Fiona Shaw

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The Hippopotamus Review

Good

This British satirical comedy may be a bit of a mess, but since it's based on a Stephen Fry novel, the snappy wit in the dialogue zings with his specific brand of intelligent humour. This keeps the audience entertained as the story plays lightly with ideas of social privilege and deep-seated faith. The film is overcrowded, and the themes are all over the place, but it's often quite funny.

The story is told through the eyes inebriated curmudgeonly writer Ted (Roger Allam), a former poet who has just been sacked as a theatre critic. Thankfully, he has a distraction when he's asked to look into the rumours that his 16-year-old godson David (Tommy Knight) has some sort of mystical healing powers. So he heads to the manor house where David lives with his parents (Matthew Modine and Fiona Shaw) and older brother Simon (Dean Ridge). As Ted tries to get to the bottom of things, he speaks with a local playwright (Tim McInnerny) and his old flame Rebecca (Geraldine Somerville). But it's not easy to keep focussed on his task when he's drinking so much.

The film is very loosely directed by John Jencks (The Fold), which means that the tone is all over the place. Some scenes are played for slapstick value, while others are darkly pointed or intensely emotional. There are also so many characters that it's tricky to work out the connections between them, especially as their constant bickering reveals a labyrinth of past issues, and Ted never stops talking in the voiceover narration. All of this is amusing but noisily chaotic. So it's up to the actors to hold our interest. Allam is reliably entertaining as the likeably smug Ted, and his interaction with each of the others is energetic and sometimes funny. Amid the shameless scene-chompers in the cast, it's Knight who emerges as the most sympathetic figure even though, like everyone else, he's just using other people to get what he wants.

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Fiona Shaw - Celebrities at Loulou's nightclub in Mayfair - London, United Kingdom - Tuesday 25th June 2013

Fiona Shaw

Fiona Shaw Gives Powerhouse Performance In Testament Of Mary


Fiona Shaw

Testament of Mary is an ambitious project as far as Broadway productions go, with the striking stage set up almost as awe-inspiring as the actual one person show. A live vulture, an uprooted tree suspended in mid-air and a seemingly bottomless pool of water litter the stage that is soon inhabited by the show's star, Fiona Shaw, who gives a commanding performance in Irish writer Colm Toibin and director Deborah Warner's one woman show.

Fiona Shaw Colm Toibin
Fiona Shaw and Colm Toibin at the show's premiere.

The script is adapted from 2012 novella about Mary, the mother of Christ in 'historical' terms and the Mother of God and the Queen of Heaven in the Biblical sense. Holding lilies, surrounded by a Plexiglas cube or by candles, or stripped of any defining qualities, Toibin's presentation of the Virgin Mary is bound to be one that you have never seen before as Testament of Mary really is a spectacle to behold.

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Deborah Warner, Colm Torbin and Fiona Shaw - 'The Testament of Mary' photocall held at the New 42nd Street Studios - New York, NY, United States - Thursday 14th March 2013

Deborah Warner, Colm Torbin and Fiona Shaw

The Tree Of Life Trailer


Watch the trailer for The Tree of Life

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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part 1) Trailer


The final instalment of the Harry Potter series is almost upon us! Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will bring the much loved set of films to a close.

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Fiona Shaw - Fiona Shaw, Tuesday 3rd July 2007 at Old Billingsgate London, England

Fiona Shaw

Fracture Review


Weak
It is hardly a reassuring sign when one of the more interesting things in a film is not even sentient. Over the title sequence of Fracture, and in the midst of some of the duller stretches (of these there are many) we see a glittering sort of Rube Goldberg contraption, all shiny metallic tracks and carved wooden wheels, where small glass balls skitter and roll in an elaborately choreographed dance. It's a beautiful piece of elegant machinery and, one hopes, symbolic of the many complex and artfully managed plot twists to come. Instead, what we're given is Anthony Hopkins and Ryan Gosling sleepwalking around each other as they navigate through one of the year's laziest films.

Fracture has no excuse to be so lazy, given the actors at its disposal and a setup that should have made this an easy slam-dunk. Hopkins plays Ted Crawford, an aeronautics engineer who's found out that his wife Jennifer (Embeth Davidtz) is having an affair with police detective Rob Nunally (Billy Burke). Confronting her at home, Crawford shoots her in the head and calmly waits for the cops to arrive. When they do, it's with none other than Nunally at the lead, who's shocked and enraged at finding Jennifer in a pool of blood and Crawford standing there as though nothing had happened. After a quickly-interrupted beating from Nunally, Crawford later confesses and even waives his right to a lawyer. When it's all dropped in the lap of assistant district attorney Willy Beachum (Gosling), the case couldn't seem more airtight, which is good since Beachum can't wait to slip the bonds of lowly civil employment for a well-paying private sector job.

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The Black Dahlia Review


Weak
Sure, the man's had a bad run of things. When Brian de Palma directed Snake Eyes, a corker of a plot that went nowhere, it seemed like a fluke. When he did Femme Fatale, that ludicrous sapphic French diamond heist flick, it could be written off as just an idiosyncratic minor joke by a former Hollywood heavyweight in self-imposed Euro-exile -- something to keep him occupied until he went back to the big leagues. Well, that moment of return finally arrived in the form of the long-gestating adaptation of James Ellroy's 1987 novel The Black Dahlia, a mystery about the infamous 1947 Elizabeth Short murder which seemed purpose-built for de Palma's needs. Ellroy's fever dream of a novel has everything that the famously self-referential director could utilize: doppelgangers (male and female), seedy urban underbelly, and psychosexual perversities galore. Given the limp, campy joke of a film that resulted, however, it seems time to stop making excuses for the man -- Brian de Palma has become one very bad director.

The generally limp script by Josh Friedman starts off smartly, setting us up for the bruising friendship between the stars, a couple of L.A. cops who also happen to be boxers and get paired up for a publicity-machine fight that touts them as "Mr. Fire and Mr. Ice." Ice is "Bucky" Bleichart (Josh Hartnett), a cool and low-key guy charitably described as a loser who gets his shot at a good chunk of change as well as reassignment to the LAPD's hotshot Warrants department for agreeing to the fight. Fire is Lee Blanchard (Aaron Eckhart), one of those bigger-than-life cops who cuts corners with aplomb and seems happy enough to bring Bucky on as his partner after knocking his teeth out (literally) in the ring. Further binding the two men together, besides work and friendship, is Kay Lake (Scarlett Johansson), the sultry blonde dame on Lee's arm who takes a shine to Bleichart that doesn't seem to be entirely platonic.

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Triumph Of Love Review


Bad
The moral of love: Be manipulative and conniving to get the man (or woman) you want, even if a few other folks get their hopes crushed along the way. That's what's certain after watching Clare Peploe's depressing fairytale/restoration comedy Triumph of Love (based on a superficial Marivaux play originally performed in 1732). That's not the filmmaker's intention, though. She's clearly going for whimsy, light romance, and slapstick cuckolding. What her film lacks is a heart and a conscience.

Mira Sorvino plays a princess who dresses up as a dandified male student to infiltrate the summertime estate of a misogynistic philosopher (Ben Kingsley). Under the old man's tutelage, a dashing prince (Jay Rodan) has been instructed to distrust the female sex. So clever Sorvino attires herself as a man to earn his friendship, trust, and above all, love.

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Harry Potter & The Chamber Of Secrets Review


Good

In his second big-screen outing, adolescent wizard Harry Potter is blessed with enough cinematic magic to overcome several of the very same problems that left last year's "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" feeling a little protracted and rambling.

Sure "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" spends twice as much screen time on atmosphere and adventure scenes than on plot and character. But this time around every episode seems relevant, which is a vast improvement over last year's film, bloated as it was with Quidditch matches and monster moments that didn't advance the plot one iota.

Returning director Chris Columbus retains the enchanted ambiance as Harry heads to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry for his second year of instruction in the black arts. But nothing is ever easy for our young hero, as unseen forces seem to be conspiring against him -- not the least of which is some kind of elusive beast that's loose in Hogwarts' halls, turning students to stone.

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Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban Review


Very Good

Harry Potter is growing up, and so is his movie franchise.Under the tutelage of a new director -- Alfonso Cuarón, known for both children's fare (the 1995 remake of "A Little Princess") and an edgy, insightfully soulful, sex-charged teen road-trip flick ("Y Tu Mama, Tambien") -- the boy wizard has graduated from the world of kiddie movie spectacles with tie-in toys.

"Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" is a film in which depth of character, cunning humor and hair-raising chills come shining through the visual blitzkrieg of special effects -- which are also magnificently improved over the series first two installments. Case in point: a half-horse, half-eagle creature called a Hippogriff that gives "Lord of the Rings'" Gollum a run for his money as the most life-like CGI creation in cinema history.

Beyond just its detailed feathers (which fluff when it shakes) or its golden eyes (which bore holes in the screen with obstinate personality), this winged equine's every movement, from its canter to its peck, is a studied yet natural, amazingly fluid amalgam of the two beasts that were combined to create it.

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Harry Potter & The Sorcerer's Stone Review


OK

Overly self-indulgent director Chris Columbus could have cut out the entire middle hour of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" and if you hadn't read the popular children's book, you'd never know the difference.

A good 70 percent of the picture consists of showy set pieces that don't service the plot (which we'll get to in a minute) so much as obligingly recreate unrelated passages that would be missed by the boy wizard's enthusiastic and possessive fan base had they been omitted.

One 10-minute episode is spent watching a sport called Quidditch, sort of a flying-broom version of field hockey with more than one puck and incredibly intricate rules that go largely unexplained. It's a lot like the pod race scene in "The Phantom Menace" -- irrelevant but spirited -- although with 1/10th the special effects budget. (Oh, that blatant blue-screening!)

Continue reading: Harry Potter & The Sorcerer's Stone Review

Fiona Shaw

Fiona Shaw Quick Links

News Pictures Video Film Quotes RSS

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Actor


Fiona Shaw Movies

The Hippopotamus Movie Review

The Hippopotamus Movie Review

This British satirical comedy may be a bit of a mess, but since it's based...

The Tree Of Life Trailer

The Tree Of Life Trailer

Watch the trailer for The Tree of LifeThe Tree Of Life is Terrance Malick's first...

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part 1) Trailer

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part 1) Trailer

The final instalment of the Harry Potter series is almost upon us! Harry Potter and...

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Trailer

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Trailer

Harry Potter and the Order of the PhoenixTrailerWe've managed to get our hands on the...

Fracture Movie Review

Fracture Movie Review

It is hardly a reassuring sign when one of the more interesting things in a...

The Black Dahlia Movie Review

The Black Dahlia Movie Review

Sure, the man's had a bad run of things. When Brian de Palma directed Snake...

Triumph of Love Movie Review

Triumph of Love Movie Review

The moral of love: Be manipulative and conniving to get the man (or woman) you...

Harry Potter & The Chamber Of Secrets Movie Review

Harry Potter & The Chamber Of Secrets Movie Review

In his second big-screen outing, adolescent wizard Harry Potter is blessed with enough cinematic magic...

Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban Movie Review

Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban Movie Review

Harry Potter is growing up, and so is his movie franchise.Under the tutelage of a...

Harry Potter & The Sorcerer's Stone Movie Review

Harry Potter & The Sorcerer's Stone Movie Review

Overly self-indulgent director Chris Columbus could have cut out the entire middle hour of "Harry...

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