My Week With Marilyn

My Week With Marilyn is a fluffy piece of entertainment aimed at men of a certain age who can fantasise that they too could have been the young Colin Clark, who blagged his way onto the set of the Laurence Olivier/Marilyn Monroe film The Prince and the Showgirl. As Clark tells it in his book (which might play a bit fast and loose with the truth) Arthur Miller (Marilyn's third husband) left the production after a row with Monroe and he, Clark, spent a week as Marilyn's assistant and supposed romantic plaything.

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The movie is deliberately lightweight fare in the mode of The King's Speech or any of those awful Richard Curtis/Hugh Grant films, but somehow this flick is more engaging. Ken Branagh does his party turn as the aging Olivier (and does it very well of course), Julia Ormond is Vivien Leigh, Eddie Redmayne is the young Colin Clark and a transcendent Michelle Williams captures some of the essence and magic of Monroe. The opening act is very breezy and the film only bogs a little near the end when everyone becomes very wise and begins spouting improbable screenwriter's dialogue. "I cast Marilyn to recapture my own youth through her," "Olivier is a great actor who wants to be a movie star and you are a movie star who wants to be a great actress," etc.

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There are nice performances from a pixie-like Emma Watson as a wardrobe assistant and a regal Judy Dench as Dame Sybil Thorndike but the real pleasure in My Week is Michelle Williams's incredible performance as a vulnerable, funny, sad, radiant Marilyn Monroe. I reckon My Week With Marilyn is the real reason Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes got divorced. Katie saw this on DVD a few weeks ago and thought my God, I was the star of Dawson's Creek not Michelle Williams, what the hell has happened to my career! And of course this was not even Michelle Williams's best performance of last year which came in the minimalist western that no one saw, the underrated, Meek's Cutoff. 

My Favourite Films Of 2011

I knew he couldnt programme the GPS

I don't get to the movies as often as I'd like for two reasons: it costs 17 dollars a ticket in Melbourne (and yes the USD and Australian dollars are at parity) and secondly because most films are terrible. But I do love going to the pictures and here's a little list of some of my favourites of the year. 
10 Bridesmaids: two very funny scenes and a lot of filler which is more than most films which are all filler. 
9 Archipelago: Joanna Hogg's film about a family holiday to the Isles of Scilly. No one saw this which is a shame because it's a kind of To The Lighthouse for our times.   
8 Moneyball: The true story of how Brad Pitt and a bunch of geeks turned the Oakland A's into that mighty baseball franchise it is today...oh wait, uh...
7 Cold Weather: No one saw this either. A murder mystery/family drama set in a very rainy Portland. 
6 Drive: Everyone saw this. Hollywood stunt man by day gettaway driver by night. It sounds crap but it isn't. 
5 Killing Bono: I haven't seen this one, but I was sold on it just by the title alone. 
4 We Need To Talk About Kevin: Lionel Shriver's excellent book turned into a great movie. 
3 Into The Abyss: A Werner Herzog documentary about death row not quite up there with his classics such as Grizzly Man and Encounters At The End Of The World, but still very compelling.  
2 Meek's Cutoff: Kelly Reichardt's feminist, minimalist Western about a bunch of settlers getting lost on the Oregon trail. The lovely Michelle Williams stars.
1 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: OK so I haven't actually seen this one either, but I loved the book and the BBC series and the director is the guy who made Let The Right One In which is one of my all time favourites. I know its a risk putting a film I haven't seen at number 1 but hey thats the kind of guy I am.