Meewella | Critic

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Tag: Jason Isaacs

QuickView: Loved Up (1995)

“I’m not alone in this. Everybody’s happy nowadays. That’s not enough for you.”

Tom

A young Lena Headey (already sporting Queen Cersai’s short hair) is excellent as an 18-year-old waitress meeting a 21-year-old raver who introduces her to Ecstasy and provides a way out of her troubled home life. The verisimilitude with which Loved Up portrays the 90s British rave scene without moralising will appeal to fans of Human Traffic (not least for the soundtrack and even a brief cameo from Danny Dyer). However, the film’s more interesting exploration is the way that even a small age difference in a relationship can create the false impression of maturity, especially in the eyes of a teenager.

7/10

QuickView: The Death of Stalin (2017)

“Nod as I’m speaking to you. People are looking to me for reassurance and I have no idea what’s going on.”

Georgy Malenkov

Mining the aftermath of Stalin’s death for comedy may seem an unusual choice, but the interpersonal relationships within the resulting political power vacuum are perfect for an Armando Iannucci farce. The film begins slowly, its pace gradually ramping with the characters’ paranoia, coming to a head at Stalin’s funeral. Steve Buscemi’s quietly scheming Khrushchev stands out, along with the wonderful excess of Jason Isaacs’ Field Marshall Zhukov. Like Veep, it lacks the bite of Iannucci’s television masterpiece The Thick of It but this is intelligently absurd cinematic comedy.

8/10

"A film is a petrified fountain of thought."

(CC) BY-NC 2003-2023 Priyan Meewella

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