Now Is Good (2012/Sony DVD)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: C Film: C+
In what
is an ambitious film, Ol Parker’s Now Is
Good (2012) has an older Dakota Fanning playing Tessa, a young British gal
who happens to be dying of leukemia and is going to make the most of her life
before this happens. She has friends,
dreams, a brother and divorced parents, living with her father (the underrated
Paddy Considine) who is having as much trouble as anyone dealing with her
eventual fate.
She also
starts to become involved with her neighbor (Jeremy Irvine of Spielberg’s War Horse) who himself has taken a
break from starting college as his father died in an accident. They fall in love, but it is a doomed
one. The actors have chemistry, but
despite some fine performances, an intelligent script, some good directing and
solid performances, this cannot avoid being another disease-of-the-week film no
matter what they do with it since they add nothing new to the situation, though
just being British made it more tolerable than the endless U.S. version
thereof.
Not a fan
of Miss Fanning’s work early on despite her talent, this is one of her best
performances to date and the film is never phony, condescending or idiotic, so
it deserves points on those fronts.
However, I wish it had gone further somehow, but it just adapts a novel
and does what it can with it. Still, if
you are interested, you should definitely see it.
The
anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image is a little soft, but this was shot on
35mm film and has some nice shots throughout, enough that I wished this were a
Blu-ray or that I had seen it in a theater.
Director of Photography Erik Alexander Wilson does a decent job of using
the scope frame to tell the story, but not always and that keeps it from excelling
like it might have. The lossy Dolby
Digital 5.1 is dialogue-based and has its quiet moments, so don’t expect
surrounds to be engaged much. I have to
add that some of the music score and most of the choices of vocal music did not
work for me and was often a distraction.
Extras
include Deleted Scenes and a making of featurette entitled Making Moments: Creating Now Is
Good.
- Nicholas Sheffo
