The fourth feature film in 14 years from Spike Jonze follows the director's habit of painting iconic portraits of lost individuals seeking a new existence through an avatar of some form. Spike Jones's witty, tender and gorgeous masterpiece He has gathered together a group of similarly aged and ill qualified war art experts played by Matt Damon, John Goodman, Bill Murray, Jean Dujardin, Bob Balaban and Hugh Bonneville, with a little help from Cate Blanchett, and they are dispatched across France, Belgium and Germany in search of art that the Nazis have stolen for the proposed Fuhrer Museum in Linz.Īs the months pass two pieces of art in particular take on special meaning, and whilst they're competing with the Nazis on one hand, they will have to contend with the Russians too. It's 1944 and the Second World War is not as close to ending as they all believe when Stokes and his crew land in France.
He also stars as Frank Stokes, middle-aged American art expert, charged with saving the art treasures of Europe from the Nazis. Based on real events, the screenplay is co-written by George Clooney and Grant Heslov (who as a team have been behind some excellent films like Argo and The Ides of March) which Clooney then directed. The Monuments Men is a great story, with a great cast and some great performances, well, good performances but whilst the film as a whole is perfectly watchable, it never approaches great. The rest of the cast may not be so fortunate. Production values can't be faulted and there's a definite star-is-born quality about Wilde's turn in the central role. If you're a stranger to Mills and Boon or movies like The Notebook, it can be said, with a decent degree of probability, that Endless Love will require endless patience. Faster than you can say move over Romeo and Juliet, David and Daddy are going toe to toe in a breathless battle that is destined to end in blue flashing lights. If Daddy has his way, Jade will be following him into medicine and he's not about to let a jumped-up grease monkey put that in jeopardy. Jade is the daughter of rich cardiolologist, Hugh Butterfield (Bruce Greenwood). David's the product of a broken home and his blue collar job prospects revolve around working on cars. It's High School graduation day and the last chance saloon for the dreamy David Eliot (Alex Pettyfer) to turn his crush on the ethereal Jade Butterfield (Gabriella Wilde) into something more substantial.Ĭupid's got his work cut out with these two as, besides impossibly high-cheekbones, they have little in common.
The story centres on the hunk-meets-hottie affair that develops between two star-crossed teens. With a title like Endless Love, and a global release on that day in the year when half of humanity comes under inordinate pressure to "say it with flowers", it won't come as a surprise to read that this unapologetic swoonathon is an extended exercise in attempting to say it with celluloid.Ī remake of a Brooke Shields star-vehicle that went off the road in the 80s and was never seen again, it's difficult to imagine an alternative destination for this Shana Feste directed frothfest. ROMANTIC fiction refuseniks will want to look away now.
Reviewed this week: Endless Love The Monuments Men Her Cuban Fury The Lego Movie Stalingrad