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Men In Black 3

It’s not a sequel that needed to be made, but thanks to the charm of its leads and a tone that harks back to the wit and humour of the original, it’s a pretty enjoyable trip.

Bel Ami

The excellent female support cast saves this patchy effort, which is let down by its leading man and a flat screenplay.

The Dictator

A disappointing, often repulsive and mean-spirited mess of a film with seemingly only one real criterion on its agenda: to shock and offend.

The Woman In Black

Packed with atmosphere, this old-fashioned but deftly told ghost story delivers ample chills and thrills.

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Taking Woodstock (Film)

by Erin Free | August 25, 2009 10:13 | Edited August 25, 2009 10:13

Despite the sometimes crazy rhythm, the diverse and exuberant characters bring a sense of fun and merry frivolity to this one small tale about the iconic festival.

Even for a director with a wildly diverse, hard-to-pin-down cinematic sensibility, Taking Woodstock rates as a wild, shaggy anomaly. If the combined works of filmmaker Ang Lee have anything in common, it's a sense of graceful restraint. Though the subject matter might be different, all of Lee's films feel tightly, rigidly controlled, with not a frame of film carelessly placed. Taking Woodstock, however, is gleefully, enjoyably loose, and you can practically feel the director metaphorically letting his hair down in every scene. Thankfully, that sense of fun seeps off the screen and into the audience, with Taking Woodstock rating as a high time indeed.

 

It's 1969, and Elliot Teichberg (highly engaging newcomer Demetri Martin) is the quintessential nice Jewish boy, with his ambition never outweighing his loyalty to his family. Seeing an opportunity to bring in a little business to the ramshackle hotel run by his ornery, spendthrift mother (Brit thesp Imelda Staunton delivers a voluble interpretation of the classic Jewish mother) and reserved, eccentric father (Henry Goodman is curiously effective), Elliot uses his position on The Chamber Of Commerce of his small, upstate New York town to okay a permit for a music festival. A few months later, Woodstock is in full flight, eventually becoming one of the most important American cultural events of the 20th century.

 

In looking at what happened before and around Woodstock, Ang Lee never gets too bogged down with history. Though real life figures are present (newcomer Jonathan Groff is absolutely brilliant as too-cool concert organiser Michael Lang), the true story of Elliot Teichberg is a tiny piece of the Woodstock puzzle, and it allows the film to dance merrily and sloppily to its own crazy rhythm. Characters come and go, and plot strands aren't properly tied up, but that's all part of the heady, dizzy fun.