Decided to clump a load of non-theatrical offerings (in this country) together here so I'll just get on with it. First up is Oliver Hirschbiegel's Five Minutes of Heaven, which was shown on the BBC a few weeks after a theatrical showing in Ireland. Set up of the plot is that a man (Liam Neeson) who killed someone during the troubles is going to meet the brother (James Nesbitt) of the man he shot for a television program about reconciliation. The opening 20 minutes has the backstory of what happened and it is rather devoid of tension. Following another 10 minutes of Neeson and Nesbitt talking to their respective drivers on the way to the venue for the meeting the film finally takes off. Neeson excels throughout giving a subtle, restrained, brooding performance which is the best he's done in well over a decade. Nesbitt on the other hand is excessively mannered and whilst being very impressive at the end, the mechanics of his acting are on show for the most part. Gets better the longer it goes, but doesn't really say anything new and they almost offensively waste Anamaria Marinca in a nothing role.
It's a sad transition from Neeson to his late wife Natasha Richardson, but again, following her death a British TV channel felt compelled to broadcast a performance of hers from their library, this time BBCFour with their early 90s adaptation of Suddenly, Last Summer. It's a case of good casting for the women (Richardson and Maggie Smith in for Elizabeth Taylor and Katherine Hepburn, respectively) but Rob Lowe was never going to be any kind of replacement for Montgomery Clift. Smith is far less mannered than Hepburn was and Richardson shows more restraint than Taylor, it's also a lot shorter as it keeps the play-feel to it with the one setting. When director Richard Eyre has them all shouting at each other it gets decidedly uninteresting, but the women make sure an inherent interest is retained overall. Worth it if you're a fan of the people involved, otherwise, get the 50s version.
Over the past month I've been watching BBCFour's repeat of the french series Engrenages, called Spiral over here. It's a police-procedural following a murder case, which chronicles the French judicial system as the public prosecutors have most of the power. The beginning shows the body of a Romanian call-girl being found in a skip and then the prosecutor being blackmailed by his childhood friend, who has information about the crime but is more concerned with protecting himself and those responsible. Grégory Fitoussi and Caroline Proust are very appealing as the prosecutor and policewoman, but the problem is that after so much promise there is practically no resolution. Feels like a complete cop-out with strands left up in the air, characterisation changing out of the blue and the end being completely random. Apparantly there's another series but given the way this one finished, I'd not have a tremendous amount of patience with the second one.
Given my interest in all things Charlotte Rampling, I watched the 1999 BBC version of Great Expectations. The good aspect of this is the casting, Ioan Gruffudd does well as Pip, Rampling plays Miss Havisham as a seductive vamp and Justine Waddell (who I discovered afterwards, with horror, was in one of the worst films I've ever had the misfortune to see: Dracula 2000) does the best with the horrible character of Estella I've ever seen. The problem with it is that it's directed by Julian Jarrold, who is quite the period drama hack. Despite the acting (including a decent ensemble highlighted by Ian McDiarmid's Mr. Jaggers) it does not move freely and there are more than a few hackneyed shots. The end is a sort of combination of both Dickens endings, but results in a half-cop-out as for a while you almost think they're going the way of the David Lean version. Decent, with aspects which are good, but nothing particularly special.
Lastly I was searching for anything with Caroline Dhavernas in it and came across Cry of the Owl which is directed by Jamie Thraves (who did the legendary Radiohead video for Just) and stars Paddy Considine, who I have a lot of time for. The set up of the plot is that Considine and Dhavernas are divorcing and Paddy has relocated to the sticks to get away from it all. Lonely, he stops his car every night and stands in the bushes looking into Julia Stiles' window. Upon being rumbled Stiles sees it as fate and before too long she's stalking him, much to her ex-boyfriend's chagrin. Considine makes it watchable, Stiles was fine and Dhavernas very fun and a walking advert for the delights of jeans, but sorely underused. Turns out this was based on a Patricia Highsmith novel, which was adapted by the French in the mid-80s. Immediately I thought "Chabrol would have been the perfect choice" and it turns out he did it so I'm going to see if I can get my hands on it because what was missing here in Thraves' direction was that Chabrol-esque mood and tense atmosphere. This has gone straight-to-dvd though in a few countries, hence being up online, but it was a decent watch, if a bit weird and eliciting laughter at times when they really weren't going for it.
Completely agree on Five Minutes of Heaven, totally uninspired, all been said before, and Neeson was INFINITELY better than Nesbitt. The pairing seemed pretty comical to me in advance, but I figured they wouldn't give him the role if he couldn't match up, but he spends the entire time trying so hard, while Neeson makes it so effortlessly simple, I guess one might say he was going for the complete opposite of what Neeson was doing as some kind of juxtaposition, but I don't think it worked at all. Marinca WAS criminally wasted, I liked her okay in what little she had to do.
I liked Suddenly, Last Summer, seeing it open up with Rob Lowe squaring off with Maggie Smith was amusing, but I don't think he embarrassed himself at all. While he's certainly no Clift, I DEFINITELY preferred the two ladies here to the performances in the 59 film, for all the reasons you stated. They were wonderful.