Rob Roy.

By all accounts Robert Roy MacGregor was quite a character, born in 1671 and dying in 1734 at the grand old age of 63. During his lifetime he was seen as an outlaw, a folk hero and a Jacobite.  At the age of eighteen Rob Roy joined with his father in support of the Stuart King, James the Second of England and fifth of Scotland. But as history has taught us the Stuart Kings and their supporters were not successful loosing out to the German House of Hanover. This led to Rob Roy’s father serving two years for treason and his mother who was in bad health not surviving to see her husband released. 

 

Portrait of Rob Roy MacGregor.

Even before his death Rob Roy became a legend in his own lifetime due to the publication in 1723 of a fictionalised account of his life called The Highland Rogue. In 1817 the great Scottish author Sir Walter Scott published his novel Rob Roy, although the ‘outlaw’ was not the main subject of Scoots historical novel the book formed the loose adaptation for the 1995 movie of the same title. The film stars Liam Neeson as Robert Roy MacGregor, Jessica Lange as his wife Mary, Tim Roth as the evil Englishman Archibald Cunningham and John Hurt as Montrose. Helming the movie was the Scottish born director of Scandal (1989), Michael Caton-Jones.

Our story starts in 1713 and we are in the Highlands of Scotland. When we first meet Rob Roy he is a well-known and respected cattleman and works for the Duke of Montrose chasing down rustlers of his lordship cattle.  With ambitions to be an entrepreneur and to this end he arranges a loan of £1000 to buy cattle and hopefully selling them at a good profit in the market at Carlisle. Sending a trusted friend Alan MacDonald (Eric Stoltz) to collect the coinage but unbeknown to both Roy and MacDonald, Montrose’s houseguest Archibald Cunningham and his Lordships Factor Killearn (Brian Cox) have hatched a plot to steel the money on route to Roy and make all and sundry believe that MacDonald has absconded to America with his newfound wealth. As a result of all this and because Rob Roy has no chance in paying back his loan he is branded an outlaw with burnings, violent death and rape the order of the day.   

 

John Hurt and Tim Roth.

Liam Neeson as the man himself. 

Once you get the lovey dovey nonsense out of the way the movie settles down into a great swashbuckling tale of violence and intrigue, the climactic sword scene is well worth waiting for and certainly stirs the blood.  Tim Roth stands head and shoulders above all the other fine acting won a BAFTA for his role as Archibald Cunningham.  One of the main supporting stars is the Highland landscape that includes Glen Coe, Glen Nevis and the Loch’s Morar and Leven and not forgetting the rain and the midges.  The main music was composed by Carter Burwell best known for his work with the Coen Brothers. We also not only get the hear her singing but we also have the pleasure of seeing Karen Matheson whose group Capercaille I have enjoyed in concert.

They even named a cocktail after him!

 

Love is Strange.

I came across the Memphis born film director Ira Sachs via his second feature film Forty Shades of Blue (2005). The movie starred the beautiful Russian actress Dina Korzun in which she played a trophy wife to Rip Thorns ageing music producer. Also featured in this movie was Darren E Burrows who coincidently appears in Sachs latest outing the romantic drama Love is Strange (2014), a character study of a gay couple whose lives are thrown into turmoil when that decide to get married after living together for 39 years.

 

Wedding Day.

This LGBT movie extends a successful genre to include a love story about two late middle-aged men. George (Alfred Molina) is sacked by the Catholic school were he has successfully worked for a number of years as a music teacher. His relationship with the 72-year-old Ben (John Lithgow) was well known by the staff, the pupils and their parents, and until they were legally married nothing had ever been said about their relationship. Now the Bishop wants him out after spotting their wedding photo’s on Facebook! Because of this change of circumstances their finances are very stretched and they realise that they will have to sell their Manhattan apartment, as they are unable to afford the mortgage. This leads to a crisis! George moves in with his neighbours, two gay policeman who love to party, and Ben stays with his nephew Elliot  (Burrows), Elliot's wife Kate (Marisa Tomei) and shares a room with their teenage son Joey (Charlie Tahan), both George and Ben are not happy with this new arrangement as they are forced to live apart.

 

Uncle Ben shares with family....

....while George shares with friends.

Sachs, who recently got married to his long-term partner, based many of the films characters on real life people and he portrays the two older middle class Academics as being very much in love and successfully pulls it off. The film has been described as a 'graceful tribute to the beauty of commitment in the face of adversity' and to that I would add meaningful and sincere. It's well written script gives the films cast a chance to excel and with some great cinematography from Christos Voudouris gives a depth to a story that at times is both sad and moving at the same time casting a warm glow over its watching audience who are treated to a rather agreeable love story.

The Grandmaster.

I must admit that this is the very first time I have been disappointed with a movie directed by one of my favourite directors Wong Kar-wai. Since falling in love with the man unique style in 2004 with 2046 and watching nearly his entire repertoire feature films since including Fallen Angels (1995), As Tears Go By (1988) and Chungking Express (1994), even his first English language film My Blueberry Night’s (2007) was very good. Here comes ‘the but’. His latest movie, for which he also wrote the story, The Grandmaster (2013) is a martial arts drama based on the life story of Ip Man a Chinese martial artist who specialised in Wing Chun ‘a form of self defence utilising both striking and grappling while specialising in close range combat’ or so I'm told. Ip Man was also credited with training global martial arts star Bruce Lee.

 

Gong Er.

I think if was aware of these facts before I watched the movie then it may have been more enjoyable, as it was it had a very jumbled narrative which at times made it difficult to understand what was going on. The most enjoyable scene in the film is at the end where we witness a verbal love scene between Ip Man and Gong Er that is reminiscent of Wong Kar-wai’s previous work.

A very inviting brothel.  

The film stars one of my favourite Chinese actresses Zhang Ziyi as Gong Er whose previous movies have included The Road Home (1999), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), Hero (2002), Purple Butterfly (2003), 2046 (2004) and the Academy Award winning Memoirs of a Geisha (2005). Tony Leung who has worked with the director on six other occasions and also appeared in Infernal Affairs (2002) and the erotic thriller directed by Ang Lee Lust, Caution (2007) that won him two Best Actor Awards portrayed Ip Man.

Zhang Ziyi at the films premier. 

Paradise Now.

After researching Hany Abu-Assad's Omar (2013), a compelling drama set in the occupied West Bank, I discovered that the director had made a previous film that received two Academy Award nominations but was probably less known in the UK than Omar. This previous movie is Paradise Now released in 2005 but not in the UK until a year later. It's a film whose subject matter would not please everybody, that's for sure; but it's a movie that goes a long way in explaining the motivation behind seemingly ordinary people who are prepared to become suicide bombers because of what they believe in. In this case the attack is to take place against an aggressor that has invaded a country to which they have no legitimate right. 

 

Preparing the explosive device. 

The movie follows two Palestinian childhood friends Said (Kai Nashif) and Khaled (Ali Suliman) who live in Nablus and are recruited by the local resistance group to carry out a suicide attack in Tel Aviv, Israel's second most populated city after Jerusalem. There was problem’s making the film on location to which the director is reputed to have commented that if he could go back in time he would not have made the film! This followed a land mine exploding near the set, a missile attack by Israeli gunships on a car again very close to where the filming was taking place, prompting some crewmembers to abandon the project. If that was not bad enough the film’s location manager was kidnapped during the shot, eventually released following intervention from Yasser Arafat’s office. Who said filmmaking was easy?

 

That last video.

In Hany Abu-Assad's Golden Globe acceptance speech he said that he hoped that the award would be "a recognition that the Palestinians deserve their liberty and equality unconditionally" and as I opined in my blog on the recent global warming documentary Greedy Lying Bastards, movies are becoming essential in providing information to make people think and formulate their own views. Let's hope film directors of the calibre of Abu-Assad carry on the good work and are not side tracked by the promise of fame and glory.

More brothers in arms than The Blues Brothers.