This month it’s glamour and glitz in equal measure at the movies
When you’re not down watching classics like Jaws and ET at “Brighton’s Big Screen” you might like to check out three star studded offerings at your local multiplexes.
Jersey Boys
Jersey Boys is a musical biography of the Four Seasons-the rise, the tough times and personal clashes, and the ultimate triumph of a group of friends whose music became symbolic of a generation.
Far from a mere tribute concert, Jersey Boys gets to the heart of the relationships at the center of the group-with a special focus on frontman Frankie Valli, the small kid with the big falsetto.
In addition to following the quartet’s coming of age as performers, the core of the show is how an allegiance to a code of honour learned in the streets of their native New Jersey got them through a multitude of challenges: gambling debts, Mafia threats and family disasters.
Jersey Boys is a glimpse at the people behind a sound that has managed to endure for over four decades in the hearts of the public. Clint Eastwood directs this stylish and yet often dark and gruelling master class in the art of filmmaking.
4/5 from me and out late June
Grace of Monaco
The story of former Hollywood star Grace Kelly’s crisis of marriage and identity, during a political dispute between Monaco’s Prince Rainier III and France’s Charles De Gaulle, and a looming French invasion of Monaco in the early 1960s.
Grace Of Monaco has its share of toe-curling, Diana-style moments. In particular, the scenes in which Grace makes small talk with opera star Maria Callas (Paz Vega) are excruciating.
The jokes about whales’ penises cracked by Callas’ husband, shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis (Robert Lindsay in a role a long way removed from Citizen Smith days), fall very flat. There are moments when the film plays like a Riviera-version of Dynasty. Some of the dialogue – “politics is never on vacation Miss Callas” – is clunky in the extreme.
However, for all the crudity of its plotting, this is a subtle and stylised character study. Watching the film, it is easy to be reminded of Gloria Swanson’s famous line from Sunset Boulevard, “we didn’t need dialogue, we had faces.”
The director understands the power of the close-up and in doing so has created an excellent study mired by some lame mismanaged scripting and plot holes!
3/5 and that’s just because I love Roth and Kidman so much – out on the 6 th June
Chef
A chef who loses his restaurant job starts up a food truck in an effort to reclaim his creative promise, while piecing back together his estranged family.
Written, produced and directed by the modern maestro that is Jon Favreau.
Starring Scarlett Johansson, Robert Downey Jr, Sofía Vergara, Dustin Hoffman, John Leguizamo and Jon Favreau, this is hilarious in parts and full of good meaning sentiment. It never gets too mushy and Favereau yet again shows us how America can still do funny and fancy in equal measure.
4/5 and out late June too!
That’s it from me for this month. See you at the Big Screen!