items tagged with Simon Beaufoy

127 HOURS

At my first screening of Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours (which I initially caught in Chicagoland over Thanksgiving weekend), I was immediately knocked out by how vibrantly entertaining it was – hardly a fait accompli when a movie climaxes with a bloody act of self-amputation.

Before commencing with the annual fawning, I thought I’d begin by exercising one of my God-given rights as a reviewer: the right to bitch about the sorry state of movies. I think it’s supposed to go something like this:

Boy, are the movies in a sorry state!

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE

Admitting that you have serious reservations about Slumdog Millionaire is a bit like admitting you have reservations about ice cream and rainbows and Malia and Sasha Obama - who would dare?

MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, in which an unemployed British governess becomes the accidental social secretary to a ditzy American chanteuse, is the sort of movie that's likely to be (agreeably) written off as "lighthearted." But that description doesn't suggest just how exhilarating this "lighthearted" outing actually is, or just how remarkable Frances McDormand and Amy Adams are in it. I'm the type of person who instinctively rolls his eyes at the "you'll laugh, you'll cry" plaudit, but at director Bharat Nalluri's Miss Pettigrew, I laughed, I cried, and I don't think a minute passed in its hour-and-a-half running length in which I didn't grin from ear to ear.