Movie Natters: July 13, 2007 Archive

Re-finding Emma

Posted at 10:18 PM on July 13, 2007 by Euan Kerr (1 Comments)

It was with great delight this week that after years of not stumbling across Emma Thompson, she turned up twice in movies crossing the Movie Natters radar. Potter fans will see her as Sybil Trelawney in "The Order of the Phoenix." She's the absentminded Hogwarts prof with glasses the thickness of decorative glass bricks.

However what I was truly charmed by was her performance in "Stranger than Fiction." While this film was mainly marketed as a Will Ferrell flick, it is Thompson who blows everyone else off the screen.

It's the story of an IRS agent (Ferrell) who starts hearing a female voice narrating his life. He has some problems convincing his friends he's not crazy, but comes to find he is actually a character in a novel written by Karen Eiffel (Thompson,) a hugely successful writer who is suffering from writers block. While she is a very kind lady, she doesn't know he's real and she's trying to work out how to kill him.

It's a thought-provoking tale, probing the boundaries between fact and fiction. Ferrell does very well, but Thompson brings the film alive.

The film didn't get much attention when it was out. But it's well worth having a look if you haven't seen it.

Comment on this post