contemporary teen comedy Clueless , which relocated the action to Beverly Hills and gave star Alicia Silverstone her biggest solo hit. It turns out that social status and inherite...

  There can never be enough films in which a stranger comes to town and says, ‘I’m going to open a ...’ - please complete sentence. Juliette Binoche opened a cake shop in Chocolat . Fancy? Seriously, she sold fancies. In The Bookshop , adapted by Spanish writer-director Isabel Coixet ( Learning to Drive, Elergy ) from Penelope Fitzgerald’s celebrated 1978 novel, a young-ish widow, Florence Green (Emily Mortimer) moves to the coastal town of Hardborough and has bought The Old House (that’s its name) with the intention of opening a bookshop. ‘A bookshop?’ cries leading toff Violet Gamart (Patricia Clarkson). She doesn’t object but she would rather Mrs Green opened it in a less central location, say in the premises of a local fishmonger. I can hear the conversation: ‘do you want kippers or Kipling? Plaice or Plath?‘ Florence is not deterred from her mission. The house is empty. She has acquired it. A bookshop would be a suitable way to honour her late husband, though she never displ...

  There is a critical orthodoxy that films about filmmaking don’t make money at the box office. This doesn’t stop them from trying. Admittedly, director Robert Altman’s The Player (1992) got rave reviews and earned $28.2 million on release – cameos from Julia Roberts and Bruce Willis didn’t hurt.  But it is not a reliable genre. For the record, the top eleven types of film likely to make money are:  Superhero movies Action adventures  Science fantasy (or just plain fantasy) epics  Horror films (frequently a good return)   Suspense thrillers (off-shoot from the above)   Buddy cop movies  Romantic comedies   War movies (front line)  Sports movies (winners only) / Dance movies (e.g. Step Up )  Biographies featuring a star transformed for the leading role Run a list of the top-grossing films in almost any country - I would rule out India and Nigeria - and these genres will appear again and again. (Should have stuck to ten, I know.)...