Review: The Trip to Italy (2014)

* * *
Director: Michael Winterbottom
Starring: Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon

Being on a trip with Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon would probably be a bit of an endurance test, but watching them on a trip with each other is certainly a delight. While The Trip to Italy amounts to little more than two guys bantering, bickering, and doing impressions for just under two hours, stopping occasionally to eat some delicious looking food and take in some scenery, that's more than enough to keep the viewer's attention when the two guys are as funny as Coogan and Brydon. I never saw The Trip, but I'll definitely be catching up with it now that I've seen The Trip to Italy and I'm sure that if there's a third entry in the series (and I can't imagine that there won't be as one sequel never seems to be the end of the story anymore) I'll be seeing that, too.

Review: Philomena (2013)

* * * 1/2
Director: Stephen Frears
Starring: Judi Dench, Steve Coogan

"Human interest" is a polite way of saying that something is soft, and a really polite way of saying that something is emotionally manipulative. The story of Philomena Lee is dismissed, within the film, as a human interest trifle and the film itself could easily have descended into that realm were it not for the sharpness of the screenplay by Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope and the direction of Stephen Frears, and the engrossing and affecting performance of Judi Dench. This isn't to say that Philomena is entirely free of the sort of sentimentality that marks human interest stories, but for the most part the film transcends those moments to become a truly effective drama.