tm-sheehan

My Review- Rental Family My Rating 7/10

Rental Family is a bitter sweet comedy drama directed by Hikari and co written with Stephen Blahut.

It's an independent international co production between Japan and America starring Brendon Fraser as an actor named Phillip Vanderploeg and centre's around the Japanese custom of renting a family or friend or even a fake mistress to apologise to a wife for sleeping with her husband.

It's a very strange and foreign premise to any Westerner ,well this Westerner anyway as it's really based on deceit and dishonesty, even though the story has some very warm and fuzzy moments.

It's also about loneliness and the benefits of social connection.

Brendon Fraser is his usual amicable self in a totally different role to his Oscar Winning performance in The Whale.

His character Phillip sacrifices a great acting opportunity after he begins working in a rental family agency as their token white guy.

The company Shinji hires him out to pose as a little girls estranged father who he promises not to desert again plus various other roles including companion to an elderly Japanese author approaching dementia.

His first assignment is to pose as the fiancé of a woman named Yoshie, a lesbian who is already married and wants to perform a traditional wedding for her parents.

Phillip's loneliness in the huge metropolis of Tokyo soon disappears as he begins to form emotional bonds to his clients.

The Rental Family practice may be popular in Japanese culture where pride is obviously a top priority but I found the whole premise more than a little disturbing.

I recall hearing that Japanese men who found themselves unemployed during the Global Financial Crisis still dressed in suits caught the train to work to save face pretending that they still were employed.

The entire cast who I don't know all give excellent performances and most of the movie is in English.

Rental Family is entertaining well produced worth seeing but I came away hoping that westerners despite all our fake news don't adopt the transactional employment practice of pretend friends and families .

It's just dishonest and I think could be dangerous however I may think differently after our visit to Japan next year?

The sweet little girl Mia asks Phillip a great question when she discovers he is not her father "Why do adults always lie ?

Good question out of the innocent mouth of a hurt child .

My Review Avatar: Fire and Ash My Rating 6.5/10

A short review for a very very long drawn our movie saga. No movie in my opinion should run for 3 hours and 17 minutes even if it's undeniably beautiful in parts and technically brilliant.

I've followed the previous Avatar movies and enjoyed them especially Avatar :The Way of Water which was only 5 minutes shorter than Fire and Ash .

I gave Way of Water my top score of 10 because it held my interest throughout far more than Fire and Ash.

This movie is just endless battle after endless battle whereas The Way of Water I thought had a great message of care and conservation even the characters started to look alike so I got confused as to who was who ?

By the end of Fire and Ash I couldn't care less who survived and who perished as it was just relentless violence.

I think this will definitely be my final instalment of the Avatar movie franchise as I read that Avatar 4 & 5 are already planned for release at the end of this decade.

My Review- The History of Sound In selected Cinemas now My Rating - 8/10

The History of Sound won't appeal to everyone, what does these days ,however I found it to be a moving and nostalgic romantic elegy to forbidden love.

I came away thinking about how it must have been a traumatic experience in 1910 and onward for decades for any gay couple when homosexuality was punishable by imprisonment and disgrace.

The History of Sound based on 2 short stories by Ben Shattuck who also wrote the screenplay of the movie based on his novels titled The History of Sound and Origin Stories.

I couldn't help comparing The History of Sound on an emotional level to Brokeback Mountain released 20 years ago or the far superior English movie God's Own Country 2017 which coincidently also starred Josh O'Connor if you haven't seen it I thoroughly recommend it.

This back story of The History of Sound is very different to Brokeback Mountain as it's a more intellectual and culturally significant story.

It's also a romance between Lionel played impressively by Paul Mescal and David played equally impressively by Josh O'Connor .

The plot in some ways mirrors Jack Twist ( Jake Gyllenhaal and Ennis Del Mar's (Heath Ledger) romance and unfulfilled possibilities in places that at times I thought diminished its originality.

The story begins in 1910 when Lionel who comes from the Kansas wheat belt .

He meets David in a city saloon and is immediately attracted to his piano recital of a familiar American folk song from his childhood.

They soon realise their mutual attraction to each other especially after a few drinks and end up spending the night together.

David is drafted and goes off to war while Lionel is ineligible due to his eyesight so he returns to his father's farm in Kentucky setting his music studies aside .

When David returns in 1919 from the War in Europe he writes to Lionel and suggests he join him in a funded study trip from his university in Maine. They are commissioned to travel across the state to collect folk songs and record them on wax cylinders.

Lionel leaves his mother behind on the farm in Kentucky after his father dies to join David .

This was the most interesting part of The History of Sound for me as I'm interested in music history.

Their quest reminded me of the famous English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams who a few years before in 1903 went on a similar study trip .

He also wrote down melodies by hand, sometimes using a phonograph, to preserve them from dying out, contributing them to the Folk Song Society and used them to develop his unique English musical style.

David and Lionel continue their affair as they travel the state but as in all love stories especially between two men the fickle finger of fate interrupts their lives sending both men on a different course.

Lionel experiences great success in Europe singing and directing choirs but is haunted by the intensity of his affair with David.

No spoilers regarding the conclusion of the story I found it intensely moving and interesting.

It's a slow paced movie in parts but well worth seeing and the two leads both give one of their finest movie performances.