Acensbart
Excellent but underrated film
Fairaher
The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.
BeSummers
Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.
StacyOnEarth
Mike Binder must have had some kind of seriously serious blackmail-worthy information on Colin Firth. There is no other way to explain why he'd allow himself to complete a single scene in this film without walking right off and calling a lawyer.I only decided to watch this movie because Firth was in it, and hoped for a smart film that would distract me with voyeuristic moments into American-English cross-culturalism. Instead, one improbable scene after another violently attacked my intelligence, as Bender starts an affair with Margeaux Hemingway, who's married to Firth, who falls for Bender's wife. Hemingway and Bender then try to bait their spouses into an affair, which they then regret, compounded by the fact the the spouses fall in love with each other.The consistent nonsense of this film comes from the humanly improbable scenarios, and the pervasive personality disorders of each character with no context whatsoever. Firth apparently is trying to come across as a cuckold, who likes "letting off steam" by violently beating up unsuspecting(?) staff who consistently meet with him after work in a pub. No cops, no witnesses, no suing, no quitting - just violence then "see ya at work tomorrow." Bender is just an idiot writer whose interests, goals, motivations and drive seem to shift schizophrenically in every scene. His wife is a control freak he and Firth can't seem to get over, while Hemingway plays a neurotic narcissist actress that everyone keeps tolerating. The nuttiness of this movie is compounded by the attempt at a romantic ending, which only leaves you dazed, confused and convinced that you will regret having ever donated 2 hours of your life to this movie.In the credits, Binder adds "This Movie is for Dyno, I Love You..." Dyno, if this is representative of Binder's love, then you need to develop an escape plan. And hopefully, you missed the film he dedicated to you.
graham-turnock
Other than saccharine shots of West London, if that appeals to you, and a lesson in "how not to do it" this film has relatively little to offer. The problem is in the writing. Many scenes are badly written, painfully unfunny - such as the sessions with the Stephen Fry's "labour relations" counselor -, or simply misjudged - the late night pub brawl which seems to be trying to reprise the excellent fight at the end of Bridget Jones' Diary, but looks more like a sick sub-Ritchiesque gangland denouement. To their credit, the actors do a good job with the material they are given. The plot is promising, and somewhere there was a good film in here but one feels that combining the roles of writer, director and lead actor lead to a fatal loss of internal critical tension.
fishhac
I like Mike Binder quite a bit, from "Mind of the Married Man" (apparently, I was the only one) to "The Sex Monster." So, I was eager to see "Londinium" when it came up on HBO the other day. I went in with ZERO expectations and was pleasantly surprised. Which is to say that there were several parts of the film which were slow, and others where I was laughing out loud. Seven or eight out of 10.
EThompsonUMD
Michael Binder the writer, director, and star of `Londinium' is clearly a Woody Allen wannabe. In my view that's not necessarily a bad thing. Unfortunately, this film is so derivative of Allen that one has to wonder why he isn't given due recognition in the credits. Contemporary London is here substituted for Allen's New York of the '70s and '80s. As in several of Allen's films of that period, the cityscape in `Londinium' dominates the film's cinematography, creating an urban tone poem of sorts as well as a sophisticated backdrop for the cross purpose comedy of courtship, sex, and marriage that constitutes the screenplay.`Londinium' even brings back Mariel Hemingway, Woody's high school-aged love-interest in `Manhattan,' for a mid-life redaction of her earlier role. Binder himself seems to be auditioning for a part as `younger Woody' in a future Allen film. His character is a nearly complete borrowing of Woody's classic nebbish/lover/writer persona with a little Paul Reiser verbal inflection mixed in. The other two characters in the film's sexual foursome are played by the always-lovely-to-look at Irene Jacob, who provides the film's voiceover narrative for reasons that are never made clear, and Colin Firth (`Bridget Jones' Diary,' `Shakespeare in Love'), who once again offers up his unique (read: peculiar and off-putting) thuggish/romantic screen presence, taking it so far this time as to beating his friends and associates to a pulp whenever the impulse strikes. Actually, the fight impulse even overtakes the unlikely Ben Greene (the Binder character), producing an upper middle-class `Fight Club' scene that is supposed to be cathartic and funny, but just seems flat and dumb.In addition to the leads, Stephen Fry (`Black Adder') has a very funny minor role as a proper British labor relations counselor who is pressed into unwilling service as a marriage/sex therapist. His scandalized reactions to some rather lurid confessions/accusations bandied by Jacob and Firth are the comic high point of an occasionally amusing, but mainly pretty dull and forgettable film.
