There is a lot of noise around this movie and with good reason as well. This is almost a secret topic that people of my generation don't know about. Official Secrets is about the leak of an NSA and GCHQ email attempting to fix a vote before the Iraq war in 2003.
Katharine Gun was a 27/8 year old analyst attending work on a normal day when she got the email that caused her to start questioning the war. I was six years old when my country decided to go to war thanks to the decisions of Tony Blair and George W Bush. I didn't know anything about this war other than that the world had been lied to about Sadaam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction.
Keira Knightley took on the role of Katharine Gun and let's start with the normal differences. The real footage from the trial is shown at the end and Katharine Gun has blonde hair. Knightley has brown hair. Now that we've got that tiny difference out in to the air let's actually talk about the events in this movie.
Since watching this movie I have started studying this war and trying to learn as much as I can about it. The movie opens with Katharine Gun being presented at her trial and then goes back to opening with setting the scene. She lives in Cheltnham with her husband. She sits there watching the news on the tensions between Iraq and other UN nations and argues against what is being said. She then goes to work and we learn that she is working on the Chinese analysis. She receives an email which makes her uncomfortable and she doesn't know what to do about it so she goes to see a friend who is part of the Anti-War movement. She says that she wants to give them the email so that they can look in to it and then regardless of what happens, her conscience is clear.
We see her copy the email to floppy disk and then print the email and sneak it out. She cuts off the head of the email and passes it on. We watch her become nervous and look anxiously for any signs that something has been done with her information until she goes to meet her friend again to enquire about it.
The email was about forcing the smaller countries in the UN to vote for war. Eventually the email gets handed to a journalist writing for 'The Observer' called Martin Bright ( Matt Smith) and after a lot of digging he manages to obtain that there could be genuine truth to the email and publishes a story on it.
GCHQ start interviewing everyone and whilst Katharine survives her first interview, she becomes increasingly paranoid and decides to own up to prevent her colleagues and friends from having to continually go though these interviews. She risks her job, her freedom and even her husband who is facing deportation to make the public aware but she does just that and she captures our hearts whilst we are watching, She is defended by Ralph Fiennes as her lawyer from Liberty and he is utterly fantastic as a lawyer. He shows passion and determination to obtain all the information that he needs to argue that the war was an illeagle war and therefore Katharine is not guilty.
These are probably the best performances I have seen from both Knightley and Fiennes. I thought that his performance in 'The Constant Gardener' was outstanding and this is just as good, if not slightly better. This time as a supporting role, he really shines and shows qualities that are often missed in Hollywood portrayals of lawyers. Keira Knightley really has become a much better actor as she has grown older. There was a lot of passion in this performance but also a really measured performance from her. She didn't become overly emotional and gave a really moving performance.
I spent the entire film moving around. I was determined to not take my eyes off the screen and I felt myself being pulled in to the movie at times. There were moments of laughter but I didn't want to miss anything that this movie had to offer. I absolutely love films that have historical relevance to them and having done some research in to this movie, I can see that the script spent about five years not being picked up. It seemed like this movie was never going to be made and that would have been a huge shame. This movie needed to be made to educate and to also show the strength of Katharine Gun. This is a woman who has moved out of the UK because she struggled to work after leaking this email. The events were historically accurate and that made me happy. I was angry with the British government for forcing her to appear in court and spend one entire year in total unrest before announcing that they had decided not to prosecute her; a decision that they had made one year earlier.
I am personally very glad that Matt Smith left Doctor Who. It is good to see him showcase his talent on the big screen. I think that he has a bright future ahead of him. If anyone has seen 'The Post' that was released a few years ago then they will see the similarities with this movie. Smith's character is similar to that of Tom Hanks in 'The Post' but Matt Smith is better in this movie than Tom Hanks was in that movie.
This movie is a movie of determination. Katharine is determined, Martin is determined and Ben (Fiennes) is determined. Without their determination it could have been a very different story. Martin and Ben did most of the work after Katharine had been charged. Katharine Gun broke the official secrets act but she did it to make sure that the British people were not being lied to and that is something to be admired. Ben and Martin tracked down everyone that they needed to and called for questionable documents to be brought to light and by doing so they forced the government to cancel the trial and left Katharine walk free.
Wherever you are, make sure that you see this movie. Knightley deserves an award for this film. I know that I said the same about Renee Zellwegger in 'Judy' and even though I am a huge fan of musicals, I actually think that this performance from Knightley is better and more deserving of the award. I have never thought much of her as a leading lady before now but my opinion of her has changed.
Watch it, learn about it and appreciate it for a fantastic script and fantastic casting. This movie will help you learn about a very important and forgotten figure in British Political History. I respect you Katharine Gun and thank you for doing what you did.
The first thing to say is that I would love for anyone with a lot of knowledge surrounding the comic character to comment on this post and help me out because it is difficult to write an accurate, factual review on this movie.
Just from watching the adverts I was not convinced about this movie. Joaquin Phoenix can do weird and crazy well but there is another side to the joker as well that just seemed to be missing from the trailers. The Joker is the one character who seems to make a new appearance on the superhero/villain scene with a new actor every five years or so. The question that I felt needed to be asked is "do we really need another interpretation of the Joker"? Especially considering that this movie was a DC movie and by definition, the best they can be is 'decent'. Looking back over the movies that they have made since 'The Dark Knight Rises', 'Superman: Man of Steel' was a good movie, 'Batman Vs Superman' was shocking, 'Suicide Squad' was a total flop, 'Wonderwoman' was actually decent, 'Justice League' was so terrible that I turned it off after ten minutes and I haven't even bothered to watch Aquaman. That's two decent movies out of the last six which is very poor considering that 'the lego batman' movie was better than any DC film featuring Batman since the Christian Bale series.
In this stand alone movie, The Joker is revealed to be called Arthur Fleck. My problem with naming the Joker and giving him a real back story is that there isn't much substance to support it. From the first introduction of this villain in the very first issue of Batman, he had no explanation and no back story. He was given no name and no parents. In 'The Dark Knight', Heath Ledger's Joker gives three different reasons as to how he got his scars, one of which involved his father and another involving his wife. He doesn't name them and because he gives multiple stories you don't believe that any of them are true. In Tim Burton's movie in 1989, Tommy Lee Jones portrays a character called Jack Napier who then becomes the Joker through the same methods described in the comics. In the Netflix series 'Gotham' the Valaska brothers are modelled on 'The Joker' and in this movie, Arthur Fleck is revealed to be 'The Joker'. My first issue with this is that if you are going to do a back story then use a name which has already been used. No one knows the real name of the Joker so why not try to use the same name and make the audience connect the characters in their heads?
In this movie, Arthur is a guy who isn't good at education. His writing is readable but not great, his speech is a little interesting and he doesn't come across as a guy who has an interest and talent for Chemical Engineering. In this movie he is a weird guy, suffering from mental health issues who doesn't eat, dances around, has no friends and works as a clown whilst living with his mother. You don't look at this guy and think that he is going to become potentially the worlds biggest super villain. No way can you look at this guy on the screen and think that. He's delusional, he thinks about killing himself and he kills people because he is crazy but he doesn't seem like a criminal mastermind who has thought out everything.
I have to agree with the review in the Guardian. After he kills three boys on a train you lose interest in the movie. I felt like I was watching a history documentary where the murder of three innocent people triggered riots and revolts across the city. That is pretty much what happened in this movie and it just wasn't interesting. There wasn't any real action in this movie and it made it really hard to enjoy the movie. Joaquin Phoenix was good but he has given better performances.
This movie is an interesting interpretation but it is very personalised in many ways and I highly doubt that it will become a box office hit just because it isn't the type of movie that you would go and see again with your other friends who didn't make it the first time around. Honestly, I don't even think that it is the type of movie that you can enjoy with your friends. It didn't trigger anything inside of me, I wasn't bored but I wasn't engaged. I wasn't angry, I was more just wondering why this movie was made. In this movie they hint that Arthur Fleck could be the son of Thomas Wayne, which would make him the brother of Batman but I can't recall ever reading about it in the comics or seeing that mentioned anywhere else so I wonder why they did it? The end of this movie also removes the league of Shadows from 'Batman Begins' and ruins the start of that movie, they don't follow on from each other but this one is trying to lead in to it and failing. I hear rumours that Robert Pattinson has been cast as Batman, which will be shocking, so maybe they will re-do all the movies and make them more terrible than some of them already are which means that this movie would finally fit in somewhere.
I would be interested to know if there is any original material out there, as in, material from the start when the Joker was just kicking off or was originally developed, that suggests his relationship with Thomas Wayne or his name? I'd like to know where the script writers got this idea from.
Yep, the Judy Garland movie.
It's not really a musical, it's more of a musical biography type of film, focusing really on her last year or so of life and her arrival and time in London.
The films flashes back to her time on the set of 'The Wizard of Oz' and explains a lot about her and why she is so skinny and so messed up. The film is more what I would have considered to be a 'classic' musical movie rather than a musical. So it cannot be compared to Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocketman, A Star is Born or Yesterday.
Renee Zellweger takes on the role of Judy Garland and I was very impressed with her. Renee became known for taking on the role of Bridget Jones and at times, that role can be very irritating (especially her accent) but she has become a more selective actress and only takes on roles which are different and challenge her. This role is different to any role I have seen her perform and I wouldn't necessarily have known that it was her, had I not have seen the adverts and actually read up on the film before going to see it.
This movie really gives you an incite in to what the life is like when you make your name young. People don't want you to gain weight in the middle of a movie so you can't eat cake or anything fast or sugar-y. Instead you are given pills and your sleep and diet is impacted. I have no first hand experience in the film industry so I can't say that this is what it is like but I imagine that something similar would occur as people notice when the character puts on weight midway through the movie.
I would not doubt that when she was starting her acting and singing career, her life was controlled by the studio and the pills.
Something that was really highlighted in the movie was Judy's inability to recognise her own mistakes and to learn from them. She turned up late, she was rude to the audience at times and at times, collapsed on stage. It was impossible to get her the real money that she could have earned in her later years because she wasn't reliable and was practically impossible to work with. It has been said in a lot of movies that when people get famous, they want all of the privileges but none of the responsibility.
Renee Zellweger is singing. This was something that I wasn't sure about because in some movies the actors mostly lip sync but sing a small amount. I knew that Renee could sing because she sings in 'Empire Records' but her voice was nowhere near as good so I wasn't sure if it was just a recording of Garland being played in the background. I am pleased that she is actually singing as it makes for a better movie and a better performance. Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga did it live in 'A Star is Born' and that made their performances a lot better. You can't reenact that emotion that you actually when you perform live. No matter how good the actor, you can always tell when they aren't singing live because the music is inside of you, it sparks something which changes every time that you perform and so to act something sporadic and unpredictable is practically impossible.
I didn't know anything about Judy Garland because she is way before my time. I knew that she was dead and I have seen a few of her movies. I never found her to be as appealing as Ginger Rodgers or Audrey Hepburn but she was better than average. She could sing and she could dance which is what matters. I am amazed that so many people went to see her show in London after all of the negative press coming from around America. Judy Garland was homeless, she lived in a hotel until she was unable to take on enough paid performing work to cover the bills and then left her kids with their dad so that she could go and perform in London to earn enough money to buy a home for herself and her kids to live in. That didn't work out because she was late, rude to the audience and collapsed on stage and so she ended up with nothing but a fifth marriage problem and potential divorce (although she couldn't pay for the divorce) and nothing to live with.
Her marriage issues are also highlighted in this movie. Rufus Sewell plays 'Sid', the children's father and he managed her but had problems because she was always late and impossible to work with. In this movie, Garland portrays him as a pathetic figure who can't afford anything and hasn't contributed anything to the world but he actually has a house and looks after the kids. She needs someone who will devote themselves to her, sort out all of her problems without changing her and that just doesn't work out because in real life you can't just wash away all the negative press surrounding someone and convince people in the movies and theatre that they want to take on someone who has a really bad reputation.
I don't know if this was an accurate portrayal but if it was then I not only think that it was done very well but it also teaches a lot about fame and about what it can do to people. It's one thing to work hard to become famous but another thing entirely to keep working hard and avoid the drugs and alcohol when you get there. Fame ruins a lot of people and often claims their lives on top of their careers.
Hats off to Renee Zellweger for this performance. Side notes to Rufus Sewell and Michael Gambon who were both excellent.
Jessie Buckley is starting to make a name for herself (which considering that she originates from the same place my family do, is a hard thing to do!) and Darci Shaw is also one to watch out for. She was almost perfect as young Judy.
Watch it. Enjoy it and just admire Zellweger's performance.
Hi all,
Apologies for the delay- have been away and unable to write a blog post on a movie that I watched about two weeks ago.
I watched the Fast and Furious franchise in random order and had no idea about the plot or characters featuring in this movie but I like the idea of most action movies which star Jason Statham and Dwayne Johnson.
What can I say about this movie?
Lots of action, a British bad guy to go with a British protagonist and a plot based around Deckard Shaw's sister. The music is fantastic and the final stand is a sight to behold. Moving to Samoa to fight brings a different element to the franchise and makes it more enjoyable for a lot of fans. The technology also helps to bring a different element to this movie. It's more what you would expect from two heavy weights in the same movie.
Is there the standard, typical, car chase that has to feature in every movie to make it worthy of the title? Not that I recall but possibly. There is one of those 'let's all lock together to ring down an aeroplane' scene but nothing that really screams that this is a Fast and Furious movie other than a few characters who have featured in previous movies.
I will say that Vin Diesel does not feature in this movie. This is a sort of spin off and so his character doesn't actually feature.
If you like action movies, cars and stunts then you'll enjoy this movie.
A huge shout out to Helen Mirren who is fantastic as Deckard Shaw's mother. Her birthday cake is fantastic and she has some of the most comical lines in the entire movie. Adding her in to this franchise when they did was one of the better choices that they made about the direction that the franchise was going in.
This movie really is about Deckard Shaw. His sister becomes a target of a man called 'Brixton' (Idris Elba) as she is working for the Government, transporting a virus when her team is attacked and she manages to escape with the Virus by injecting herself with it. Both Shaw and Hobbs get assigned this case respectively and have to work together in order to take down Brixton and the forces behind him. It takes only the entire movie for them to actually be able to work together but they all manage it in the end.
This movie is just another way to have fun. Watching this movie is a decent way of spending an evening. It is one of those that you can enjoy with family and friends or just on your own. Neither Statham nor Johnson can really act, they just get cast in movies that need people who look strong and can perform stunts well. They get type cast but that isn't always a bad thing. So long as you don't expect world class acting then you are not going to be disappointed with this movie.
Watch it, enjoy it and let me know your thoughts on it.
