
RBC Film Club’s final film of this season was somewhat of a disappointment. The Ghost (2009) is based on the 2007 paranoid thriller of the same name by the English novelist and former political journalist Robert Harris, which he wrote while working with Roman Polanski on the screenplay for a film based on his earlier novel Pompeii (called off because of the actors strike). An unnamed ghost writer played by Ewan McGregor, sporting a grand cockney accent, is hired to sex-up and complete the former British Prime Minister Adam Lang’s memoirs, (Pierce Brosnan), after the previous ghost writer was found washed up on a bleak Atlantic beach following the discovery of his abandoned BMW on a car ferry. There’s an outstanding performance from Olivia Williams (An Education 2009, Sex Drugs& Rock & Roll 2010) as Ruth Lang who makes the wife of the ex PM seem totally believable unlike the hollow performance from Pierce Brosnan. The other high light of this relatively slow moving and drab film is the cameo from Eli Wallach as the ‘old man on the porch’ who spills the beans to McGregor on the death of the original ghost writer. I believe that Polanski was attempting to ‘do’ a Hitchcock and sure enough it does bring to mind North by Northwest (1959), which is not meant as a complement.
Written and directed by John Simpson, Freeze Frame (2004) is a dark psychological thriller. The film, which was shot in the Crumlin Road Jail in Belfast Northern Ireland, stars comedian Lee Evans as Sean Veil a man who was so traumatised by a near murder conviction that he constantly videotapes himself in case he is in need of a future alibi. Due to the video imagery this is a depressing and disorientating movie. Evans creepy performance is strangely disturbing substituting the frantic comedian into a frantic actor.
Greg Mottola drew on his own experiences when he wrote and directed 2008’s adolescent ‘comedy’ Adventureland. This coming of age movie is entirely predictable, quite boring and not very funny. The conventional plot involves James Brennan (Jessie Eisenberg The Squid and the Whale 2005) who has to cancel his dream summer vacation when his parents develop financial problems. Forced into taking a summer job at a tacky local amusement park he meets all sorts of orthodox wacky characters including Em (Twilight star Kristen Stewart) who he fools in love with. American Graffiti (1973) this certainly ain’t!
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