1957 Archives - Jeremy C. Processing

Director – Brad Bird – 1999 – US – Cert. U – 88m

*****

1957. A giant robot falls out of the sky and is befriended by a young boy in Maine. However, the US government proves less sympathetic – animated feature is out in UK cinemas from Friday, December 17th, 1999

This has all the hallmarks of classic fifties sci-fi outings – giant monster, small American town, paranoid government agent, mobilised militia. For those demanding still more, it has a single working mum and a sympathetic beat sculptor, neither of whom would be out of place in a period Roger Corman cheapie.

But you shouldn’t pigeonhole The Iron Giant by genre because a further two factors mark it out as very different. Freely adapted from Ted Hughes’ marvellous children’s book The Iron Man but given a decidedly American spin by director Brad Bird (cartoon TV series The Simpsons, 2 eps, 1990-91; creator of Family Dog, 1993), this is without doubt the animated film of the year and arguably the film of the year period. We’ve grown so used to the Disney blockbuster model – cute characters (and merchandise), hit songs – that anything else (this employs neither device) comes as a shock.… Read the rest

Ferrari

Director – Michael Mann – 2023 – US – Cert. 15 – 130m

*****

As Enzo Ferrari’s racing team takes on a particularly tough race in 1957, the complexities of his private life prove equally challenging – out in UK cinemas on Tuesday, December 26th

You might reasonably expect a movie about legendary driver turned racing car manufacturer Enzo Ferrari to be about motor racing, and while that’s undeniably true of this film, it’s about far more. In essence, it’s a character study about a man’s life focused on a brief period of his career, in which complex professional and personal issues intersect.

Based on a script by the late, great Troy Kennedy Martin (1932-2009 – writer of The Italian Job, 1969; BBC TV series Z Cars, 1962 and Edge of Darkness, 1985), Mann’s film covers four months in 1957 building up to a particularly tough race, the Mille Miglia, the route for which covers 1 000 miles of open country roads.

Alongside the considerable challenges and demands of the race itself, the personal life of Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver) is nothing if not complex. His marriage to business-savvy Laura Garello Ferrari (Penélope Cruz) is on the rocks thanks to the death from muscular dystrophy in 1956 of their son Dino aged 24.… Read the rest