Stardust

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Rating 3¾


Directed by Matthew Vaughn

Written by Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn from the novel by Neil Gaiman

Starring Charlie Cox (Tristan), Claire Danes (Yvaine), Michelle Pfeiffer (Lamia), Robert De Niro (Captain Shakespeare), Mark Strong (Septimus), Jason Flemyng (Primus), Rupert Everett (Secundus), David Walliams (Sextus), Sarah Alexander (Empusa), Joanna Scanlon (Mormo), Nathaniel Parker (Dunstan), Ricky Gervais (Ferdy), Sienna Miller (Victoria), Henry Cavill (Humphrey), Kate Magowan (Una) and Peter O’Toole (King)

Narrated by Ian McKellen


“But of course, nothing says romance like the gift of an injured kidnapped woman!”

Young Dunstan Thorn crosses a wall that divides England and the kingdom of Stormhold. During his single night in Stormhold he chances to meet a princess who is held captive by a witch. Nine months later a baby in a basket is left at the wall with a note asking that the baby (named Tristan) be given to Dunstan to care for.

Eighteen years later Tristan is in love with Victoria, but she does not return his affections. When they see a falling star he promises to retrieve it and present it to her as a demonstration of his devotion. He finds himself setting out on an extraordinary adventure that takes him into Stormhold, where the King has recently died without naming a successor and three witches seek the fallen star to restore their youth and beauty.

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“Right here, this is where I got hit by a magical flying moron!”

Claire Danes is Yvaine, the fallen star, Michelle Pfeiffer is Lamia, the witch who seeks the star, and Mark Strong and Jason Flemyng are the two princes who compete to be the new King, seeking the Monarch’s ruby stone, now worn by Yvaine. Robert De Niro plays Captain Shakespeare, the captain of an airborne pirate ship that captures lightning for sale on the black market.

‘Stardust’ began life in 1998 as a comic book by the English science fiction and fantasy writer Neil Gaiman, published by DC Comics. It was turned into a novel with illustrations in 1999. I was not familiar with Gaiman’s work before watching the film. With its all-star cast, this film adaptation was shot in England, Scotland and Iceland. It had a $70 million production budget, but its box office gross in America reached only a little under $39 million. However, the worldwide gross was just below $136 million.

The reviews were in the main very positive. 176 reviews collected at Rotten Tomatoes result in a 76% fresh rating. A lot of attention was paid to the presence of Michelle Pfeiffer, who had returned to acting following a five-year gap. She gives a very enjoyable performance in the role of the dark witch Lamia – and I say this as someone who had never been particularly a fan of hers in past, although I certainly did not dislike her in any way.‘Stardust’ is a family fantasy film that I assume would appeal equally to children and fans of films like ‘Lord of the Rings’ and ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’. It is a much better film than the latter, which ultimately disappointed me, despite some nice touches – I was a huge fan of the C S Lewis ‘Chronicles of Narnia’ books as a boy.

‘Stardust’ is great fun. It is not especially original, but it contains all the ingredients one would expect in a film of its type. There is plenty of knockabout action, sword and sorcery elements, fairytale romance, and some nice moments of clever humour directed at the audience. It is, perhaps, a touch too long.

Stephen Fry was apparently originally considered for the role of Captain Shakespeare. I have to admit I am not much of a fan of Robert De Niro, who seems rather horribly miscast here, and I think Fry would have been a better fit for the role.

Sarah Michelle Gellar stated in an interview prior to its release that she had turned down a role in the film, generally assumed to be that of Yvaine. I like Gellar a lot, but having seen the film I cannot help but think Claire Danes is the better choice. I think she is very good in the role (although I am not entirely convinced by her limping technique) and I am not sure Gellar would necessarily have been right for part. However, I do wonder if in fact Gellar was actually offered the role of Victoria, which was eventually taken by Sienna Miller. We will probably never know.

Review posted 25 April 2008; updated 9 May 2009



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Superstition

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Rating 2


Directed by Kenneth Hope

Written by Kate Dennis and Paul Hoffman, based on an original story by Stephen Volk

Starring Mark Strong, Sienna Guillory, David Warner, Frances Barber, Alice Krige and Charlotte Rampling


Julie (Sienna Guillory, the actress-model daughter of the famous Cuban guitarist Isaac Guillory) is a 19-year-old English nanny living and working in Italy. She is accused of the murder of her employers’ child, who dies in a mysterious fire. Isabella Flores (Frances Barber, sporting a scary pair of eyebrows that seem to do most of her acting for her), the prosecuting counsel, persuades Antonio Gabrieli (Mark Strong), a celebrated defence lawyer who has not worked since the death of his wife a year earlier, to act as the defending counsel. Charlotte Rampling plays Mother Frances Matteo, a nun and psychiatrist, appointed by Gabrieli to assess Julie’s state of mind, and David Warner is the no-nonsense Judge Padovani. Most of the action takes place in the courtroom.

This film is based on an original story, but quite clearly that is inspired by the case of Carole Compton, a 19-year-old Scottish nanny living and working in Italy who, in 1982, was accused of witchcraft when several mysterious and unexplained fires broke out in the homes of her various employers. In 1990 she wrote a book about her experiences, entitled ‘Superstition: The True Story Of The Nanny They Called A Witch’.

The premise of ‘Superstition’ might not be as preposterous as it seems, simply because it is based on events that actually took place – the accusation of witchcraft made against a young woman in the late 20th century – but it is still a preposterous film. The template is set in the opening scene when a red London double-decker bus drives along a lonely and spooky country road, clearly intended to alert us that this is taking place in England. This is all very well, but I defy anyone to find a country bus service using old AEC Routemaster buses.

The film does not get any more believable after that. A joint UK-Netherlands-Luxembourg production, it was filmed primarily in the Netherlands, but set in Italy. The majority of the characters are Italian, but the cast is predominantly British. Nobody attempts any kind of accent, which sabotages the theme of Julie (played with the same kind of posh-girl-putting-on-a-working-class-accent sometimes employed by Keira Knightley) being an innocent lost in a strange land.

Mark Strong was actually born Marco Giuseppe Salussolia and has an Italian father. However, you would never guess it from his accent or physical appearance. At one juncture in the film his character is eating a boiled egg for breakfast, washed down with tea served in a china cup and saucer. My knowledge of Italy is largely confined to holidays there, but this does not seem to me to be a very Italian way to start the day.

What point there is to Charlotte Rampling’s character is never made entirely clear. Having been employed to assess Julie’s mental faculties, we never hear the two engaged in conversation and we never find out what conclusions Mother Frances finally arrives at – this from a nun-psychiatrist in a film that is supposedly tackling a story about the balance between science and superstition. However, what is perhaps most mystifying is why anyone would employ Julie as their nanny in the first place. She is barely literate and exhibits numerous worrying signs of borderline psychosis.

The screenplay is poor and the film constantly teeters on the edge of being laughably bad. It constantly veers from bad soap opera to pretensions to European arthouse cinema to lurid Hammer-style schlock-horror. The actors are clearly hampered by this and some of the performances suffer accordingly. I hated the music, which on some occasions was so overwhelmingly painful to listen to I almost stopped watching the film.

In the end, though, for all of its faults, or maybe because of them, I found it almost transfixing. I would even go so far as to say I rather enjoyed it all – in some inexplicable way!



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