Bell is fine, too, but Daldry overuses the dance as a metaphor for escape and frustration, and choreographer Peter Darling's grandstanding ballet numbers sit a little uneasily, given the realist comedy pitch. Walters is first rate when she checks her tendency to mannerism and harnesses her natural emotionalism. Mrs Wilkinson is a dispirited soul who finds as much genuine pleasure in nurturing the talent and hope of this 11-year-old as he does in the discipline and support of her surrogacy. That said, the film's real heart - the relationship that Billy (Jamie Bell) strikes up with his dance teacher Mrs Wilkinson (Walters) - provides the conventional dramatic arc with a supple emotional springboard. Regrettably, the unsentimental depiction of the working class Northeast in Lee Hall's semi-autobiographical script has been tinged with caricature in stage director Daldry's first feature.
It stars Gwyneth Paltrow, Joseph Fiennes, Geoffrey Rush, Colin Firth, Ben Affleck and Judi Dench. And I loved hating it.During the miners' strike of 1984, a motherless boy from a pit village takes up dancing against the wishes of his collier dad and older brother. 1998 romantic period comedy-drama film directed by John Madden, written by Marc Norman and playwright Tom Stoppard, and produced by Harvey Weinstein. The better class of moviegoers will love Billy Elliot. At a Manhattan screening last week, one Academy member effused, “I’m marking it off in all categories!” And victorious they both may be, perhaps even at Oscar time.
#Movies like billy elliot movie#
It’s a victory for Bell to be so natural in a movie so calculating. Unlike most theatre, which is rooted in the re-creation of authentic experience, a lot of great movies are not about authentic experience at all, but rather. The cast is mostly fine, especially the kids: Stuart Wells as Billy’s effeminate friend (at home he dresses up in women’s clothes–just like his dad!) Nicola Blackwell as the teacher’s precocious daughter (she has a near sex experience with Billy) Jamie Draven as Billy’s tough brother (star quality could be blooming there) and Bell, a comely lad whose unaffected poise carries the film and brings charm to its excesses. The Truth in Criticizing Law demands that I tell you what’s good about the movie. Billy Elliot is about as open to unforced feeling as Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will. He loads every image with emotive propaganda (this character noble, this one morally myopic) and lards it with music that cues you to weeping or cheering.
This is the first feature for stage director Daldry ( An Inspector Calls), yet he displays an awesome instinct for cinematic manipulation.
Thus ensue the inevitable domestic disputes, softening of hard hearts and pirouettes in heroic slow motion. He finds a crabby, loving teacher (Julie Walters), who is impressed enough by his skill and spirit that she prods him to apply to the Royal Ballet school. He’s got happy feet that can drive him into a dervish fury. We’re in the drab northeastern town of Easington in 1984, the year of a crippling coal strike, and Billy (Jamie Bell) is taking boxing lessons at the insistence of his gruff widower dad (Gary Lewis). Sentimental movies need subtlety this one goes after every sweet little effect with a sledgehammer so large that the film could have been produced by Jerry Bruckheimer.
The movie could be called Chariots of Flashdance, Strictly Ballet, Smile–Life Is Beautiful! Audience members, already primed to love a losers-win story about a poor boy with big dreams, don’t have to bring anything to the film, because director Stephen Daldry does all the work for them. Written by playwright Lee Hall, Billy echoes most of the manipulative inspirational films of the past 20 years. Billy Elliot, the new British film about an 11-year-old from a coal-mining town who wants to be a ballet dancer, is a prime example of elevated kitsch.
0 kommentar(er)
