Tag Archives: Romance

Groundhog Day (1993)

10 Wednesday Apr 2019

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D: Harold Ramis / 101m

Cast: Bill Murray, Andie MacDowell, Chris Elliott, Stephen Tobolowsky, Brian Doyle-Murray, Marita Geraghty, Angela Paton

Although I have an All-Time Top 10 Movies list – one that has been carved in stone for a very long time now – and I’ve never been able to put together a Top 100, or even a Top 50, there are two movies that would sit comfortably at No 11 and No 12 on those lists – if they ever existed. No 11 will be reviewed later this month. This is No 12. It’s a wonderfully written movie, one that screenwriter Danny Rubin spent around three years working on before the movie was made. For me, the only comedy movie more quotable than Groundhog Day is Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979). In that spirit, this “review” will be in the form of ten quotes that sum up the movie’s sweet-natured yet anarchic spirit. Something of a cheat, I hear you say? Perhaps, but when writing is this good, why not celebrate it? After all, “anything different is good.”

Psychiatrist: That’s an unusual problem, Mr. Connors. Uh, most of my work is with couples, families. I have an alcoholic now.

Phil: Ned, I would love to stay here and talk with you… but I’m not going to.

Rita: I like to see a man of advancing years throwing caution to the wind. It’s inspiring in a way.

Phil: You know, people like blood sausage, too. People are morons.

Phil: (Holding Phil the Groundhog behind the wheel) Don’t drive angry. Don’t drive angry!

Phil: This is one time where television really fails to capture the true excitement of a large squirrel predicting the weather.

Ned: Ned… Ryerson. “Needlenose Ned”? “Ned the Head”? C’mon, buddy. Case Western High. Ned Ryerson: I did the whistling belly-button trick at the high school talent show? Bing! Ned Ryerson: got the shingles real bad senior year, almost didn’t graduate? Bing, again. Ned Ryerson: I dated your sister Mary Pat a couple times until you told me not to anymore? Well?

Phil: (Driving down the railroad tracks toward an approaching train) I’m betting he’s going to swerve first.

Rita: You’re not a god. You can take my word for it; this is twelve years of Catholic school talking.

Phil: Do you ever have déjà vu, Mrs. Lancaster?
Mrs. Lancaster: I don’t think so, but I could check with the kitchen.

Rating: 9/10 – still the best time loop movie ever made, and one of the finest comedies period, Groundhog Day features terrific performances (Murray is superb as the jaundiced weatherman on a very steep learning curve), Ramis’s spirited direction, and again, Rubin’s wonderful screenplay; when a contemporary critic boldly states that “‘Groundhog’ will never be designated a national film treasure by the Library of Congress” – and that’s exactly what happens – then you know that it’s a movie that isn’t just another fluffy, high concept romantic comedy.

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Chico & Rita (2010)

26 Tuesday Mar 2019

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D: Fernando Trueba, Javier Mariscal / 90m

Cast: Limara Meneses, Eman Xor Oña, Mario Guerra, Lenny Mandel

In 1948, in Havana, budding pianist Chico (Oña) and his best friend, Ramon (Guerra), are enjoying a night on the town with a couple of American tourists when he encounters Rita (Meneses), a singer with the most beautiful voice Chico has ever heard. For Chico it’s love at first sight, and he pursues her, but it’s not until he proves his mettle as a pianist that Rita begins to consider him as boyfriend material. Once she does, their relationship blossoms until an unfortunate incident drives a wedge between them – and on the eve of a talent competition that they’ve a good chance of winning. Chico has written a special song for the competition that’s dedicated to Rita, and Ramon persuades her to still take part. They win, and part of the prize is a month’s residency at the Hotel Nacional. But Rita’s talent and beautiful looks attract the attention of an American businessman, Ron (Mandel), who wants to take her to New York and make her a star. However, Chico’s jealousy drives a further wedge between them, and Rita goes to New York with Ron. Realising his mistake too soon, Chico too heads for New York, but a reconciliation isn’t as easy as he hopes…

A vibrant and vividly portrayed romance set against a colourful backdrop of artistic and cultural change, Chico & Rita is a hugely enjoyable celebration of love and music that thrums with a passion and a vigour that could only have been achieved through its unique combination of animation and the jazz stylings of the period. It’s rare to see an animated movie that uses music to such good effect in electing to tell its simple story of love and heartbreak, and the pain that both characters are able to feel and express through their love of music. Their love affair is a thing of beauty and regret, of ill-advised decisions and wasted opportunities, of battered ambitions and tender expressions – in short, it’s a love story that resonates with every glance and gesture no matter what the emotion behind it. There’s not a false note (no pun intended) in the way that Chico and Rita’s relationship plays out, and the script – by Trueba and Ignacio Martínez de Pisón – keeps the viewer guessing all the way through as to whether or not they’ll have the happy ending they deserve. Beautifully observed, and rendered with a great deal of charm, this is a love story that would be hard to replicate with real people.

Chico & Rita is also a movie where the backdrop is just as lovingly and beautifully rendered as the main storyline, with co-director Mariscal using his skills as a designer and artist to create a visually arresting depiction of late Forties/early Fifties Havana, and the bright lights of Fifties New York and Las Vegas. This is another area where the movie has a vibrant, energetic feel to it, and the characters take their place amidst the noise and the commotion and the excitement of their surroundings so naturally that their whole environment feels completely realistic (even though the animation is highly stylised). It’s a tremendously life-affirming movie as well, bold and daring, and willing to take risks such as in a handful of scenes that are unapologetically sensuous and erotic, but still in keeping with the mood and tone of the movie and its approach to Chico and Rita’s tempestuous realtionship. Along the way there are astute explorations of the casual racism of the period – Rita achieves fame in Hollywood but loses out on respect because of her origins – and the flourishing jazz fusion that occurred when Cuban musicians met American musicians. It’s all of a piece, though, wonderfully thought out and assembled, and one of the most impressive animated movies of the current decade.

Rating: 9/10 – with a killer soundtrack that features the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and Thelonius Monk alongside compositions and arrangements by Bebo Valdés, Chico & Rita is a vivid piece of movie making that tells its agonising tale of tragic love with gusto and huge, great heaps of charm; simply irresistible, whether you’re a fan of animation or not (or even Cuban music), and often breathtaking in the way that it dissects a simple love affair with precision and skill.

Fisherman’s Friends (2019)

25 Monday Mar 2019

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D: Chris Foggin / 112m

Cast: Daniel Mays, James Purefoy, Tuppence Middleton, David Hayman, Dave Johns, Sam Swainsbury, Maggie Steed, Vahid Gold, Christian Brassington, Meadow Nobrega, Noel Clarke

For city boy and music executive Danny Anderson (Mays), the thought of leaving London for the quieter environs of Cornwall, even for a friend’s stag do, goes against the grain. But when a planned sailing weekend fails to happen, Danny, his engaged friend, Henry (Brassington), colleague Driss (Gold), and boss Troy (Clarke), all find themselves having to be rescued when their paddle boarding excursion goes wrong. Afterwards, they find that their rescuers are part of a group of local fishermen well known for singing sea shanties. Danny is immediately impressed by them, and finds himself tasked by Troy to sign the fishermen to a record deal. Unaware that he’s being pranked – Troy has no intention of taking them on – Danny manages to persuade the men to make a demo recording that he can send to the record labels. Staying at the home of de facto group leader Jim (Purefoy), who is distrustful of “outsiders”, and finding himself growing more and more attracted to Jim’s daughter, Alwyn (Middleton), as well as the way of life there, Danny begins to understand why life in Port Isaac has more to offer than he could have ever expected…

Based on the true story of the Fisherman’s Friends, a group of Cornish fishermen whose distinctive renderings of traditional sea shanties has brought them fame (if not fortune), and even a spot on the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury, Chris Foggin’s eponymous movie features the kind of heartfelt and sincerely handled narrative that is guaranteed to raise a smile and a tear, and sometimes even in the same scene. What makes it work so well isn’t the focus on the music – though there’s plenty of that, including a rousing rendition of What Shall We Do With the Drunken Sailor? – but the sense of community that the fishermen are a part of. Shot in Port Isaac, and with the town looking like an honest picture postcard version of itself, the movie doesn’t take long to woo the unsuspecting viewer with its various charms, not least the relaxed way of life on display, and the inhabitants’ positive atttudes about pretty much everything. A buoyant, ebullient sense of mischief also runs throughout the movie, with the men’s camaraderie allowing for a handful of comedic moments where pretensions are dismantled before they can take root… all of which is in stark contrast to the less amusing “humour” evinced by Troy and his sycophants. (Troy is the ostensible bad guy in the movie – but it doesn’t need one.)

With its knowing approach to the material, and a script that takes the time to add moments of poignancy to the mix, the movie is a celebration both of the sea shanties that the men sing and the tradition that keeps them from being forgotten. Again, the music is secondary to the feelings it evokes, and through the perfectly gauged performances, this appreciation is explored through a number of fine renditions that prove infectious and affecting. Mays is particularly good as the (entirely apt) fish out of water, succumbing to the love of a good woman, and the simple pleasures of Cornish life, while Purefoy makes more out of Jim’s sour demeanour than could have been expected; there are depths to his portrayal that aren’t necessarily in the script. With a number of minor sub-plots to round out the material, the movie isn’t afraid to explore more meaningful areas, such as absentee fathers, the perceived betrayal of a community, and the serious nature of what the men do away from singing. It’s ultimately light-hearted and often as whimsical as these things are usually, but Foggin ensures that it’s sprightly and entertaining in equal measure, and no one aspect of the narrative overwhelms all the others. A distinct and effective crowd pleaser, its message couldn’t be clearer: that heritage and tradition still have a vital role to play in modern day communities.

Rating: 8/10 – rousing, rambunctious, and hugely likeable, Fisherman’s Friends tells its story simply and with a great deal of subdued, yet appropriate style; beautiful Cornish locations and sterling cinematography by Simon Tindall add extra layers of charm to the material, and though it treads a very familiar path – Danny makes as many mistakes as he gets things right on the way to a hit record – this doesn’t detract from the sheer enjoyment to be found in such an unassuming movie.

Finding Steve McQueen (2018)

19 Tuesday Mar 2019

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D: Mark Steven Johnson / 92m

Cast: Travis Fimmel, Rachael Taylor, William Fichtner, Forest Whitaker, Louis Lombardi, Rhys Coiro, Jake Weary, Lily Rabe, John Finn

1980. John Baker (Fimmel) meets his girlfriend, Molly Murphy (Taylor) at a diner, where he proceeds to tell her that he’s not the man she thinks he is. Baker reveals that his real name is Harry Barber, and that in 1972, along with four other men, he robbed the United California Bank of around $12 million. The robbery was carried out in the belief that then President Richard Nixon had stashed $30 million in illegal campaign funds within the bank’s vault. After the robbery, the five men went their separate ways, Harry and his younger brother, Tommy (Weary), having been paid their “share” already. But it wasn’t long before the FBI, and lead agent Howard Lambert (Whitaker), had tracked down and arrested everyone except Harry, who promptly went on the run. Ending up in a small town, and finding a job as a bartender, Harry met Molly, and they began seeing each other. While Harry settled into small town life, he was still being sought by the FBI, but eight years later his relationship with Molly has become too important for him not to tell her the truth…

If you like your movies – whether based on a true story or not – whimsical and slightly silly, or with a surfeit of gosh-darn wholesomeness that overrides the drama of the biggest bank robbery in U.S. history, then Finding Steve McQueen will be the movie for you. It’s a movie that takes several disparate elements and mixes them all together to tell a light-hearted (and lightweight) story that opts for charm as its main characteristic, while adding dollops of goofy humour to its romantic sub-plot. Though inspired by a true story, Ken Hixon and Keith Sharon’s screenplay uses the robbery as a branching off point for a pointed exploration of Nixon’s fall from grace, an idealised appreciation for the movies of Steve McQueen, and a gently meandering romance between Harry and Molly that feels like it should be quirkier and more affecting. There’s also the FBI investigation, an avuncular affair that sees Whitaker play Lambert with a sad twinkle in his eye, and which sees the intervention of real life figure Mark Felt (Finn) in order to keep Lambert finding out (from him at least) that, yes, the President might be involved – somehow. These are worthy attempts at boosting the minimal impact the movie has as a whole, and though they’re not entirely successful, that charm that Johnson and his cast and crew have aimed for, is undeniable.

It would be easy to dismiss Finding Steve McQueen as a piece of cinematic fluff, or the movie equivalent of a meringue, but the fact that it is an enjoyable, and undemanding diversion is it’s main strength. With a slew of performances that display an awareness of the thinness of the material, and which have adjusted themselves accordingly, Fimmel et al give the more maudlin or outright saccharine-drenched moments a likeability that’s hard to ignore, and they make more of the humour than is likely was ever in the script to begin with. Fichtner is great as the Nixon-hating mastermind behind the robbery, Weary gives an affecting turn as Harry’s withdrawn, simple-minded brother, and Rabe is endearing as the rookie FBI agent whose eyes light up when she receives even the merest word of praise. Again, it’s a movie that shouldn’t work as well as it does, and kudos should go to Johnson (making only his sixth feature in twenty years) for finding a way to make each element feel more connected to the others than they should do, and for finding the through line in the narrative that keeps it all from becoming vapid and irredeemably innocuous. But then any movie that has one of its bank robbers attempt to eacape capture on a motorised lawnmower can’t be all bad…

Rating: 6/10 – with a script that could have been sharper, more focused, or less determined to make a Seventies cultural reference every two minutes or so (or all three), Finding Steve McQueen is a curious beast in that it somehow makes you forget just how bland it is once you take away the performances and Johnson’s direction; pleasant and undemanding – and those are good things – it’s a movie that serves as a reminder that sometimes less can really mean less, and still be entertaining.

Happy Anniversary (2018)

06 Wednesday Mar 2019

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D: Jared Stern / 78m

Cast: Noël Wells, Ben Schwartz, Rahul Kohli, Joe Pantoliano, Annie Potts, Kristin Bauer van Straten, David Walton, Leonardo Nam, Kate Berlant, Sanchita Malik, Isidora Goreshter

Mollie (Wells) and Sam (Schwartz) have been together for three years. On the morning of their third anniversary, Sam treats Mollie to a special breakfast in bed, which soon leads to their starting to make love, and then Mollie’s blurted admission that she’s not happy. What follows is an argument where the couple pick out each other’s faults, and generally explain why they shouldn’t be together. This continues as Sam drops off Mollie at her parents’ home, where she reveals that she’ll be staying there while she sorts out her feelings. Sam is in the process of starting up an online clothing business, and he and his business partner, Ed (Kohli), are due to make a pitch that day to a supplier, Willa (van Straten). While they prepare, Mollie spends time with her parents, and tries to decide if her relationship with Sam is worth saving, while also encountering an old flame, Arik (Walton), who helps put things into perspective. Later, though, an emergency involving their dog brings them together again. But it proves to be temporary – thanks to a message Mollie receives from Arik, and which Sam sees…

You could argue that the romantic comedy is something of a spent force as far as genres go these days. Sure they still get made, and some even show up in cinemas, but when was the last time you saw a truly satisfying romantic comedy? And particularly one that was actually about how romance can endure, and not the standard boy-meets-girl scenario? That’s where Happy Anniversary comes in, the debut feature of screenwriter Jared Stern – Mr. Popper’s Penguins (2011), The LEGO Batman Movie (2017) – a bright, appealing look at how we determine if we’re happy in a relationship, and what things convince us that we are (or we’re not, or we might be). When Mollie announces that she’s not happy, Sam calls time on her “bullshit” and accuses her of never being happy unless she’s feeling unhappy. And though this leads to the kind of recriminations we’ve all seen before, Stern is canny enough to make those recriminations more relatable because they’re exactly the kind of things that most of us have probably brought up at times in our own relationships. Mollie wants Sam to be the same romantic guy he was when they first got together, and Sam wants Mollie to acknowledge that she doesn’t know what she wants (sound familiar?).

As Stern explores the couple’s feelings about love and romance, the movie addresses further relationship issues such as getting married and having children, but thankfully not in a way that sounds pedantic or contrived, and Stern’s screenplay finds time for subtle, pithy moments such as when Mollie’s mother (Potts) tells her that marrying her father wasn’t a mistake, but not leaving him was. The movie makes the obvious point that relationships are difficult (possibly the hardest work you never get paid for), and that knowing the person you’re with is Mr or Miss Right isn’t always easy to work out, but it does all this with an easy charm, and a lightweight, comedic approach that will keep viewers smiling throughout even if there aren’t any real belly laughs to be had. Wells and Schwartz make for an appealing couple, and they share a slightly off-kilter chemistry that benefits their characters’ predicament, while there’s solid support from Kohli as the friend who does his best to help but can only do so as inappropriately as possible. There’s a bright, sunny feel to the movie thanks to DoP Nicholas Wiesnet’s use of space and light, and editor David Egan knows just when to focus on Sam or Mollie to get the most emotion out of a scene, while Stern provides us with the requisite happy ending – though one that’s tinged, for once, with a remaining sense of unresolved issues that feels in keeping with Sam and Mollie’s journey.

Rating: 7/10 – though much of Happy Anniversary follows established romantic comedy tropes, and its tone is breezily upbeat while it explores the downside of having “second thoughts”, it’s nevertheless an engaging, enjoyable movie that avoids any hint of cynicism and roots for its main characters throughout; a minor gem that has just enough dramatic heft to make it look and sound like more than just an average rom-com, it’s quietly perceptive, and just as quietly effective.

The Aftermath (2019)

04 Monday Mar 2019

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D: James Kent / 108m

Cast: Keira Knightley, Alexander Skarsgård, Jason Clarke, Martin Compston, Kate Phillips, Flora Thiemann, Jannik Schümann, Fionn O’Shea, Alexander Scheer

In the winter of 1946, Rachael Morgan (Knightley) comes to Hamburg to be with her husband, Lewis (Clarke), who is a colonel in the British Forces. They are to live in a requisitioned house on the outskirts of the city, the home of an architect, Stephen Lubert (Skarsgård) and his teenage daughter, Freda (Thiemann). Though Lewis has a great deal of respect for Lubert – and for the ordinary German people – Rachael is less than friendly. She has a reason: their son, Michael, was killed in a bombing raid when he was eleven. But as Lewis spends more and more time trying to track down the members of a group of fanatical Nazis called the 88’s, Rachael becomes more and more reliant on Lubert’s company, and while Lewis is away for a few days, she and Lubert become much closer. The pair make plans to leave Hamburg together, and when Lewis returns Rachael determines to tell him their marriage is over. But danger lurks in the wings: Freda has unwittingly aided a member of the 88’s, Albert (Schümann), in targeting Lewis for assassination…

Put Keira Knightley in a period costume, and she shines. It’s as much a cinematic given as Tom Cruise doing a dangerous stunt (though without the broken ankle). With a gift for interpreting closeted emotions and their eventual impassioned expression, Knightley is always the best thing about the movies she makes, and The Aftermath is no exception. Based on the novel by Rhidian Brook, the movie takes full advantage of Knightley’s skills as an actress, and provides viewers with a central character whose sense of morality, and her sense of loyalty, is challenged by the (somewhat staid) attentions of a man she sets out to hate, but who, in time honoured romantic fashion, she later falls in love with. That this happens at all is predictable enough, and there are many clues to tick off along the way, from the less than convincing reunion between Rachael and Lewis at the train station, to Lewis’s inability to talk about the death of their son, to the meaningful stares Rachael and Lubert exchange whenever anyone isn’t looking. With Lewis playing the absent, work-focused husband, it’s left to Rachael to occupy her time by having an affair and hoping for a better life. It’s the crux of a movie that feels as familiar, and therefore as empty, as many before it.

And so, it’s left to Knightley to rescue the movie from its self-imposed doldrums and minor soap opera theatrics. In many ways the movie doesn’t deserve her, because she seems to be the only one who’s trying. There’s a scene where Rachael breaks down and talks about her son that is truly heartbreaking for the depth of the despair and the grief that Knightley expresses. And that scene sticks out like a sore thumb because there’s no other scene to match it for its emotion, and its power, and its impact. Likewise, Skarsgård and Clarke are left in her wake, playing monotone versions of characters we’ve seen a hundred times over, and unable to make them look or sound like anything other than broad stereotypes. With the narrative offering nothing new, and Kent maintaining a steady but too respectful pace, the movie fails to excite, and remains a placid affair about a – well, placid affair. The wintry locations at least add some visual flair to proceedings, and the recreation of bomb-ravaged Hamburg is effectively realised, but these aspects aren’t enough when the main storyline should be passionate and convincing, instead of moderate and benign. Thank heaven then for Knightley, and a performance that elevates the material whenever she’s on screen.

Rating: 6/10 – a movie that means well, but which starts off slowly and stays that way (and despite an attempt at adding thriller elements towards the end), The Aftermath is rescued from terminal dullness by the force and intensity of Keira Knightley’s performance; a period romantic drama that at least gets the “period” right, this is a cautious, overly restrained tale that allows the odd flourish to shine through from time to time, but which in the end, doesn’t offer enough in the way of rewards to make it more than occasionally memorable.

Songbird (2018)

01 Friday Mar 2019

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aka Alright Now

D: Jamie Adams / 95m

Cast: Cobie Smulders, Richard Elis, Jessica Hynes, Noel Clarke, Emily Atack, Laura Patch, Holli Dempsey, Mandeep Dhillon, Griffin Dunne

Twenty years after they were first successful, rock band The Filthy Dukes are reduced to playing working men’s clubs in small British towns. Their lead singer, Joanne Skye (Smulders), is still living the rock n’ roll life, partying hard and trading on past glories whenever she can. When her manager-cum-boyfriend, Larry (Clarke), calls it quits on their relationship, and the rest of the band call it quits too in the same evening, Joanne ends up in a pub where she meets Pete (Elis) – but it’s not the best first encounter. Afterwards, Joanne meets up with old friend, Sara (Hynes), and under the influence of copious amounts of alcohol, they decide to enrol in a marine biology course at the local university. The next day they decide to go through with their enrolment, and at the university Joanne discovers that Pete is the admissions officer. Blagging their way onto the course, they also get a dorm room, and find themselves surrounded by young women half their age. For Joanne, it’s a chance to continue being a rock chick, but a growing attachment to Pete has her re-thinking her priorities…

Sometimes, a movie maker makes enough of an impression to ensure that his other work is tracked down or taken advantage of when it surfaces. Such a movie maker is Jamie Adams, whose Black Mountain Poets (2015) showed promise even though it was uneven and inconsistent in its approach. Songbird is the second of two movies made by Adams and released in 2018, and at first it looks as if it’s going to be a spoof of a pretentious Nineties indie band, with excerpts from a dreadfully arch music video for a Filthy Dukes song that was number one for fourteen weeks(!). Alas, it’s not to be, as instead, Adams decides to concentrate on Joanne and her bullish, hyperactive behaviour. She’s a verbal bull in a china shop, a slave to the persona she created twenty years before, and perilously close to having no self-awareness at all. She’s also really, really, really difficult to connect with as a character. Thanks to Adams’ further decision to have Joanne behave like the most annoying person in a room full of annoying over-achievers, most of the movie’s first half is a chore to sit through as she displays the kind of childish, free-form expressions (both verbal and physical) that denote either someone suffering from arrested development or incipient mental health problems.

All this is – of course – meant to be funny, but thanks to Adams’ leaden direction and a script that feels largely improvised (and which, like Black Mountain Poets, Adams appears happy to go along with, no matter how laboured it is), the movie struggles through long periods of dramatic and comedic inertia before it finally begins to tease out the semblance of a crafted storyline, instead of the fractured narrative it’s adopted up until then. The jittery romance between Joanne and Pete comes to the fore, and the movie almost sighs with relief at having something more defined to focus on, and the performances improve as well, with Smulders and Elis at last able to flex their acting skills in the service of something more meaningful and emotive. It’s a long time coming, and some viewers may well have hit the Stop button, or decided to head for the pub (or anywhere) long before this, but the movie’s last half hour shows just how good it could have been if Adams had been more rigorous in his approach to the material. It’s still fairly rough around the edges, and it does seem as if everyone suddenly woke up to the fact that more effort needed to be made, but it’s the one section of the movie that succeeds by actually having something to say – and knowing, at last, how to say it.

Rating: 4/10 – shot in five days (and it shows), Songbird has a dire first hour that acts as a challenge to the viewer to keep watching, and a final half hour that rescues the movie from obtaining a much lower rating; ill-advised and sluggish, with occasional flashes of inspiration that are quickly snuffed out by the next woeful occurrence, it’s to be hoped that Adams’ next endeavour has more structure and attention to both characters and plot than this does.

Happy Birthday, Toby Simpson (2017)

24 Sunday Feb 2019

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aka Breaking Free

D: Patrick Makin / 78m

Cast: Alexander Perkins, Edyta Budnik, Zara Day, Gary Heasman, Josh Wood

It should be a good day for Toby Simpson (Perkins), but his birthday is lining up to be anything but. His stewardess girlfriend, Hannah (Day), is either accusing him of seeing someone else or demanding he finish work early so he can take her to the airport; the train he normally takes to work is cancelled and the replacement coach service makes him late, something his boss at Sun Soaps, Terry (Heasman), goads him about; Terry refuses to let him go early, and so he’s forced to head home on the replacment coach – which will make him late in meeting Hannah. On the return journey he gets talking to festival goer Renata (Budnik); when the coach reaches its destination, Toby discovers that he’s lost his keys, his phone and his wallet. Realising that they’ve been stolen by someone on the coach who was wearing a purple hat, and that they’re heading to the festival, Renata persuades Toby to let her help him retrieve his belongings. Once inside the festival grounds however, the possibility of finding the thief amongst thousands of music lovers becomes less and less likely. But Renata is determined that Toby shouldn’t give up…

The debut of writer/director Patrick Makin, Happy Birthday, Toby Simpson is a light-hearted and easy-going romantic comedy that in time-honoured fashion, takes its put-upon central character on a journey of self-discovery and personal redemption. It does all this amiably and with a great deal of subdued charm, and though there’s nothing new in its boy-gets-treated-badly-by-everyone, boy-meets-girl-who-believes-in-him, boy-regains-self-respect scenario, by offering viewers a pleasant enough diversion from more standard fare, it’s far more successful than might be expected. Toby is a classic under-achiever, unable to stand up for himself, and when he tries to be more assertive he ends up worse off than he was before. Makin and Perkins make Toby a sympathetic character from the start, and even when he’s flailing around trying to justify his weak-willed behaviour (or excuse it), the sense of quiet desperation he’s projecting remains sincere and awkwardly appealing. It makes the inevitable romance with Renata all the more credible, even though their relationship is a movie staple. Thanks to the quality of Makin’s script, and of Perkins’ performance, Toby’s journey of self-discovery is amusing and warm-hearted, and because there are no detours into melodrama or more serious territory, it retains that subdued charm that helps it along so much.

Shot during the set up of Wiltshire’s End of the Road festival (and careful not to show any of the artists who played there in order to avoid any copyright problems), Makin’s debut is a good example of what can be achieved on a very small budget but with plenty of forward planning. Utilising a number of visual techniques to make it look as if Toby and Renata are actually “there”, the movie uses some of the energy from the festival as a way of adding a sense of urgency to the plot device of Toby trying to retrieve his personal effects, and the short amount of time that he and Renata have together. As the couple thrown together by the movies’ idea of fate, Perkins and Budnik have an easy chemistry that makes their characters’ growing relationship convincing, while their portrayals adhere to the idea that sometimes the shortest but most intense connections are the ones that stay with us, or influence us, the most. The romantic elements are handled with confidence and a clear sense of affection on Makin’s side, while the humour stems from the characters rather than the circumstances they find themselves in. With a great indie soundtrack working well to support the action (An Horse’s Trains and Tracks is a particular standout), those lucky enough to see this won’t be disappointed.

Rating: 8/10 – though its basic storyline is as old as the hills, and has been done a million times over, there’s still much to enjoy about Happy Birthday, Toby Simpson, not the least of which is the performances of its two leads, and the happy-wise approach adopted by its writer/director; sometimes keeping it simple is the best formula for success, and by doing this, the movie overcomes its lack of originality by having characters you can care about, and by being unrepentently good-natured throughout.

If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)

20 Wednesday Feb 2019

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D: Barry Jenkins / 119m

Cast: KiKi Layne, Stephan James, Regina King, Colman Domingo, Teyonah Parris, Michael Beach, Aunjanue Ellis, Ebony Obsidian, Dominique Thorne, Bryan Tyree Henry, Diego Luna, Ed Skrein, Finn Wittrock, Dave Franco, Pedro Pascal, Emily Rios

Clementine “Tish” Rivers (Layne) and Alonzo “Fonny” Hunt (James) are childhood friends who have grown up and fallen in love. But building a life together has become something of a challenge: Fonny’s mother (Ellis) doesn’t like her, and finding a place where they can live together is hampered by most New York landlords’ reluctance to rent to black couples. Eventually finding a place through a Jewish landlord (Franco), the pair are shopping nearby one evening when Tish is accosted by a stranger. Fonny sees him off, but not before a passing policeman, Officer Bell (Skrein), gets involved and tries to arrest Fonny. The store owner intervenes, but Fonny’s card is marked. Some time later, Fonny is arrested by the same officer for the rape of a woman (Rios) who lives in another district; Bell states he saw Fonny running from the scene and the woman picks him out of a lineup. Fonny has an alibi, though, but with the police and prosecutors dismissing it, Tish and her family set out to prove Fonny’s innocence…

Told in non-linear fashion, Barry Jenkins’ adaptation of the novel of the same name by James Baldwin, begins with the revelation that Tish is pregnant. Fonny is already behind bars, awaiting trial, and Jenkins depicts the scene where Tish informs both families. It’s a good scene, and gives Ellis a chance to shine as Fonny’s mother, a religious zealot with a vicious streak a mile wide. And yet, though it is a good scene, it also provides the first indication that Jenkins’ adaptation might not prove as rewarding a movie overall as his previous feature, Moonlight (2016). For all the drama and outbursts of physical and verbal violence, the scene is overwritten, and filled with the kind of structured dialogue that only occurs in the movies, or on stage. And despite the best efforts of a very talented cast, this leads to the scene having only a certain amount of energy and power. As the movie progresses, there are many more scenes that reflect this problem with the screenplay, including an extended scene between Fonny and his friend, Daniel (Henry), and the moment when Tish’s mother (King) meets the woman Fonny is supposed to have raped. Many of these scenes have an unfortunate tendency to drag, or feel under-developed, and the movie suffers as a result.

The overall feeling is that Jenkins is being too respectful of the source material, and in attempting to remain faithful to Baldwin’s work, has done so at the expense of making it a truly cinematic experience. There is emotion here, and much of it is expressed through the love that Tish and Fonny have for each other, but it doesn’t resonate or linger from scene to scene, and in the end it doesn’t matter how many affecting close ups of Layne and James are used, they’re unable to improve on the minimal impact that’s present throughout. Though it’s an intelligent, perceptive movie when it comes to racial matters and the details of Tish and Fonny’s relationship, and Jenkins places the action in an ersatz combination of the Seventies and modern day that is oddly effective, even James Laxton’s excellent cinematography and Nicholas Britell’s Seventies-influenced score can’t overcome the deficits inherent in the material. Layne and James make for a sweetly likeable couple, and there’s terrific support from King, Henry, and the aforementioned Ellis, but there are times when the use of some cast members is a distraction of the “oh look, it’s…” variety (Pascal, Franco). Somewhere in If Beale Street Could Talk there’s a definitive version of Baldwin’s novel trying to break out, but thanks to Jenkins’ inconsistent efforts, it never gets the chance to show itself.

Rating: 7/10 – with enough about it to justify the good reviews it’s getting elsewhere, in truth If Beale Street Could Talk looks and sounds like a movie that doesn’t know how to connect with its audience; technically well made, and with a number of relevant things to say about the nature of love and commitment, it’s ultimately a movie that’s difficult to engage with, and not as powerful as it could have been.

Untogether (2018)

13 Wednesday Feb 2019

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D: Emma Forrest / 99m

Cast: Jamie Dornan, Lola Kirke, Jemima Kirke, Ben Mendelsohn, Billy Crystal, Alice Eve, Jennifer Grey, Scott Caan

Andrea (Jemima Kirke) is a recovering heroin addict (straight for a year now) who wrote a successful literary novel when she was twenty-one, but who hasn’t written a word since. She has a one night stand with a doctor, Nick (Dornan), who has had recent literary success himself with a memoir of his time in a war zone. For the first time since her recovery, she feels a connection to Nick and finds herself pursuing a relationship with him. Meanwhile, her younger sister, Tara (Lola Kirke), is in a relationship with Martin (Mendelsohn), a former musician who’s much older than she is. When she meets a rabbi, David (Crystal), and he offers to help her reconnect with her faith, Tara finds herself smitten by him, and unsure suddenly about her feelings for Martin. Both sisters find themselves dealing with their own insecurities as they navigate these new relationships, and having to also deal with the fallout of the decisions they’ve made. Things are made even more difficult when Tara doesn’t attend a comeback gig that Martin has arranged, and an unexpected truth about Nick’s memoir is revealed…

The feature debut of English writer/director Emma Forrest, Untogether is another of those LA fables that revel in presenting a handful of characters with a surfeit of insecurities, and traits that keep them from ever being happy, no matter how hard they try. Your patience for this sort of thing will be dependent on how many similar movies you’ve seen already, because although there’s no shortage of pointed humour and affecting drama in Forrest’s debut, ultimately the problems and the issues her characters face aren’t all that original. Andrea is another in the long line of movie novelists who struggle to find that elusive second book, and detest the negative attention that comes with it. Nick isn’t a writer, and his easy success rankles with her, and it’s this and her own doubts as to whether she’ll ever write again that causes Andrea to do what she can to sabotage her relationship with Nick, and take steps toward self-harming. However, a lot of this perceived angst is just that, perceived, as Forrest’s script never takes Andrea to a dark enough place to make her as sympathetic as she should be. You just want her to get over herself and stop brooding about what she hasn’t got, and to focus instead on what she has got.

Unfortunately, the same is true of Tara. While we can assume that she likes older men given her relationship with Martin, her sudden attraction for David is never convincingly portrayed, despite good work from the ever reliable Kirke, and Crystal in a serio-comic role that carries a lot of warmth. This leaves the relationship between Tara and Martin to founder more and more as the movie goes on, becoming less and less interesting as Forrest moves her characters from Point A to Point B by way of convenience instead of natural progression. As for Nick, Dornan is stuck with a role that has no arc, and makes little impact, leaving Andrea’s infatuation for him something that comes across as more curious than plausible. Though her script struggles to avoid the clichés inherent in such intertwined stories, Forrest has better luck in the director’s chair, and keeps the viewer involved thanks to a combination of placing the emotion in a scene front and centre, and a cast that enters into the spirit of things with a commitment and gusto that smooths over the screenplay’s rougher patches. By the end, you may be glad that it’s all over, and that the journey wasn’t worth the time and the effort, but there are enough good moments along the way to make sticking with it a reward in itself.

Rating: 6/10 – another tale of lost souls in LA (just how many can there be?), Untogether sees its characters tasked with taking risks in their lives, but having no idea what to do, or being too afraid to do so in the first place; frustrating for its lack of a coherent message, but worth it for the performances (Mendelsohn is particularly effective), perhaps it’s an indication that Forrest should focus on directing instead of writing.

Then Came You (2018)

09 Saturday Feb 2019

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D: Peter Hutchings / 97m

Cast: Asa Butterfield, Maisie Williams,Nina Dobrev, Ken Jeong, Tyler Hoechlin, David Koechner, Peyton List, Tituss Burgess, Sonya Walger, Colin Moss

(And the award for worst movie poster of 2018 goes to…)

Calvin (Butterfield) is nineteen and a committed hypochondriac: he keeps a journal of his symptoms, and is a regular at his long-suffering doctor’s. When his doctor sends him to a cancer support group in the hopes that it will put Calvin’s “problems” into perspective, he meets Skye (Williams), a sixteen year old whose condition is terminal. Skye latches on to Calvin, and browbeats him into helping her tick off the items on her bucket list. As they get to know each other better, and Calvin sees how Skye copes with her illness (and her impending demise), his own fears and worries begin to fall away, and he even entertains the idea of talking to the woman of his dreams, an air stewardess called Izzy (Dobrov) (Calvin works as a baggage handler at the local airport). With Skye and Calvin’s friendship helping both of them to recognise what’s important in their lives, a reticence on Calvin’s part threatens his budding relationship with Izzy, while Skye comes to realise that the items on her bucket list aren’t as important as she first thought…

And we’re back… in that strange realm where teenagers are saddled with the kind of emotional baggage that can only come from having back stories forged in the mind of a cruel screenwriter (here the wonderfully named Fergal Rock). Calvin’s hypochondria is the by-product of the guilt he feels for surviving the car accident that killed his twin sister when they were eight. Skye’s devil-may-care attitude hides her genuine fear of dying before she’s had a chance to really experience life. And in true movie fashion, their friendship allows them both to shrug off the emotional chains that they’ve allowed themselves to carry around (like teenage versions of Jacob Marley’s ghost), and to become better people as a result. All of which begs the question, just why is teenage suffering so widely explored in the movies? And why is it so often explored in such a lightweight, overly familiar, and generally superficial manner as it is here? Even if you had never seen this kind of movie before, you’d still be able to work out its dynamic and where it’s headed, and pretty quickly too. It’s a strange conundrum – why keep combining a coming of age drama with a tragic, illness of the week scenario?

In the hands of Rock and director Peter Hutchings, Then Came You lacks surprises, depth, and any appreciable consistency in the tone of the material, preferring instead to make an amiable comedy out of dying, and to use one character’s terminal illness to make another character feel better about themselves. If this leaves a nasty taste in the mouth, it’s as nothing to the scene where Calvin takes Skye to visit his sister’s grave, and explains how she died. It’s such a monumentally insensitive thing for Calvin to do, and yet you can tell this is meant to be one of those “important” moments that speaks to the pain he’s been suffering (poor thing!). Badly thought out as it is, it could have been a whole lot worse, but thanks to the combined efforts of Butterfield and Williams, scenes such as this one, and many others, look and sound better than they would do under closer inspection. Their performances (and Dobrov’s) are enjoyable, and their efforts allow Calvin and Skye’s relationship to appear more credible than it has any right to be. And this all speaks to the overall problem that the movie struggles to overcome: it never feels real and it never feels as if you could ever meet the likes of Calvin and Skye in real life.

Rating: 4/10 – with its central message – if you’re feeling bad about yourself, go find someone who’s worse off than you – Then Came You is a romantic comedy drama that plays derivatively as a romance, uneasily as a comedy, and disastrously as a drama; its attempts at being quirky fall flat, and without its talented cast to prop it up, it would all collapse like a poorly cooked soufflé, an analogy that is entirely apt once you realise just how little this movie has to say about death, love, and finding happiness.

Jonathan (2018)

28 Monday Jan 2019

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aka Duplicate

D: Bill Oliver / 101m

Cast: Ansel Elgort, Suki Waterhouse, Patricia Clarkson, Douglas Hodge, Matt Bomer, Souleymane Sy Savane, Shunori Ramanathan, Joe Egender, Ian Unterman

For Jonathan (Elgort), life is lived in just twelve hours every day, from 7am to 7pm. During that time he works and sleeps and and exercises and takes care of his apartment, the one he shares with his brother, John (Elgort). John’s life unfolds between 7pm and 7am, and he has a similar routine. But their relationship isn’t exactly like that of other brothers, because Jonathan and John inhabit the same body. They are two distinct personalities, able to live their separate lives thanks to the intervention when they were children, of Dr Mina Nariman (Clarkson). Using technology to keep both identities in their own daily “time zones”, the pair communicate through video messages, thus ensuring that their lives don’t overlap. But when Jonathan starts to notice a difference in John’s behaviour, he becomes curious and hires a private detective (Unterman) to check on John’s movements. Jonathan discovers that John has a girlfriend, Elena (Waterhouse), a relationship that both have agreed not to have because of the difficulties involved. When Jonathan’s involvement causes the relationship to end, John refuses to communicate with him, which leads Jonathan into doing two things he’s never done before: explaining their condition to Elena, and falling in love with her…

How well do we know our siblings? How confidently can we say that we know what they would do or how they would react in any given situation? And how much more difficult would that be to judge if you’ve never met that sibling in person? In Bill Oliver’s debut feature, questions of identity are clearly to the fore, but more than whether you can truly know someone through the medium of video messages takes a back seat to the question of how well you can know yourself in those circumstances. It’s an intriguing idea, and Oliver, along with co-screenwriters Peter Nickowitz and Gregory Davis, spends much of Jonathan‘s running time exploring the tilte character’s personality and how it responds when the ordered world it exists in is threatened. Jonathan’s life is governed by rules and responsibility, and his lifestyle is one that he has embraced wholeheartedly because it keeps him safe. John is more outgoing, more likely to indulge himself or be spontaneous, things that Jonathan would never dream of doing. So when John’s relationship with Elena is revealed, it sends Jonathan into a tailspin that, ironically, has him behaving in similar ways to his brother. And in exactly the same way that John kept Elena’s existence a secret from Jonathan, so too does Jonathan keep his relationship with her secret from John.

All of this has inevitable consequences, and as the movie plays out, Oliver adds a fine layer of foreboding to the narrative, as Jonathan becomes ever more confused and afraid of where his new-found feelings will take him. In the title role (and the supporting one), Elgort gives perhaps his best performance so far, tightly wound as Jonathan and unravelling faster and faster as the movie goes on, his initially placid features and economy of movement giving way to expressions of muted horror and staccato bursts of physical energy. There’s also an emotional depth to Elgort’s portrayal that highlights Jonathan’s dependence on his brother, and which is allowed more and more expression as he struggles to understand what’s happening to him. Oliver keeps the sci-fi elements deliberately low-key, preferring instead to focus on the brothers’ relationship, while also affording time to explore Elena’s reaction to her involvement in a unique ménage à trois, and the motherly affections and attentions of Dr Nariman. As the latter, Clarkson brings further gravitas to the material, while Waterhouse brings a much needed looseness to her character that offsets the serious nature of the other performances. With Oliver opting for a restrained, observational feel to much of the material, it’s not entirely engaging, and there is the sense that we’re looking at a lab rat navigating a maze that doesn’t have an exit, but when Elgort is struggling for a clarity that he just can’t grasp, the movie becomes poignant and more than a little bittersweet.

Rating: 8/10 – a polished, thought-provoking drama with an impressive central performance from Ansel Elgort, Jonathan is a low budget indie movie with lofty ambitions that it can’t always attain, but which has a sense of purpose about it that helps it through some of the rougher parts of the script; a neat idea that could have been expanded further, it succeeds thanks to the wise decision not to Hollywood-ise either its romantic elements, or the dramatic nature of Jonathan’s emotional turmoil.

Beast (2017)

02 Wednesday Jan 2019

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D: Michael Pearce / 106m

Cast: Jessie Buckley, Johnny Flynn, Trystan Gravelle, Geraldine James, Oliver Maltman, Charley Palmer Rothwell

On the island of Jersey, three young women have been murdered recently and the killer is still at large. Moll Huntington (Buckley) is a twenty-something tour guide who still lives at home with her parents. On the night of her birthday, she leaves the party her mother (James) has organised, and heads to a nightclub, where she meets a young man (Rothwell), who later tries to take advantage of her on their way home. She’s rescued by local poacher and odd job man Pascal (Flynn), and the pair strike up a tentative romance. That same night, a fourth girl is abducted and later found murdered. Suspicion points toward Pascal, who has a violent history, but Moll has become so infatuated with him that she lies to the police about being with him the whole time she was at the nightclub. However, doubts about his innocence begin to plague her, and when she learns about his past, this causes her to doubt him even more. When a break in the case appears to clear Pascal, it’s still not enough to convince Moll, and she starts to challenge what seems to be the truth…

Based very loosely on the real life Beast of Jersey who broke into homes at night and attacked women and children during the 60’s and 70’s, Beast is a psycho-drama that is heavy on atmosphere, and rife with undercurrents of dread and barely contained mania. There’s madness here too, but the source isn’t what (or who) you might expect, as writer/director Michael Pearce slowly unravels the identity of someone who isn’t the Beast, but who is, in many ways, far worse. Both Pascal and Moll have violent pasts – she stabbed a fellow pupil when she was thirteen as revenge for bullying, he assaulted his girlfriend of the time – and Pearce explores the different mindsets that have kept both of them from having any real friends, or from being in a long-term relationship. They’re both outsiders, Pascal because he doesn’t “fit in”, and Moll because she doesn’t want to. Together their different social exclusions help them bond and this bond allows a twisted form of romance to develop. But as the movie progresses, and we learn more about them, Pearce reveals that their relationship is less of a romantic connection, and more of a strange co-dependency.

Pearce places this odd, and very disturbing central relationship against a backdrop of bucolic imagery that hints at darker deeds to come, and which also offers little in the way of comfort for the easily dismayed viewer. Bolstered by two terrific performances from Buckley and Flynn, the movie works best when it’s exploring Moll’s tortured psychological motivations, with Buckley navigating the kind of dark emotional territory that is both unnerving and frightening for the scale of its intensity. Flynn makes Pascal more of a tragic figure than he first appears, and though his past misdeeds point at the poacher being involved in the murders, there’s an ambiguity that remains in place even when Pearce affects a narrative sleight of hand that changes things irrevocably for both Moll and Pascal. But this sleight of hand also means that the movie goes off at a tangent that isn’t anywhere near as convincing as what’s gone before, and it raises more questions than Pearce’s screenplay has answers for. It’s a shame, as up until then, the movie is a confident, tightly controlled thriller that plays with audience expectations, and which offers complex characterisations instead of the usual thriller-style stereotypes. It’s also beautifully composed and shot by DoP Benjamin Kracun, and features an eclectic but effective score by Jim Williams.

Rating: 7/10 – a compelling, and malice-filled first feature from Pearce, Beast isn’t quite the sum of its parts, but when it’s being mysterious and malignant, it’s hard to look away for fear of missing something either horrible or important, or both; Buckley is outstanding, but the secondary characters, including James’s stern-faced mother and Gravelle’s lovelorn policeman, aren’t as well developed, while Maya Maffioli’s sometimes hesitant editing doesn’t always allow certain scenes to flow as smoothly as they should.

Cold War (2018)

28 Friday Dec 2018

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Original title: Zimna wojna

D: Pawel Pawlikowski / 88m

Cast: Joanna Kulig, Tomasz Kot, Borys Szyc, Agata Kulesza, Cédric Kahn, Jeanne Balibar, Adam Woronowicz

In the wake of World War II, and with Poland trying to establish a new identity for itself under Communist rule, Wiktor (Kot) and Zula (Kulig) meet at the musical academy where he is one of the directors, and she is a pupil. The academy has been set up as a training ground for performing musicians tasked with spreading Communist propaganda, but despite all the rules and restrictions that prohibit any kind of relationship between them, Wiktor and Zula fall in love. While on a foreign tour, they grab the opportunity of escaping to the West, but their plan means travelling separately, something that leads to both of them making decisions that affect their reunion. When they are eventually reunited in Paris, they renew their love affair while Zula is approached to become a recording artist. Jealousy and distrust begin to undermine their love for each other, and Zula becomes unhappy with her life in France. Looking for a solution to her problems, Zula makes an independent decision that has a far-reaching impact on both her life, and Wiktor’s also…

With Ida (2013), writer/director Pawel Pawlikowski made good on the promise hinted at in the four movies he’d made up ’til then, and showed that he was a movie maker of extraordinary skill and talent. In case anyone thought that movie might be a flash in the pan, here’s Cold War to prove them wrong. Loosely based on the experiences of his own parents, Pawlikowski’s ode to the power and perseverance of love is an impressive, heart-wrenching experience that has flashes of profundity and a clarity of purpose that is outstanding. Everything about Cold War has a note of authenticity about it, from the opening recitations of Polish folk songs, to the austere functionality of the academy and its rural surroundings, to the smoky clubs and bars of late Fifties Paris, and the heady milieu that gave birth to the cultural and artistic explosion that was beginning to make itself felt. But looking and sounding even more authentic is the relationship between Wiktor and Zula, an incandescent, tender, desperate, imploring, fiery, all-consuming romance that can only be sustained in bursts before it tears them apart. Pawlikowski shows the pain and the anguish they feel, and also the need for each other that drives them on, their love prompting them to make sacrifices for each other that may appear foolish to others, but which are true expressions of the depth of their love.

As with Ida, Pawlikowski has chosen to shoot Cold War in black and white, and the decision is yet another reason why he’s such a skilled cinematic interpreter and technician. Working again with DoP Lukasz Zal, Pawlikowski ensures the movie is often breathtaking to look at, whether we’re looking at wintry rural Polish landscapes, or the interior of the garret apartment where Wiktor and Zula live in Paris. Individual frames and compositions leap out, but they’re always in service to the material, and never feel gratuitous. This visual flare is matched by the flawless choice of music that enhances and enthralls, whether it’s the aforementioned (and melancholy sounding) Polish folk songs, or the jazz breakouts, or even the unexpected use of Rock Around the Clock. Pawlikowski melds it all together with a singular ease, tying the characters’ moods and emotions to the music, and enhancing the narrative so much and so effectively that the movie winds up feeling like a lost Sixties New Wave classic being given a long overdue, big screen re-issue. Kulig and Kot give powerful, indelible performances, highlighting their characters’ strengths and shortcomings with equal measures of sympathy and persuasion, and Pawlikowski rounds it all up with a final shot (and line) that is so affecting it almost takes the breath away. It’s simple, and it’s audacious, and it sums up the movie completely.

Rating: 9/10 – a prime contender for best movie of 2018, Cold War is a passionate, beautifully shot tale that exceeds expectations at every turn, and which provides ample rewards for the interested viewer; with this and Ida, Pawlikowski seems to have found his oeuvre, and on this form if he wants to make further features in a similar fashion and/or vein, then he absolutely should be allowed to do so.

British Classics: Love Actually (2003)

24 Monday Dec 2018

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D: Richard Curtis / 135m

Cast: Rowan Atkinson, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Colin Firth, Gregor Fisher, Martin Freeman, Hugh Grant, Keira Knightley, Andrew Lincoln, Laura Linney, Heike Makatsch, Kris Marshall, Martine McCutcheon, Lúcia Moniz, Liam Neeson, Bill Nighy, Joanna Page, Alan Rickman, Rodrigo Santoro, Emma Thompson, Billy Bob Thornton

In the weeks leading up to Xmas, several friends and relatives who are all connected to each other find themselves dealing with love in (almost) all its various forms. David (Grant) is the newly elected Prime Minister who finds himself attracted to Natalie (McCutcheon), a junior member of the staff at 10 Downing Street. Mark (Lincoln) is the best friend of Peter (Ejiofor), who has just married Juliet (Knightley) – who Mark is secretly in love with. Writer Jamie (Firth), after being cheated on by his girlfriend, heads to Provence to write his latest novel, and falls in love with his housekeeper, Aurélia (Moniz). David’s sister, Karen (Thompson), begins to suspect that her husband, Harry (Rickman), is having an affair with someone at his work. Meanwhile, one of his other employees, Sarah (Linney), has feelings for her colleague, Karl (Santoro), but doesn’t know how to broach them. Daniel (Neeson), a friend of Karen’s, is a recent widower who’s stepson Sam (Brodie-Sangster) reveals his own life for a girl at his school. John (Freeman) and Judy (Page) are body doubles working on a movie, while Colin (Marshall) dreams of visiting the U.S. where he believes his being British will attract lots of women.

The glue that binds all these characters together, even more so than writer/director Richard Curtis’s excessive generosity in connecting them in the first place, is the character of Billy Mack (Nighy), an aging singer making a comeback with a cover version of The Troggs’ Love Is All Around, retitled Christmas Is All Around. Whenever the movie is spending time with the other characters, Billy is often there in the background, his cheesy monstrosity of a Xmas record and louche behaviour a much needed antidote to the surfeit of sentimentality and saccharine romanticism that peppers the narrative from start to finish. Even the less “happy” storylines – Harry and Karen, Sarah and Karl, Juliet and Mark – are bittersweet entries that are layered with poignancy and hopefulness. But that’s the point of the movie: it’s a positive message of love for everyone. Even if a marriage founders for a moment (Harry and Karen), or love is a case of wrong place, wrong time (Mark and Juliet), or even if it never gets off the ground at all (Sarah and Karl), all the clichés are in place: love will find a way, love is all you need, love conquers all… That Curtis holds it all together and still manages to make it work despite all the plot contrivances and rampant wish fulfillment that threaten to derail it several times over, is a testament to his confidence in the material.

Of course, he’s aided by an accomplished ensemble cast who rise to their individual challenges with gusto and no small amount of charm. Grant’s dance routine, Rickman’s hangdog expressions, Nighy’s inappropriate smirking – all of these character beats and more help to make the movie a feast of feelgood moments that linger like treasured memories long after it’s ended. Curtis may have laid on the romance with a trowel (sometimes it’s like being battered over the head with a dozen red roses), but this is a very, very funny movie with endlessly quotable lines (Colin: “Stateside I am Prince William without the weird family”), visual gags aplenty, and the ability to spring a number of clever narrative sleights of hand when you’re least expecting them. It’s an appealing, but unsophisticated slice of romantic fairy tale excess that’s bolstered by pin-sharp humour, terrific performances, and a refreshing awareness that it all takes place in a fantasy-based “reality” of Curtis’s devising (where else would the US President get such a public dressing down for his behaviour?). Fifteen years on, it remains a perennial favourite at Xmas, and despite an initial lack of enthusiasm on the part of critics, a movie that has transcended any criticism – deserved or otherwise – to become one of those rare movies that can be enjoyed over and over again, and which never seems to grow old or stale with repeated viewings.

Rating: 8/10 – a movie that tells nine separate stories and which does justice to all of them, Love Actually is a moving, thoughtful, and emotional look at love itself and what it means for a variety of people in a variety of situations and circumstances (though notably, not anyone who’s LGBT); comic and romantic in equal measure, it’s a movie you can fall in love with easily and unreservedly (and any movie that contains Jeanne Moreau in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo has got to be getting things more right than wrong).

Outside In (2017)

17 Monday Dec 2018

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D: Lynn Shelton / 109m

Cast: Edie Falco, Jay Duplass, Kaitlyn Dever, Ben Schwartz, Charles Leggett, Eryn Rea, Matt Molloy, Pamela Reed

After spending the last twenty years in prison for murder, Chris (Duplass) is paroled and returns to his home town of Granite Falls. At a surprise party given by his brother, Ted (Schwartz), Chris reunites with Carol (Falco), one of his high school teachers and the person whose efforts have helped gain his release. Later, Carol begins to realise that Chris has a crush on her, something that is confirmed when he kisses her outside her home and declares his love for her. Carol insists they can only be friends, but even that proves difficult, as when he and Carol do begin to spend time together, it’s in the company of Carol’s teenage daughter, Hildy (Dever). While Carol does her best to put some distance between them, Hildy becomes interested in Chris and begins to hang out with him. But though he and Hildy get on, Chris still hopes to be with Carol, and convinces her to spend the day with him as a kind of final, one off experience that would allow him to move on. But while the day goes better than they could have hoped for, the following day sees things begin to go badly wrong…

Featuring an original screenplay by director Shelton and star Duplass, Outside In is a subtle, elegantly paced drama that explores the emotional vicissitudes of two people whose close bond has been developed over years in which they have only been able to exchange their ideas and feelings through letters. How much longing would build up over all that time, the movie asks, and how would someone deal with the inevitable pressure of expectation that would bring? Well, for Chris it’s easy: he blurts out his feelings as if it were the simplest thing in the world to do. But for Carol, the pressure she feels is different. Married – though to an indifferent husband (Leggett) – and with a daughter who is trying to deal with her own issues, Carol’s feelings for Chris are tempered by responsibility and their inappropriate nature. While Chris persists in his attentions, Carol feels the weight of her own expectations slowly eroding her will to say no. And though there are no prizes for guessing how things will turn out on their day together, Shelton and Duplass’s sympathetic and revealing screenplay ensures that what follows isn’t as easily deciphered.

The movie is anchored by two terrific central performances. Falco offers a quietly devastating portrayal of a middle-aged woman who is only now beginning to realise just how much she’s settled for in her life. As she struggles with her feelings for Chris, Carol’s inner torment is perfectly expressed by Falco, and the depth of her feelings, and the crisis it’s causing her is beautifully rendered. Just as good, but in a different fashion, Duplass plays Chris as a thirty-eight year old man suffering from arrested development, still the eighteen year old he was when he went to jail, and still viewing much of life through the eyes of a teenager. That he’s not fully aware of this should be tragic, but Chris is so good-natured and kind that it counts almost as a blessing, and Duplass uses the character’s naïvete to good effect. This is a movie that is decisive and impactful in equal measure, and in service to a story that builds momentum while avoiding many of the clichés that you might expect from yet another “small-town story”. Shelton has made perhaps her best movie yet, and the whole thing is given a further boost thanks to a lovely, wistful, engaging soundtrack courtesy of Andrew Bird.

Rating: 8/10 – full of quiet, tender moments that carry an unexpected emotional wallop, Outside In is a beautifully crafted and shot movie (by Nathan M. Miller) that takes its time in developing both the main storyline and the inner lives of its two central characters; a movie about hope and longing, and how there are many, different kinds of imprisonment, the latest from the prolific Duplass brothers reconfirms that when it comes to small scale indie dramas, they’re still in a league of their own.

The Sweet Life (2016)

09 Sunday Dec 2018

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D: Rob Spera / 90m

Cast: Chris Messina, Abigail Spencer, Maggie Siff, Tyson Ritter, J.D. Evermore, Karan Soni, Glenn Plummer, Nick Searcy, Josh Pence, Jayne Brook

After another day of poor returns, depressed ice cream salesman Kenny Pantalio (Messina) contemplates throwing himself off a bridge and ending it all. But he’s interrupted by Lolita Nowicki (Spencer), a young woman with her own suicidal tendencies. When they discover they have the same therapist, it leads to them wandering through night-time Chicago until outside a swanky restaurant, Kenny is mistaken for a valet parker, and is given the keys to a Mercedes. Lolita convinces him to take the car, and that they should travel together to the Golden Gate Bridge where they can both commit suicide. As their journey takes them across country, Kenny and Lolita find themselves in a number of weird situations, from trying to rob a convenience store on the promise of their having a gun, to Kenny’s stealing a car that has a surprising cargo on the back seat, to a side trip to meet someone from Kenny’s past. Through trial and error they arrive in San Francisco, where Lolita’s own past catches up with her, and her relationship with Kenny prompts a sudden decision…

Despite the best of intentions, and the best efforts of its screenplay – by Jared Rappaport – its director, and its two leads, The Sweet Life lacks the necessary credulity to allow the viewer to connect with the characters and the plot. From the moment that Lolita interrupts Kenny’s suicidal reverie, the movie goes off in several different directions all at once, and it tries to become a drama, a comedy, and yes, a romance, and often, all at the same time. This scatter gun effect works well at certain moments, but falls flat at others, leaving the movie feeling haphazard and poorly constructed. Even if you accept the unlikely “meet-cute” that brings Kenny and Loilta together, the contrived nature of their subsequent relationship remains a recurring problem. The idea is that they will support each other during their road trip, but this rarely happens, as each is as selfish and inwardly focused as the other, and even when they do put aside their differences to come to each other’s rescue, it’s always because the script needs them to, not because it makes their journey that much richer or profound. That said, their journey does avoid easy sentimentality, and there are trenchant moments that work surprisingly well.

What Rappaport’s script also avoids is any in-depth explorations of Kenny and Lolita’s reasons for wanting to commit suicide. There are hints and clues, but none that are fleshed out enough to make sense, or allow the viewer to feel sorry for them. Kenny is depressed, and as it transpires, for a variety of reasons; Lolita is the same. But their intention to jump from the Golden Gate Bridge always feels like a stretch, the road trip a way of giving them time to realise that their lives aren’t as bleak as they think, and for the movie to make a number of telling comments about the nature of happiness. If you were watching the movie, and didn’t know why they were heading to San Francisco, you could quite easily believe this was merely another modern rom-com where opposites attract. And on many levels, when the script isn’t addressing this issue directly, the movie is much better for it. Messina portrays Kenny with an increasingly endearing manner that proves likeable by the movie’s end, but Spencer has the very hard task of making Lolita look and sound like someone who would exist in the real world. In the end, Spera’s direction proves too wayward to help matters, and the outcome is both dramatically and emotionally spurious, something that undermines those moments earlier in the movie that do work.

Rating: 5/10 – with little in the way of depth, and little in the way of examining the serious side of suicidal tendencies, The Sweet Life is a rom-com with dramatic pretensions it’s unable to pull off; a frustrating experience, it’s a low-key, genial movie that offers odd moments of poignancy, but never gels into anything more substantial.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2018)

25 Sunday Nov 2018

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D: Mike Newell / 124m

Cast: Lily James, Michiel Huisman, Glen Powell, Matthew Goode, Jessica Brown Findlay, Katherine Parkinson, Penelope Wilton, Tom Courtenay, Kit Connor, Bronagh Gallagher, Bernice Stegers, Clive Merrison

In 1946, author Juliet Ashton (James) is in the middle of promoting her latest book, when two things happen simultaneously: The Times Literary Supplement asks her to write a series of articles on the benefits of literature, and she receives a letter from a Guernsey man named Dawcey Adams (Huisman) who is part of a literary society on the island. Intrigued by the idea of a literary society formed during the war, Juliet opts to visit Guernsey and meet Adams and the other members. Just before she sails from London, her American beau, Mark (Powell), proposes to her and she accepts. On Guernsey, Juliet meets all but one of the members of the literary society, and is told that the absent member, Elizabeth McKenna (Findlay), is away on the continent. When she mentions writing an article about the group, one of them, Amelia Maugery (Wilton), refuses to agree to the idea. Sensing there are things that she’s not being told, Juliet remains on the island and soon finds herself beginning to piece together the mystery surrounding Elizabeth’s absence…

Based on the novel of the same name (and how could it be anything different?) by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is a lightweight slice of rose-tinted nostalgia filtered through the lens of modern movie-making techniques, and with even less substance than the culinary creation in its title (which sounds like a stodge-fest of epic proportions). It’s by-the-numbers movie making with no surprises, an ending you can guess all the way from the rings of Saturn, and as many softly poignant moments designed to raise a tear that can be squeezed into a two-hour run time. It’s cosy, and reassuring in its approach, and it requires almost no effort at all in watching it. In short, it’s a perfectly enjoyable confection that’s written and directed and performed with a keen understanding that it has to be made in a certain way, and that way is to provide audiences with the cinematic equivalent of comfort food. So lightweight is it that the mystery of Elizabeth’s absence isn’t even the most dramatic aspect of the movie – and that’s bcause there’s nothing dramatic about any of it, no matter how hard the script tries, and no matter how hard its director tries also.

Thankfully, all this doesn’t mean that the movie is a bad one, just predictable and bland and almost a perfect tick box exercise in terms of it being a romantic drama with a wartime background. It does feature a clutch of good performances, with James suitably bullish and radiant at the same time, Courtenay delivering yet another example of his recent run of lovable old codgers, Goode effortlessly suave and supportive as Juliet’s publisher, and Powell as the boyfriend who you know is going to be dumped near the end to ensure that true love prevails as it should. Only Huisman looks out of place (and there’s a distinct awkwardness and lack of chemistry between him and James), while Parkinson and Wilton deliver pitch-perfect portrayals of a gin-making (and swigging) spinster, and a still grieving mother respectively. It’s handsomely mounted (though sadly, none of it was actually shot on Guernsey), with impressive production design and period detail, and equally impressive effects shots detailing some of the destruction suffered by London during the Blitz. But still, there’s that traditional romantic storyline that anchors the movie and keeps it from straying too far into original territory. And if there’s one thing that the movie knows above all else, it’s that familiarity – when done correctly – is all you need.

Rating: 7/10 – a movie that can be criticised easily for what it doesn’t do, The Guersey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is a modest movie with modest ambitions, and likely to have a modest effect on its audience; a good-natured bit of celluloid fluff, it’s perfect viewing for a wet and windy Sunday afternoon, or when all you need is something that doesn’t require too much effort in order to enjoy it fully.

Almost Adults (2016)

19 Monday Nov 2018

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D: Sarah Rotella / 90m

Cast: Natasha Negovanlis, Elise Bauman, Justin Gerhard, Winny Clarke, Mark Matechuk, Pujaa Pandey, David John Phillips

Cassie (Negovanlis) and Mackenzie (Bauman) are best friends on the verge of leaving college and heading out into the wider world. Cassie has recently split up from her boyfriend, Matthew (Matechuk), while Mackenzie is coming to terms with being a lesbian. While Cassie tells Mackenzie about her love life, Mackenzie feels awkward about coming out to Cassie; she’s told their mutual gay friend, Levi (Gerhard), and recently her parents, but is unsure how Cassie will react. Persuaded  by Levi to look for a girlfriend on Tumblr, Mackenzie continues to avoid telling Cassie she’s a lesbian, while a couple of chance encounters with Matthew lead Cassie to wonder if she is over him. Inevitably, Cassie finds out about Mackenzie’s “secret”, and her disappointment causes a rift between them. As they navigate the new dynamic of their friendship, with each finding fault with the other for their attitudes and behaviours, both Cassie and Mackenzie try to come to terms with all the new feelings and emotions they’re experiencing. Mackenzie begins a relationship with Elliot (Clarke), while Cassie focuses on getting the job she wants. As they focus on their own needs, though, their friendship suffers even more…

In any movie where one character keeps something a secret from their family/friends/workmates (delete as appropriate), the reason for their doing so often remains unanswered at best, or spuriously explained at worst. Almost Adults opts for the second approach and never makes Mackenzie’s reasoning convincing. Fortunately, this narrative misstep doesn’t hurt the movie too much, but it does mean that the animosity that develops between Cassie and Mackenzie feels unnecessarily contrived; in real life, Mackenzie’s reticence probably wouldn’t make such a difference. But where Adrianna DiLonardo’s subtly observant screenplay scores more highly is in its depiction not of two characters falling out because of a poorly motivated secret, but because they are finally learning how to be responsible adults. Their friendship – when we first meet them – is the kind that has them swearing to be in each other’s lives forever, the kind of promise that teenagers make out of a desperate need to be needed. DiLonardo soon waves off this affectation, and has Cassie and Mackenzie behave like the insecure and selfish young adults they really are. When faced with the demands of moving on to the next stage in their lives – and their friendship – life soon finds them unprepared and trying their utmost to control everything around them, including each other.

Although the movie falls under the LGBTQ+ banner thanks to its inclusion of openly gay characters, it’s not a movie about being gay. Rather it’s a movie about finding your place in the world, and at a pivotal moment in most people’s lives, when growing up becomes a mandatory requirement. Look what can happen if you don’t, the movie seems to be saying, and though it does include its fair share of coming-of-age clichés, it’s not weighted in favour of either character, and it does its best not to make easy judgments. Making her feature debut, Rotella handles the material with a lightness of touch that helps the movie through some of its rougher patches, and she has a knack for positioning the camera at odd yet effective vantage points. As the warring BFF’s, Negovanlis and Bauman have an easy chemistry that makes their characters’ falling out all the more dramatic, while Gerhard steals nearly all his scenes as the mandatory wise gay friend. The movie balances comedy and drama (with a smattering of romance) to good effect, and proves appealing throughout. It’s not ground-breaking stuff, or particularly original, but what it does it does with a quiet confidence and skill, and in a way that impresses more than it disappoints.

Rating: 7/10 – by not taking the obvious route in telling its story of a friendship undone by poor choices and a crippling lack of self-awareness on both sides, Almost Adults avoids looking and feeling like every other LGBTQ+ movie you might have seen recently; enjoyable though not exactly profound, and with two praiseworthy central performances, it’s a lovely, self-effacing diversion, and well worth anyone’s time and attention.

On the Road #2 – Better Start Running (2018)

22 Monday Oct 2018

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D: Brett Simon / 92m

Cast: Alex Sharp, Analeigh Tipton, Jeremy Irons, Edi Gathegi, Maria Bello, Karan Soni, Chad Faust

Working at an All Shop, Harley (Sharp) is enamoured of Stephanie (Tipton), who in turn is the object of store boss’ Mr Hankey’s (Faust) inappropriate attentions. One night, with the store closed, Hankey makes a play for Stephanie in his office, then attempts to rape her, but Harley comes to her rescue. In the ensuing scuffle though, it’s Stephanie who causes Hankey to fall through a window to his death. Panicking, Harley calls the police to let them know what happened, but in doing so, unwittingly sets the FBI – in the manic form of Agent McFadden (Bello) and her neophyte partner, Agent Nelson (Soni) – on his and Stephanie’s trail. Not content with it being just the two of them, Harley also takes along his war veteran grandfather, Garrison (Irons). Intent on using being on the run as an excuse to visit a number of roadside attractions on their way to meet an old flame of Garrison’s, the trio become a quartet when they pick up wannabe hippie, Fitz Paradise (Gathegi). As the trip continues, they visit several of the attractions on Harley’s map, and discover they share a camaraderie that deepens the longer the trip goes on…

From its opening scenes where Harley moons over the object of his affections while she behaves as if she’s in a world of her own (which, it turns out, she is), Better Start Running sets out its stall as a quirky indie romantic comedy. That it’s only partially successful is down to the narrative vagaries inherent in the script by Chad Faust and Annie Burgstede, which keeps realigning its focus every few scenes and adds moments of drama to the mix that don’t always sit well with the movie’s overall rom-com vibe. Whether it’s Bello’s gung-ho bordering on psychotic FBI agent, or Irons’ irascible and lovelorn grandfather, or even Gathegi’s mid-life crisis experiencing husband and father, the movie takes occasional lurches into more serious territory before righting itself and remembering it’s a rom-com. And even then the romantic elements are subdued, with Harley and Stephanie only coming together as a couple out of necessity rather than anything resembling true love. Maybe the movie is being deliberately counter-intuitive, but if the romantic angle doesn’t convince, then why have it there in the first place? In truth, it suffers because of all the other elements the script has seen fit to squeeze in along the way.

So the movie is uneven and often frustrating, though when it strikes the right note, it does so with a great deal of charm and skill. Some of this is down to the performances – Irons and Bello add a great deal of energy to proceedings – some of it is due to the offbeat nature of the roadside attractions that get a visit (give a big shout out to Devil’s Tower, everyone), but mostly it’s because this is a movie chock-full of laugh out loud one-liners. From Garrison’s earnest instruction to Harley (“If you must come to tomorrow, I need a flash light, concertina wire and buckshot!”) to Harley’s own admission early on (“I’m sorry. I have to go now. I’m going on the run.”), Faust and Burgstede’s script ensures that the movie retains a spirit of fun throughout, even when it can’t help but slide sideways into Seriousville. Simon juggles the various elements with aplomb but can’t unite them into an acceptable whole, and he never finds a way to offset the feeling that the writers have deliberately ensured that Harley and Stephanie aren’t the brightest bunnies in the petting zoo (which isn’t necessary at all). Still, it is amusing, and thankfully so, otherwise this would have been one road trip best conducted from the driveway.

Rating: 6/10 – with the comedic aspects triumphing every time over the script’s other, less developed or worthy elements, Better Start Running is a mixed bag that sadly, doesn’t always gel as well as it should; likeable overall, it should still be approached with caution, a bit like Agent McFadden when she’s got a perp in her sights: “A cost of a year’s incarceration? $50,000. Cost of a bullet? Fifty cents. Do the math.”

Izzy Gets the Fuck Across Town (2017)

07 Sunday Oct 2018

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D: Christian Papierniak / 87m

Cast: Mackenzie Davis, Carrie Coon, Alex Russell, Alia Shawkat, Haley Joel Osment, Lakeith Stanfield, Annie Potts, Rob Huebel, Brandon T. Jackson, Sarah Goldberg, Meghan Lennox, Dolly Wells

Izzy (Davis) wakes one morning to find herself in the bed of a stranger (Stanfield). As she navigates leaving without waking him, she learns that her ex-boyfriend, Roger (Russell), is getting engaged to her best friend, Whitney (Goldberg), and there’s a party to celebrate that evening. Determined to get to the party and stop Roger from going through with it – she’s convinced he still loves her – Izzy sets off with plenty of time to get there. But obstacles soon present themselves. Her car isn’t ready at the garage, she can’t get enough money for cab fare, she takes a tumble on the bike she borrows and it’s too damaged to keep using, and the one person (Shawkat) who does give her a lift leaves her stranded in a neighbourhood she doesn’t know after going just a short distance. It’s only thanks to the help of another stranger (Potts) that Izzy is able to finally get to the engagement party. But when she does, things don’t exactly go as well as she’d planned…

There’s much to like in Christian Papierniak’s feature debut, not the least of which is Davis’s bullish, spiky performance, but Izzy Gets the Fuck Across Town is a movie whose episodic structure hampers both its flow and its effectiveness. It’s to be expected that Izzy will encounter setbacks in her journey to her ex’s engagement party, but it’s whether or not those setbacks are interesting or reflect on Izzy’s own emotional state that is the key. And that’s where Papierniak’s screenplay lacks consistency. Too preoccupied with trying to make eloquent statements about the nature of fate, or the validity of personal expectations and needs in relationships, the script often stops the action to contemplate these matters, and in doing so, negates the urgency of Izzy’s journey. What should be a more and more desperate race against time as the movie progresses, becomes instead a kind of semi-serious, semi-humorous series of bunny hops across Los Angeles as Izzy deals with one uninterested potential Samaritan after another (until Potts’s sympathetic romantic idealist comes along). Izzy herself is someone it’s well worth spending time with, and Papierniak is on firmer ground when she’s the focus of a scene, but the other characters don’t have anywhere near the same impact.

Again, this is largely due to the uneven nature of the script, and Papierniak not fully realising his thematic and subtextual ambitions. But it’s also due to a remarkable performance by Davis, who dominates the movie in a way that makes everyone else seem like they weren’t paying attention when Papierniak gave out notes. As Izzy, Davis is mercurial, fiery, amusing, good-natured at heart, abrasive when pushed, and altogether a person rather than an indie caricature (the drawback of both Shawkat and Osment’s characters). Only Coon as Izzy’s estranged sister, Virginia – they were a musical duo once before Virginia split them up – is as compelling, contrasting Davis’s messed up free spirit with a steely-eyed turn as a woman whose sense of responsibility is just as skewed as Izzy’s but in a way that has deadened her emotionally (there’s a hint that this could be Izzy’s ultimate fate but it isn’t developed any further). When it’s not trying to be serious about life and love, the movie is on much better footing, with a sly sense of humour that elevates the material, and there’s a bittersweet ending that feels antithetical to what’s gone before, but actually proves to be a bold move by Papierniak, and one that rounds off the movie much more effectively than if – well, you’ll just have to see for yourself.

Rating: 6/10 – although Davis steals the limelight and gives an indelible, finely-tuned performance, Izzy Gets the Fuck Across Town is let down by an uneven script and less than interesting secondary characters; that said, Papierniak isn’t afraid to throw in some odd stylistic choices that at least show he’s trying to do something different, and there’s a terrific moment that involves a bathroom, a change of lighting, and the exposure of past regrets.

A Message from Mars (1913)

02 Tuesday Oct 2018

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D: Wallett Waller / 60m

Cast: Crissie Bell, Kate Tyndall, E. Holman Clark, Charles Hawtrey, Hubert Willis, Frank Hector, R. Crompton

On Mars, Ramiel (Clark), an acolyte of the Martian King (Crompton), is found to have committed a grave misdemeanour. His punishment is to remain in exile on Earth until he can redeem someone. That someone is Horace Parker (Hawtrey), a wealthy businessman whose selfish, and self-serving manner has attracted the Martian King’s attention. Horace is engaged to Minnie (Bell), but when he refuses to attend a dance with her, and ignores her entreaties, Minnie realises there’s no future for them as a couple and she returns her engagement ring. Horace isn’t too upset by this, but he is by the sudden appearance of Ramiel who quickly reveals his identity and his purpose on Earth. Forced by Ramiel’s powers to acquiesce, Horace still does his best to get out of being selfless, but the Martian is too strong for him, and too determined to get back to Mars. A second encounter with a tramp (Willis) who came to him for help earlier, leads to Horace finally understanding what it means to be unselfish and thoughtful of others, all of which has a profound effect, not just on Horace, but those around him…

Though it’s widely regarded as the UK’s first science fiction movie, A Message from Mars isn’t strictly speaking a science fiction movie. Yes, the framing story is set on Mars, and once on Earth Ramiel does show an aptitude for spontaneous teleportation, but the bulk of the movie is a sub-Dickensian drama with romantic overtones that will remind viewers much more of A Christmas Carol than anything else. Horace equates to Scrooge, and Ramiel is a thinly veiled conflation of Jacob Marley and the three ghosts (you could stretch this idea even further and have the tramp standing in for Tiny Tim). This familiarity – which to be fair might not have been so obvious to audiences of the time – makes the movie hugely enjoyable as each development in Horace’s transformation from miserly misanthrope to fine upstanding philanthropist plays out with the kind of rote predictability that only a hundred years and more of similar movies and plays and television programmes can engender. This may not be the first version of Richard Ganthony’s stage play – a one-reel version was released in New Zealand in 1903 – but it has a freshness about it, and a vigour, that’s aided by the play’s opening out to include contemporary London street scenes, and some rudimentary but effective special effects.

For the time, the acting is more than acceptable too. Though Clark overdoes the whole declamatory style of acting – watch what he does when he returns to Mars in triumph – the rest of the cast acquit themselves more naturally, with Hawtrey giving a spirited, sharply observed performance that never once strays into caricature or artifice. That the movie holds up so well is a tribute to its overall quality, including a well judged screenplay by original writer Ganthony and uncredited director Waller, convincing production design that belies the source material’s theatrical origins, and Waller’s canny, unfussy direction. All comparisons to Dickens aside, A Message from Mars is a hugely enjoyable gem from the silent era that, fortunately, has been lovingly restored by the British Film Institute, and features the original tinting and toning. As such it’s a movie that probably looks even better than it did on its original release; there’s only an occasional missing frame, and it doesn’t have the jerky, speeded-up quality that poorly projected prints of silent movies are often subjected to. So, if you’re a fan of silent cinema, this is one to check out as soon as possible.

Rating: 8/10 – with its science fiction trappings serving as an extra dramatic layer for the main storyline, A Message from Mars is classy silent fare that works on several different narrative levels, and doesn’t even appear to be trying too hard; the Martians may look and behave like over-dressed members of Ancient Rome, but they do bring with them a range of science fiction staples such as mind control and interplanetary space travel, and it’s embellishments like these that add further lustre to a movie that still sparkles over a hundred years after it was released.

NOTE: Unsurprisingly, there isn’t a trailer for A Message from Mars.

Monthly Roundup – September 2018

30 Sunday Sep 2018

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Christopher Robin (2018) / D: Marc Forster / 104m

Cast: Ewan McGregor, Hayley Atwell, Bronte Carmichael, Mark Gatiss, Oliver Ford Davies, Jim Cummings, Brad Garrett, Peter Capaldi, Sophie Okonedo, Toby Jones

Rating: 7/10 – having left behind his childhood friends at the Hundred Acre Wood, an adult Christopher Robin (McGregor), now married and weighed down by the demands of his work, is reunited with them just at the moment that they all most need each other; a live action/CGI variation on A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh stories, Christopher Robin is an enjoyable if lightweight confection from Disney that features good performances from McGregor and Cummings (as both Pooh and Tigger), but which also takes a very straightforward approach to its story, and allows Gatiss to overdo it as the smug villain of the piece.

Melvin Goes to Dinner (2003) / D: Bob Odenkirk / 83m

Cast: Michael Blieden, Stephanie Courtney, Matt Price, Annabelle Gurwitch, Maura Tierney, David Cross, Melora Walters, Jack Black

Rating: 7/10 – two friends agree to meet for dinner but two other people end up joining them, leading to an evening of surprising connections and revelations that causes each to rethink their own opinions and feelings about each other; adapted from the stage play Phyro-Giants! (and written by Blieden), Odenkirk’s debut as a director is an amusing examination of what we tell ourselves to be true while being closely examined by others who may (or may not) know better, making Melvin Goes to Dinner a waspish if somewhat diffident look at social mores that feels a little forced in places, but is well acted by its cast.

BlacKkKlansman (2018) / D: Spike Lee / 135m

Cast: John David Washington, Adam Driver, Laura Harrier, Topher Grace, Jasper Pããkkönen, Ryan Eggold, Paul Walter Houser, Ashlie Atkinson, Michael Buscemi, Robert John Burke, Frederick Weller, Corey Hawkins, Harry Belafonte, Alec Baldwin

Rating: 9/10 – the true story of how, in the early Seventies, the Colorado Springs Police Department’s first black officer, Ron Stallworth (Washington), infiltrated the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan with the aid of a fellow, Jewish officer, Flip Zimmerman (Driver); a return to form for Spike Lee, BlacKkKlansman is entertaining and frightening in equal measure for the way it deals with contentious issues surrounding politics and racism that are as entrenched today as they were back in the Seventies, and for the deft way in which Lee allows the humour to filter through without negating the seriousness of the issues he’s examining.

Unearthed & Untold: The Path to Pet Sematary (2017) / D: John Campopiano, Justin White / 97m

With: Mary Lambert, Dale Midkiff, Denise Crosby, Brad Greenquist, Peter Stein, Elliot Goldenthal, Miko Hughes, Susan Blommaert, Heather Langenkamp

Rating: 6/10 – a look at the making of Pet Sematary (1989), with interviews and recollections from the cast and crew, and an assessment of the movie’s impact and legacy in the years that have followed; coming across very much like a labour of love for its directors, Unearthed & Untold: The Path to Pet Sematary features a wealth of details about the making of the movie, some of which is fascinating, and some of which is less so, making this a mixed bag in terms of content, but if you’re a fan of Pet Sematary, this will be a must-see, and should offer up behind-the-scenes information that hasn’t been seen or heard before.

Lake Placid: Legacy (2018) / D: Darrell Roodt / 93m

Cast: Katherine Barrell, Tim Rozon, Sai Bennett, Luke Newton, Craig Stein, Joe Pantoliano, Alisha Bailey

Rating: 3/10 – a group of eco-warriors discover a remote island that’s not on any maps, and find a genetically altered apex predator that soon begins whittling down their numbers; the sixth entry in the franchise, Lake Placid: Legacy ignores the previous four movies and acts – without explanation – as a direct sequel to the original, though that doesn’t make it any less abysmal, and it’s easily the worst in the series, something it achieves thanks to a dreadful script, Roodt’s absentee direction, the less than stellar efforts of the cast, and just by being greenlit in the first place.

Killing Gunther (2017) / D: Taran Killam / 93m

Cast: Taran Killam, Bobby Moynihan, Hannah Simone, Cobie Smulders, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Allison Tolman, Paul Brittain, Aaron Yoo, Ryan Gaul, Amir Talai, Peter Kelamis

Rating: 4/10 – an assassin, Blake (Killam), hires a team of other assassins to help him track down and eliminate Gunther (Schwarzenegger), the world’s most feared, and successful, hitman; ostensibly a comedy, Killing Gunther is yet another ill-advised movie where the script – and the cast – try way too hard to make absurdist behaviour funny all by itself, and where the tone is as wayward as the narrative, something that makes the movie an uneven watch and less than successful in its attempts to entertain – and the less said about Schwarzenegger’s performance the better.

Overboard (2018) / D: Rob Greenberg / 112m

Cast: Eugenio Derbez, Anna Faris, Eva Longoria, John Hannah, Swoosie Kurtz, Mel Rodriguez, Josh Segarra, Hannah Nordberg, Alyvia Alyn Lind, Payton Lapinski, Fernando Luján, Cecilia Suárez, Mariana Treviño

Rating: 6/10 – when a rich, arrogant, multi-millionaire playboy (Derbez) falls overboard from his yacht and loses his memory, a struggling single mother (Faris) that he’s treated badly sees an opportunity to exploit his misfortune for her own personal gain; a gender-swap remake of the 1987 original, Overboard is pleasant enough, with well judged performances from Derbez and Faris, but it plays out in expected fashion, with only occasional moments that stand out, and never really tries to do anything that might make viewers think of it as anything more than an acceptable remake doing its best to keep audiences just interested enough to stay until the end.

El club de los buenos infieles (2017) / D: Lluís Segura / 84m

Cast: Raúl Fernández de Pablo, Fele Martínez, Juanma Cifuentes, Hovik Keuchkerian, Albert Ribalta, Jordi Vilches, Adrián Lastra

Rating: 7/10 – four friends, all married but experiencing a loss of desire for their wives, decide to start a club for men with similar problems, and in the hope that by “seeing” other women, it will rekindle their desire; based on a true story, El club de los buenos infieles starts off strongly as the men explain their feelings, but soon the ridiculous nature of their solution leads to all sorts of uncomfortable moments and situations that stretch the credibility of the material, leaving the principal cast’s performances to keep things engaging, along with Segura’s confident direction (which helps overcome much of the script’s deficiencies), and a couple of very funny set-pieces that are worth a look all by themselves.

Destination Wedding (2018) / D: Victor Lewin / 87m

Cast: Winona Ryder, Keanu Reeves

Rating: 5/10 – two misanthropes (Ryder, Reeves) invited to the same wedding (he’s the groom’s brother, she’s the groom’s ex), find they have much more in common than expected, including an attraction to each other; the kind of movie that has its characters spout pseudo-intellectual nonsense at every opportunity in an effort to make them sound wise and/or studiously profound, Destination Wedding could have been much funnier than it thinks it is, and wastes the talents of both Ryder and Reeves (yes, even Reeves) as it leaves no turn unstoned in its efforts to be a romantic comedy that isn’t in the least bit romantic, or comic.

The Resurrection of Gavin Stone (2016) / D: Dallas Jenkins / 92m

Cast: Brett Dalton, Anjelah Johnson-Reyes, Neil Flynn, D.B. Sweeney, Shawn Michaels, Patrick Gagnon, Tim Frank, Tara Rios

Rating: 6/10 – a former teen TV star whose adult acting career isn’t going as well as he’d hoped, finds himself doing community service at his hometown church, and discovering that having a lack of religious faith is the least of his problems; a bright and breezy romantic comedy, The Resurrection of Gavin Stone wears its Christian beliefs on its sleeve, while doing absolutely nothing that you wouldn’t expect it to, thanks to likable performances from Dalton and Johnson-Reyes, a solid if predictable script, and workmanlike direction that never lets the material stray from its formulaic constraints, though if truth be told, on this occasion that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

The Predator (2018) / D: Shane Black / 107m

Cast: Boyd Holbrook, Trevante Rhodes, Jacob Tremblay, Sterling K. Brown, Olivia Munn, Keegan-Michael Key, Thomas Jane, Alfie Allen, Augusto Aguilera, Jake Busey, Yvonne Strahovski

Rating: 5/10 – a rag-tag band of PTSD sufferers and an army sniper (Holbrook) find themselves taking on a couple of Predators while a secret arm of the US government atempts to exploit their presence on Earth; a movie that could and should have been so much better (soooo much better), The Predator is unnecessarily convoluted and stupid at the same time, and despite Black’s best efforts, remains the kind of sequel that everyone has high hopes for, only to see them drain away with every dumb moment that the script can squeeze in, and every tortuous twist of logic that can be forced onto the narrative, all of which leaves everyone hoping and praying that this is the end of the line.

The Astounding She-Monster (1957) / D: Ronald V. Ashcroft / 62m

aka Mysterious Invader

Cast: Robert Clarke, Kenne Duncan, Marilyn Harvey, Jeanne Tatum, Shirley Kilpatrick, Ewing Miles Brown

Rating: 3/10 – kidnappers take their hostage up into the mountains, unaware that a space ship has crash landed nearby, and the sole occupant (Kilpatrick) is more than capable of defending itself; not a cult classic, and not a movie to look back fondly on for any low-budget virtues it may have (it doesn’t), The Astounding She-Monster is a creature feature without a creature, a crime drama with an annoying voice over, a sci-fi horror with minimal elements of both, and a movie with far too many scenes where the cast run through the same stretch of woods trying to get away from an alien whose only speed is ultra-ultra-slow.

Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool (2017)

29 Saturday Sep 2018

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D: Paul McGuigan / 105m

Cast: Annette Bening, Jamie Bell, Julie Walters, Kenneth Cranham, Stephen Graham, Vanessa Redgrave, Frances Barber, Leanne Best

In London in 1979, aspiring young actor Peter Turner (Bell) met Oscar-winning actress Gloria Grahame (Bening). Although theirs was an unlikely friendship (at first), the pair soon found themselves in a romantic relationship, one that saw Grahame being introduced to Turner’s family – mum Bella (Walters), dad Joe (Cranham), and brother Joe Jr (Graham) – and in turn, Turner travelling to the US and meeting Grahame’s mother, Jean (Redgrave), and her sister, Joy (Barber). But it wasn’t long before their relationship foundered, and Turner returned home to continue his acting career. Two years later, while appearing in a production of The Glass Menagerie in the UK, Grahame was taken ill, but instead of staying in hospital, she contacted Turner and asked to stay at his family’s home in Liverpool. Despite her assertions that her illness was nothing serious, Grahame was actually suffering from cancer, but she didn’t want anyone to know, and made Turner swear not to tell anyone, not even her family. In the days that followed, Grahame’s health worsened, and Turner found it increasingly difficult to look after her, and in the end, the secrecy she wanted couldn’t be maintained…

Based on Peter Turner’s memoir of the same name, Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool is a tragic tale given muted relevance by the nature of its origins and its refusal to show just why Grahame was, during the early Fifties at least, such a big deal. Thanks to Matt Greenhalgh’s script, which focuses more on Turner than it does Grahame, the movie makes pointed comments about Grahame the woman – her four marriages (one of them to her stepson from her second marriage), her fading career, her frightened refusal to acknowledge the seriousness of having cancer – while giving audiences little in the way of examples as to why she became a star (a short clip from Naked Alibi (1954) doesn’t really cut it). Bening is superb in the role, and captures Grahame’s carefree nature and nagging insecurities with impressive precision, but there’s also a sense that she’s working extra hard to create such a telling portrayal, almost as if she’s filling in the blanks in the script. As the movie’s deus ex machina, she’s an essential component, but this is about Turner’s relationship with Grahame, not the other way round, and how her illness affects him.

The problem with this is that Turner isn’t that well-developed a character either. What’s missing is the spark that brought them together in the first place, because personable though he is, Turner remains something of a cipher, a young man swept up by the glamour surrounding Grahame and her fame, and a little too easily for comfort. Motives are missing on both sides, and again Greenhalgh’s script isn’t interested in exploring these issues, and McGuigan seems content to follow the dictates of the script. Thankfully, Bell is just as good as Bening in overcoming the drawbacks inherent in the script, and gives a nuanced, detailed performance that impresses as much as his co-star’s. Elsewhere, the movie is an odd combination of visual styles, with the scenes set in London and Liverpool having a naturalistic, somewhat dour look to them, while the scenes set in California and New York are bright, over-saturated, and almost rose-tinted in their representation. Maybe this is intended to reflect Turner’s memories of those visits, but the US scenes are jarring and feel like they should belong in another movie (or at least a different cut of this one). In the end, and no matter how much the two storylines are intriguingly intertwined, this is one tragic romance that doesn’t have the impact it should have.

Rating: 6/10 – despite two magnificent central performances, Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool isn’t as persuasive or emotionally devastating as it wants to be; there’s a distance here that stops the viewer from becoming too involved, and though it’s handsomely mounted and shot, it never seems to be aiming for anything other than perfectly acceptable.

Jeune femme (2017)

27 Thursday Sep 2018

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aka Montparnasse Bienvenüe

D: Léonor Serraille / 98m

Cast: Laetitia Dosch, Grégoire Monsaingeon, Souleymane Seye Ndiaye, Léonie Simaga, Erika Sainte, Lilas-Rose Gilberti-Poisot, Audrey Bonnet, Nathalie Richard

After ten years living in Mexico with her boyfriend, professor and renowned photographer Joachim Deloche (Monsaingeon), Paula Simonian (Dosch) finds herself back in Paris (where they used to live), and chasing Joachim in an attempt to win him back. When her intital attempt fails – and leaves her with a nasty cut on her forehead – she takes his cat and decides to make a go of things by herself. However, that’s not as easy as it might seem. Paula has no friends, no job, no money, and a personality that could be charitably called inconstant. Moving from couch to couch, it’s not until she’s mistaken for someone else and befriends Yuki (Simaga) that things begin to improve. She finds work as a live-in nanny, finds a second job working in a knicker bar in a large shopping centre, and attempts to reconnect with her estranged mother (Richard). There’s a tentative romance on the horizon with security guard Ousmane (Ndiaye), even more tentative contact from Joachim, and surprising news that helps Paula make a number of important decisions…

Winner of the Caméra d’Or (for its director) at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, Jeune femme opens with Paula headbutting Joachim’s front door and sustaining that nasty cut. In hospital, she launches into a free-form diatribe that seeks to challenge the nurse tending to her, and the wider world around her. It’s a direct confrontation, fuelled by what appears to be long-held anger, and a clear indication from writer/director Serraille that Paula is definitely not a shrinking violet. But Serraille isn’t going to let her volatility be the only aspect of Paula’s personality to define her. As the movie progresses, we find that she can be coy and approachable (as with Ousmane), enthusiastic and open (as during the interview for the knicker bar), sad and yet determined (when confronting her mother), silly and childish (in her role as a nanny), and expressive and flirtatious (with Yuki). With all this it would be easy to view Paula as a mass of contradictions, but Serraille’s take on the character is much more subtle than that. Paula is a chameleon, adapting to the people she’s with, and her surroundings. She even looks different at every turn, her features transforming themselves noticeably but to good advantage given the needs of the situation.

What this all provides is a portrait of an enigmatic, rootless woman who knows what she should be doing to fit in, but who finds it easier to compartmentalise her life and behave accordingly. All her relationships are transitory, and end despite Paula’s best efforts to maintain them. No matter how hard she tries, and no matter how good her intentions, it’s inevitable that Paula will need to start again. And keep trying – because what else can she do? Dosch gives a terrific performance as Paula, vulnerable and tough, self-assured and resilient, but still adrift from everyone around her. It’s an unsparing portrayal, highlighting the character’s flaws and strengths in equal measure, and doing more than enough to make her more and more sympathetic as events unfold. By the end you’re rooting for her, but Serraille remains true to Paula’s knack for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. The final shot is a triumph of sorts for Paula, but in a bittersweet way that adds poignancy to the moment. It’s confident, persuasive elements such as this that help elevate the material from being another worthy yet predictable examination of how hard it is to be a woman in today’s society – and having its lead character be the architect of most of her troubles makes it resonate so much more.

Rating: 8/10 – with an awards-worthy performance from Dosch allied to a perceptive script and assured direction, Jeune femme is an intelligent, deftly handled movie with an eminently relatable heroine, and a sly streak of humour beneath all the drama; regarded by some as the French Frances Ha, this is far more involving and far more interesting, and is effortlessly sincere to boot.

Breaking and Exiting (2018)

17 Monday Sep 2018

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D: Peter Facinelli / 78m

Cast: Milo Gibson, Jordan Hinson, Adam Huber, James Kyson, Lily Anne Harrison, Justine Wachsberger, Joaquim de Almeida

Harry (Gibson) is a career criminal, a burglar who targets homes when the owners are away on holiday, and who aren’t gun owners. Along with his cousin, Chris (Huber), he makes enough money to ensure he doesn’t have to get a proper job. One day, Chris announces that their next burglary will be his last: he has a temp job lined up, and he doesn’t want to wind up in jail. Harry is dismissive of Chris’s ambition, but their last burglary goes badly wrong and they’re lucky to avoid being caught. Harry still doesn’t Chris is being serious, but finds himself carrying out their next job on his own. While he goes from room to room gathering valuables and electronics, he discovers a woman (Hinson) in the bath who is trying to kill herself. Harry’s inherent lack of empathy causes him to point her in the direction of tablets that will help her achieve her aim, and then he leaves. But he doesn’t get far before he suffers a rare attack of conscience, and rushes back to try and save the woman, an unselfish act that sees him behaving in a way that’s completely new to him…

A romantic comedy (whose humour is largely on the dark, uncomfortable side), Breaking and Exiting does something unexpected from the start: it brings the viewer in  at a point where Harry is making the decision to return and save the woman – who is called Daisy – from killing herself. So, from the beginning we know that Harry isn’t as bad as the screenplay will subsequently paint him as it rewinds the action back a few days. As a result we can bear Harry’s selfish, egoistic behaviour and attitude towards Chris, and his girlfriend, Lana (Wachsberger), partly because it’s inappropriately funny, and partly because we know he’s going to change. Hinson, who wrote the script and also produces as well as starring, wisely allows the viewer to have some vicarious fun through Harry’s unalloyed narcissism before showing us the good heart he has buried deep, deep inside him. But he’s also curious, just like the viewer, to find out why Daisy wants to kill herself. There’s a boyfriend she’s angry with, but it always seems as though that’s merely a small part of it all, and just as she teases out Harry’s deeply-rooted compassion, so we slowly learn what’s at the root of her unhappiness.

Along the way, Harry and Daisy get to know each other, and although there are a handful of generic rom-com moments, the script does its best to steer clear of anything too obvious as the story develops. Harry is open and honest about his criminal activities, while Daisy behaves wildly and erratically in line with her current mental state. It’s not until Harry challenges Daisy to let him cook her a final meal that mixed emotions on both sides begin to coalesce into something more stable for both of them. Hinson is a winning presence, likeable and endearing even when talking about suicide with determination, while Gibson (looking and sounding very much like his father), has an easy-going charm about him that is appealing and sincere. Together, the pair add a surprising amount of texture and depth to their characters, and when things turn more serious, they make the necessary switch in tone that much more believable. Facinelli directs with a good understanding of the absurdity of the basic set up, but makes it work in tandem with his committed leads, and offers up a neatly assembled and handled rom-com that does its best to avoid being predictable in its details.

Rating: 8/10 – with the chemistry between Gibson and Hinson an added plus, and Hinson’s screenplay balancing humour and more serious matters with aplomb, Breaking and Exiting is that rare rom-com that could have benefited from being longer; with fluid, emotive camerawork from DoP Christopher Hamilton and his team, and a terrific soundtrack, the movie has more than enough going on for even the most casual of viewers.

Let’s Take a Walk Down Hype Street – Crazy Rich Asians (2018)

16 Sunday Sep 2018

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D: Jon M. Chu / 121m

Cast: Constance Wu, Henry Golding, Michelle Yeoh, Gemma Chan, Lisa Lu, Awkwafina, Chris Pang, Jing Lusi, Nico Santos, Ken Jeong, Jimmy O. Yang, Pierre Png

In a summer that’s been dominated (as usual) by superhero movies, tired remakes, and special effects driven action movies, one movie has “broken out” and caught the attention of critics and audiences alike. It’s billed as a romantic comedy – though if there’s ever likely to be a breakout movie each summer it’s likely to be a comedy of some description – and it’s been hailed as not only a breakout movie but a breakthrough movie as well. The movie (surprise!) is Crazy Rich Asians, and it’s the first time since The Joy Luck Club (1993) that any feature has had a predominantly Asian cast (though it appears that an early producer thought it would be a good idea to whitewash the lead character, Rachel). Watching the movie in the wake of all this positive feedback is interesting, partly to see if it can or does live up to the hype it’s received, and partly to see if it succeeds on its own merits. Inevitably, it does and it doesn’t.

Let’s get the casting out of the way first. Perhaps a better way of describing the cast would be to say that they’re of “predominantly Asian heritage”, but that aside, it is good to see the major roles filled by recognisably Asian actors, and especially as the story is set within the confines of a recognisably Asian family and its attendant culture. But if you’ve seen one romantic comedy where the girlfriend or the boyfriend is the outsider who needs to win over a dysfunctional extended family, then much of what’s on offer in Crazy Rich Asians will be very familiar to you. Indeed, the only real difference between this movie and many others is the fact that it is an Asian family that’s on display – and display is perhaps the best word to describe what’s happening. In everyone’s rush to congratulate the movie, they seem to have forgotten that we’ve actually been here before, in My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) and its equally culturally exploitative sequel. That the cast is predominantly Asian doesn’t matter when the same romantic comedy tropes and characterisations are trotted out, and when we’re asked to laugh at comic behaviour that’s been seen too often before. It’s not enough to have an ethnic twist when the material remains the same.

And then there’s the whole idea that the movie is a romantic comedy. There is humour in Crazy Rich Asians, much of it delivered by Awkwafina as the kind of quirky best friend to the heroine that seems de rigeuer these days, or Santos’ stereotypical gay fashion designer. But in reality this is a romantic drama that has comic overtones. There are long stretches where the material isn’t even trying to raise a laugh as it seeks to explore ideas of cultural isolationism (or indigenous racism), bitterness, marital betrayal, emotional regret, depression and envy. The obstacles that loved up couple Rachel (Wu) and Nick (Golding) have to overcome lead to some very dramatic sequences, and the hurtful behaviour of Nick’s mother (Yeoh) towards Rachel borders on the perverse. And that’s without a subplot involving Chan as Nick’s sister, Astrid, whose unhappiness causes her to binge shop and hide the purchases from her husband (Png). Perhaps the makers were aware of the darkness inherent in the material from the start, but felt that promoting the movie as a romantic drama wouldn’t attract as many viewers. And therein lies the irony: as a romantic drama it’s much more effective than as a romantic comedy.

Rating: 7/10 – with very good performances in service to a good script, solid direction, and production design that emphasises the opulent above the mundane every time (the wedding is a particular standout), Crazy Rich Asians is let down by its unapologetic sense of cultural appropriation; not as groundbreaking as everyone makes out, it’s still a refreshing change from the usual summer blockbuster fare, but definitely not the movie it’s been hyped up to be.

Love Me Till Monday (2013)

29 Wednesday Aug 2018

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D: Justin Hardy / 89m

Cast: Georgia Maguire, Tim Plester, Royce Pierreson, Sarah Jayne Butler, Sarah Barratt, Christopher Leveaux, Bennett Warden, Ludo Hardy

For Becky Williams (Maguire), life at twenty-five isn’t going the way she thought it would. Stuck in a dead-end job in an office, single, and still living with her mother, Becky is beginning to wonder if she’ll ever find true happiness. While her mother is away with her latest boyfriend, Becky also has to look after her eleven year old brother, Olly (Hardy). Things couldn’t get any bleaker. But a couple of unexpected encounters outside of work with her boss, Steve (Plester), hint at the possibility of a romantic relationship, one that grows on Becky the more she considers it. But all this happens while the main object of her would-be affections, another colleague (Pierreson), is on holiday. Should she keep her relationship with Steve going, or wait until her colleague – known only as HIM – returns to work. Fate intervenes and makes the decision for her, but as with most things in Becky’s life, what she hopes for and what actually happens proves to be something completely different, even when she seemingly gets what she wants…

A bright, entertaining romantic comedy, the basic set up of Love Me Till Monday will be familiar to fans of the genre, and even those who only occasionally watch such movies. It’s another underdog movie, where the heroine is faced with disappointment after disappointment in her search for Mr Right. Here, Becky works in an office where she’s very much the “junior”, both in terms of how long she’s been there, and her “accepted” rank with regard to the other female staff: brassy and ebullient receptionist Vicki (Butler), and classy and immaculate contracts manager Carly (Barratt) (of the three it’s noticeable that Becky wears little or no make up at work, such is her lack of confidence). With a quiet, semi-withdrawn personality as well, Becky’s hopes and dreams of finding true love are further hampered by her choice of men. Steve is a charmer outside of work while remaining stern and non-committal at the office, and HIM, though charming wherever he is, has the aura of being too good to be true. How Becky discovers the truth about both of them is the meat of a movie that drifts along from time to time, but in a wistful, breezy fashion that is engaging and often delightful as well.

Much of the movie’s success is down to Maguire’s sterling performance. Making her feature debut, Maguire perfectly inhabits and expresses a life made ordinary by circumstance and banal repetition. As Becky strives – in her own awkward way – to attain the kind of life she believes she needs, Maguire highlights Becky’s naïvete in believing that having the “right man” in her life will make her happier (she even uses a book that contains love spells as a way of securing HIM). With its improvised feel and upbeat rom-com sensibility, the movie works well, though some elements aren’t given enough screen time – or explanation – to work as effectively as they should, such as Becky’s having a book on witchcraft, the reason why she doesn’t appear to have any friends (bar one) outside of work, and why her ambitions relate only to romance. That said, Hardy injects just enough drama into the otherwise lightweight nature of the material to ensure that it’s not all sweetness and casual laughs, and thanks to Matthew Wicks’ deft cinematography, the movie’s Reading backdrop adds to the likeable nature of it all. Naturally, this is a low budget movie, but it’s also one that makes the effort to make the audience forget that it is. And like Becky herself, it’s better, and more deserving, than it looks.

Rating: 7/10 – though Love Me Till Monday has nothing new to offer, what is on offer is a charming, appealing romantic comedy anchored by an equally appealing, and genuine, performance from Maguire; an undemanding watch then, but one that is pleasant and entertaining enough to hold the attention from start to (optimistic) finish.

Sixteen (2013)

24 Friday Aug 2018

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D: Rob Brown / 79m

Cast: Roger Jean Nsengiyumva, Rachael Stirling, Rosie Day, Fady Elsayed, Sam Spruell, Alexis Zegerman, Christopher Simpson, Deon Lee-Williams

Despite having escaped his life as a child soldier in Congo, and having been adopted by Laura (Stirling), fifteen year old Jumah (Nsengiyumva) is finding it difficult to adapt fully to his new, British life. He’s only been at his latest school for three weeks, and already he’s in trouble for headbutting one of the other students. He has a friend, Alex (Lee-Williams), and a potential girlfriend in Chloe (Day), but otherwise he keeps himself to himself. He wants to be a barber, but lacks the self-confidence to pursue his ambition. When he and Alex witness another student, Josh (Elsayed), commit a violent crime, it causes a rift between them, and brings local drug dealer Liam (Spruell) into Jumah’s life. As he struggles to maintain an equilibrium that is already difficult to achieve, Jumah’s relationship with Chloe begins to suffer just at the point where it becomes more serious, and Liam becomes a more and more threatening presence. His relationship with Laura becomes strained as well, and it all leads to Jumah making a fateful decision that could have dire consequences for all concerned…

The feature debut of award-winning shorts director Rob Brown, Sixteen is a bold piece of movie making that isn’t afraid to paint a dour portrait of average inner city life, and its effect on someone trying to leave behind a terrible past and adjust to better surroundings. What makes this so effective is the performance of Nsengiyumva, who himself escaped from Rwanda during the Nineties, and whose blank expressions coupled with a haunting gaze reveal the pain and anger Jumah is trying so desperately to put behind him. Dominating every scene he’s in, he’s a tightly wound force of nature, mature beyond his years in many ways but also still a child trying to make sense of the new world around him. When he’s first confronted by Liam, Liam expresses veiled concerns regarding what Jumah has seen that would normally intimidate any other teenager, but Jumah is unfazed and unimpressed. And when Liam has finished, Jumah dismisses him with a simple, “I’ve met men like you before.” This is the kind of adversarial relationship he has no trouble with. If only the same could be said of his budding romance with Chloe, a relationship that comes close to foundering completely because Jumah can’t express himself half as well.

Brown, who also wrote the script, arranges his characters against a backdrop of urban misfortune that highlights the daily struggles they all face, whether it’s Jumah’s faltering attempts at social integration, Laura’s working long hours to support them both (her husband left her because he couldn’t deal with Jumah’s behaviour), Chloe’s own need to be wanted, or Josh’s damaged aspirations. Brown doesn’t make it easy for any of them, but it’s through these struggles that he manages to create characters who feel real and sharply defined. Also, Brown doesn’t let the material descend into melodrama, keeping the action credible throughout, even when Jumah decides that his previous life of violence is the only way to solve his troubles. By doing this, Brown ensures an even tone and a steady pace that suits the narrative and which is further enhanced by Barry Moen’s precise editing. Beneath all the pessimism though, there is a message of hope, that a person’s life can change, even if their life till now has been terrifying and horrible. It’s a message that is best encapsulated by the example of its star’s own life, and which goes a long way to making this a movie with a tremendous emotional charge.

Rating: 8/10 – with a bravura performance from its lead, Sixteen isn’t the coming of age tale that it appears to be, but is instead a coming to terms tale that doesn’t soft peddle any easy answers for the tough questions it poses; affecting and mature movie making from a confident and instinctive director, it’s a movie that never gives up on its main character, and never opts for being simplistic.

Blush (2015)

20 Monday Aug 2018

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Original title: Barash

D: Michal Vinik / 85m

Cast: Sivan Noam Shivon, Hadas Jade Sakori, Dvir Benedek, Irit Pashtan, Amit Muchtar, Bar Ben Vakil, Hila Gozlan, Einav Levi, Reut Akkerman

Naama (Shivon) is a typical Israeli teenager, living a different life from the one her parents (Benedek, Pashtan) believe she lives. Away from her home – where she’s something of a moody presence – Naama spends time with her best friends, Iris (Gozlan) and Lili (Levi), taking drugs and having casual sex with random boys. Her parents are more concerned with her older sister, Liora (Vakil), who’s a secretary in the Army, but who it soon transpires, has run off with her latest boyfriend. While the search for Liora escalates, Naama meets Dana (Sakori), a confident free spirit who she finds herself attracted to. The two become friends, and soon Dana is introducing Naama to the nightclub scene in Tel Aviv. Naama and Dana become lovers, but what is a serious development for Naama, appears to be less so for Dana, whose past hints at her having unresolved issues that threaten their relationship. When a trip to Tel Aviv takes an unexpected turn, Naama is forced to confront both the reality of her relationship with Dana, and her new-found sexuality…

A frank and appealing exploration of racial, sexual and political tensions in modern-day Israel, Michal Vinik’s debut feature (which she also wrote) is a movie that tells a familiar tale but with an edge that’s borne out of its setting and the parochialism of Naama’s social background. It’s a movie that avoids depicting easy sentimentality or indulging in melodramatic flourishes, and which subverts audience expectations in often clever and unexpected ways. One such occasion occurs when Naama, high on a drug whose effects will last for several hours, is given no choice but to accompany her mother on a trip to the military base where Liora is stationed. What feels like an opportunity for some embarrassing comedy at Naama’s expense, instead leads to an outpouring of rage at an unsuspecting (and inflexible) guard that is a perfect representation of the anger and frustration that Naama feels in her own life. So extreme is this outpouring that her mother can only stand and watch, unable to intervene. Elsewhere, Vinik casts an acerbic eye over a family dynamic that includes a father whose hatred of Palestinians is all-consuming, and a rebellious older sister whose personal liberation comes at the expense of her cultural heritage.

For much of the movie, this family dynamic, with its roiling undercurrents of inter-personal animosity, is the movie’s trump card, and easily more interesting than the somewhat standardised coming-of-age tale that sits at its centre. Though Naama is a wonderfully realised character – thanks to Shivon’s tough, unsparing efforts – and her sexual awakening is handled with a delicacy that’s at odds with the jarring discomfort of the social conventions she’s expected to adhere to, there’s still the feeling that we’re in much charted territory, even down to the inevitable betrayal that lies ahead of her. To offset this, Vinik employs Shai Peleg’s sharply composited cinematography to present a world that is both familiar and alien, and even to its protagonists. Often the frame teems with details that can be easily missed, visual cues that point to the stability of Naama’s emotional state. There are terrific performances from all concerned, with Shivon a standout as Naama, Benedek proving an uncompromising bull-like presence, and Pashtan quietly impressive as Naama’s mother, her passive body language and blank expressions hiding the kind of emotional intensity that has been repressed for far too long. In the end, it’s not the sadness of Naama’s failed romance that resonates, but the idea that it’s her mother’s life that is the future she’s locked into.

Rating: 8/10 – a mixture of the bold and the commonplace (dramatically speaking), Blush offers a fascinating insight into the trials and tribulations of an average Israeli family and the challenges faced when trying to be different; full of telling moments and deft directorial touches that add poignancy to an otherwise familiar tale of burgeoning sexual expression, this is finely tuned for the most part, and with a well-defined vibrancy that makes it all the more engaging.

Earthworm Tractors (1936)

17 Friday Aug 2018

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aka A Natural Born Salesman

D: Ray Enright / 69m

Cast: Joe E. Brown, June Travis, Guy Kibbee, Dick Foran, Carol Hughes, Gene Lockhart, Olin Howland, Joseph Crehan, Charles C. Wilson

Alexander Botts (Brown) is a self-professed natural born salesman. Looking to impress his girlfriend, Sally (Hughes), and win her hand in marriage, Botts takes a job with the Earthworm Tractor Company as a master salesman and mechanic (even though he has no experience with tractors at all). Sent to the midwest town of Cypress City, Botts is tasked with selling tractors to an old, intransigent lumberman called Johnson (Kibbee). Even with the aid of Johnson’s daughter, Mabel (Travis), Botts finds the old man a hard sell, and his efforts to impress the lumberman usually end in calamity. A stroke of luck keeps Botts in his job, and he becomes even more determined to clinch the deal, but one more disaster ruins his chances, both with the old man, and with Mabel. Chastened, Botts heads home to seek solace with Sally, but that idea doesn’t work out either. Still in danger of losing his job, Botts returns to Cypress City intending to make one last effort to change Johnson’s mind, and win back Mabel…

Based on the character created by William Hazlett Upson in a series of stories for The Saturday Evening Post, Earthworm Tractors trades heavily on Joe E. Brown’s ebullient screen persona, and a number of slapstick action sequences based around Botts’ misuse of an Earthworm Tractor (often with Johnson as an unwilling passenger). It’s something of a curio now, an off-centre comedy with the requisite romantic elements, that looks and feels more like a silent movie given an audio upgrade than a movie released in 1936. But while it has the perfunctory quality inherent in so many low budget B-movies of the Thirties – all the characters are recognisable staples of the genre, the camerawork, editing and score are all adequate without standing out – there’s an energy to the movie that keeps the viewer entertained as each one of Botts’ plans comes to an ignoble, and often destructive end. Working from a script by Richard Macaulay, Joe Traub and Hugh Cummings, Enright and his star keep things moving with impressive dexterity, imbuing even the most pedestrian of scenes with a comic sheen that highlights Brown’s skills as a comic actor, and his director’s deft understanding of what constitutes effectiv physical comedy.

Brown is irrepressible as Botts (even when he’s down, a contradiction that works when it shouldn’t), and his infectious smile goes a long way towards keeping the viewer rooting for him throughout. Of the rest of the cast, Kibbee is notable for another variation on his grouchy old man routine, though Travis and Hughes are, frankly, too bland to make much of an impact. However, the acting isn’t the movie’s focal point. Rather it’s the impressive-for-a-low-budget-movie stunt sequences involving the Earthworm Tractor. The finale – which takes place in a quarry that’s primed with explosives that will inevitably be set off – sees Botts, Johnson and the Earthworm Tractor having to negotiate each detonation and a rickety old wooden bridge before reaching safety, and it’s this sequence that is the movie’s highlight. Along the way there are numerous examples of clever ideas that have been used cleverly, such as the couple of occasions where Botts is thrown bodily from Johnson’s premises and onto the ground, only for him to land on a carefully placed mattresss on the third occasion. Little moments such as that one help make the movie resonate much more with the viewer, and though some of those moments are almost thrown away (though deliberately), the ones that are included help make the movie as silly and as entertaining as it is.

Rating: 7/10 – a slapstick comedy with romantic overtones and a quiet sense of irony regarding its capitalist message, Earthworm Tractors is still very definitely a Thirties movie, but one that’s flecked with nice touches and occasional, surreal moments; Brown is the main star, but the likes of Lockhart and Crehan boost the supporting cast thanks to their efforts, and Enright orchestrates it all with a dexterity and prowess that belies his reputation as a journeyman director.

NOTE: Alas, there’s no trailer available for Earthworm Tractors.

Permission (2017)

14 Tuesday Aug 2018

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D: Brian Crano / 98m

Cast: Rebecca Hall, Dan Stevens, Gina Gershon, François Arnaud, Morgan Spector, David Joseph Craig, Jason Sudeikis

Anna (Hall) and Will (Stevens) have been together since forever, a couple with no other relationship experience except their own. They’ve never lived as a couple with anyone else, never had sex with anyone else, and never felt that they’ve missed out on anything as a result. In short, they live in a state of blissful monogamy. Will is an artisan who makes furniture and is renovating a house for he and Anna to move into, while Anna is finishing up her music thesis. Will has begun to believe that it’s the perfect time to propose, but at the same dinner in which he plans to pop the question, another one is raised by Reece (Spector), the partner of Anna’s brother, Hale (Craig): how can either of them be sure each is “the one” when they’ve never “been” with anyone else? Will holds off on proposing, and it isn’t long before both of them are contemplating the idea of sleeping with other people. Soon an agreement is reached whereby Anna meets musician Dane (Arnaud), and Will meets wealthy divorcée, Lydia (Gershon). But their agreement soon starts to cause problems between them…

It’s not immediately obvious while watching Permission, but Brian Crano’s second feature after the more easy-going A Bag of Hammers (2011), has a secret agenda that it doesn’t reveal until at the very end. You could say it’s in the nature of a twist, something that the viewer won’t see coming, but with any good twist the clues should be woven into the narrative from the start so that even if the twist really does come as a complete surprise then at least the viewer can look back and – hopefully – spot those moments where they were hoodwinked. Unfortunately, writer/director Crano doesn’t do this, so when one of his two main characters does pitch that curveball, it’s likely to provoke more headscratching than nodding in agreement. But before then, Crano is already sending the viewer mixed messages, so perhaps it shouldn’t be so surprising. Anna and Will are set up initially as the poster couple for committed monogamy, but the speed with which they allow Reece’s poser to have them throwing away their commitment to each other is as unseemly as Anna’s later encounter with a gallery owner.

Of course, this is the thrust of the movie: is Anna and Will’s specific kind of monogamy healthy enough for a relationship to succeed? But the material is too uneven to provide any kind of definitive answer (though it does decide that casual hook-ups are a no-no), and so instead of having Anna and Will explore other sexual experiences and then bring those experiences back to their own relationship, both engage in new relationships that test their own commitment in different ways. Crano can’t resist throwing in some clichés – Will asks if Dane is bigger than him, Dane falls in love with Anna – but too often the script fails to relate things back to Will and Anna except in the most perfunctory of ways. Hall is as spiky and watchable as ever, while Stevens has more of a comic role that feels at odds with the intended drama of the material. As the objects of Will and Anna’s new affections, Gershon is breezy and likeable while Arnaud is left high and dry by his character having nowhere to go. There’s an intriguing sub-plot involving Hale’s desire to have a baby (which isn’t shared by Reece), and at times this is more interesting, but overall this is a movie that puts its central characters into a number of uncomfortable situations and then gifts them a convenient way out almost every time – so where’s the lesson there?

Rating: 6/10 – if monogamy is your thing and “well-meaning” affairs are the antithesis of what you believe is right, then Permission won’t be the movie for you; even as a potential comedy of errors and/or manners it falls short, and if the movie has any kind of message it’s that you actually don’t have to be careful what you wish for.

Monthly Roundup – July 2018

31 Tuesday Jul 2018

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Hereditary (2018) / D: Ari Aster / 127m

Cast: Toni Collette, Gabriel Byrne, Alex Wolff, Milly Shapiro, Ann Dowd

Rating: 7/10 – following the death of her mother, miniaturist artist Annie (Collette) and her family begin to experience strange phenomena that hint at supernatural forces at work around them, and which appear to be malevolent in their intentions; this year’s critics’ favourite in the horror genre, Hereditary does boast a superb performance from Collette, and creates a fervid atmosphere in its first half that is genuinely unnerving, but this is a movie where the sum of its parts isn’t equal to a satisfying whole, and what should have been a tense, psychological thriller becomes a grandstanding Rosemary’s Baby for the new millennium, an outcome that robs it of much of its impact.

Mrs. Pym of Scotland Yard (1940) / D: Fred Ellis / 64m

Cast: Mary Clare, Edward Lexy, Nigel Patrick, Janet Johnson, Anthony Ireland, Irene Handl, Vernon Kelso

Rating: 7/10 – the predicted deaths of two members of a Psychic Society leads Scotland Yard to assign their lone female detective, Mrs. Pym (Clare), to the case in an effort to track down the victims’ killer; a boisterous little crime caper with a delightful performance by Clare (in her only starring role), Mrs. Pym of Scotland Yard retains a freshness nearly eighty years on that some movies can’t manage after eighty days, a feat that can be attributed to Ellis’s sprightly direction, a handful of engaging secondary performances, and a script – based on stories by Nigel Morland and adapted by Ellis and Peggy Barwell – that knows when to be amusing and when to be dramatic, and when to be delightfully daft (which, thankfully, is often).

Backlash (1956) / D: John Sturges / 84m

Cast: Richard Widmark, Donna Reed, William Campbell, John McIntire, Barton MacLane, Harry Morgan, Robert J. Wilke

Rating: 7/10 – while searching for his father’s killer, Jim Slater (Widmark) crosses paths with a woman (Reed) who may be connected to his father’s death, and who may be able to provide him with information that will lead him to the man responsible, an outcome that, when it happens, isn’t as straightforward as he’s been led to believe; a tough, muscular Western with psychological and film noir elements, Backlash is also a taut, uncompromising revenge tale that doesn’t pull its punches and which takes a sudden narrative turn halfway through that puts a whole different spin on Slater’s journey, something that Widmark handles with his usual aplomb, and Sturges – who would go on to helm Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957) and The Magnificent Seven (1960) – handles the twists and turns with confidence and no small amount of directorial flair.

Skyscraper (2018) / D: Rawson Marshall Thurber / 102m

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Neve Campbell, Chin Han, Roland Møller, Noah Taylor, Byron Mann, Pablo Schreiber, McKenna Roberts, Noah Cottrell, Hannah Quinlivan

Rating: 4/10 – the world’s tallest building, The Pearl, is ready to open but needs a final sign-off from security analyst Will Sawyer (Johnson), but when terrorists set the building on fire, Sawyer has a greater problem: that of rescuing his family who are trapped above the fire line; there was a time when a movie like Skyscraper would have been a must-see at the cinema, but this Die Hard meets The Towering Inferno mash-up (scripted by Thurber) is a soulless, empty spectacle that can’t even put Sawyer’s family in any appreciable peril, wastes its talented cast by having them play one-dimensional stereotypes, and which uses Sawyer’s disability as a narrative parlour trick whenever the plot needs it.

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018) / D: Ol Parker / 114m

Cast: Lily James, Amanda Seyfried, Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgård, Colin Firth, Christine Baranski, Julie Walters, Dominic Cooper, Andy Garcia, Jeremy Irvine, Josh Dylan, Hugh Skinner, Jessica Keenan Wynn, Alexa Davies, Celia Imrie, Cher, Meryl Streep

Rating: 7/10 – with the reopening of her late mother’s hotel just days away, Sophie Sheridan (Seyfried) is worried that everything won’t go according to plan, while the story of how a young Donna Sheridan (James) came to own the hotel in the first place, plays out simultaneously; if you liked the first movie then you’ll definitely like Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, another love letter to the music of ABBA, and a movie that has no simpler ambition than to charm its audience at every turn and provide fans with as good a time as before, something it achieves thanks to generous dollops of good-natured humour, a talented cast giving their all, and an if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it approach that works wonders on what is very familiar material indeed.

Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018) / D: Christopher McQuarrie / 147m

Cast: Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Rebecca Ferguson, Sean Harris, Vanessa Kirby, Angela Bassett, Alec Baldwin, Michelle Monaghan, Wes Bentley

Rating: 9/10 – a mission in Berlin to retrieve three plutonium cores leads Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and his IMF team into a high stakes race-against-time chase across the continents as they try to avert a terrorist attack orchestrated by the followers of arch-nemesis Solomon Lane (Harris); number six in the franchise, and Mission: Impossible – Fallout is the best entry yet, with hugely impressive action scenes, the strongest plot so far, and a surprisingly emotional core drawn from the interactions of the characters that puts this head and shoulders above every other action movie you’ll see this year – and who would have bet on that?

I Feel Pretty (2018) / D: Abby Kohn, Marc Silverstein / 111m

Cast: Amy Schumer, Michelle Williams, Tom Hopper, Rory Scovel, Adrian Martinez, Emily Ratajkowski, Aidy Bryant, Busy Philipps, Lauren Hutton, Naomi Campbell

Rating: 5/10 – when an insecure woman, Renee Bennett (Schumer), who works at an international cosmetics company suffers a blow to the head, she wakes seeing herself as beautiful and capable of achieving anything – but in reality she looks exactly the same; what should be an immensely likeable shout out to the power of self-belief, I Feel Pretty is hampered by the bludgeoning approach of the script (by directors Kohn and Silverstein), and the incredible ease with which Renee powers her way up the corporate ladder, aspects that are at least more palatable than the way in which the men are treated as accessories, something that, if the roles were reversed, would likely cause an outcry.

The Lifeguard (2013)

28 Saturday Jul 2018

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D: Liz W. Garcia / 98m

Cast: Kristen Bell, Mamie Gummer, Martin Starr, Alex Shaffer, Joshua Harto, David Lambert, Amy Madigan, Adam LeFevre, John Finn, Paulie Litt, Sendhil Ramamurthy

Fast approaching thirty, Leigh London (Bell) is a journalist working for the Associated Press in New York City. When a piece she writes about a tiger cub kept as a pet in someone’s home isn’t given the prominence she feels it deserves, she takes issue with her boss (Ramamurthy) – who is also her lover. When she learns he’s newly engaged to someone else, it proves too much, and she decides to return to her family home and rethink what she’s going to do. She takes a job as a lifeguard, and re-connects with some old friends, including art appraiser Todd (Starr), and school vice principal Mel (Gummer). Through her new job, Leigh comes to know a couple of teenage boys – artistic Matt (Shaffer), and skateboarder Jason (Lambert). Both boys want to quit school and head for Vermont, but a burgeoning relationship with Jason means Leigh doesn’t want him to go. With their friendship becoming more and more serious, it causes problems for Mel: as vice principal she has a duty to report any inappropriate relationships involving a student. But Leigh’s need for Jason to stay has tragic consequences…

The feature debut from writer/director Liz W. Garcia, The Lifeguard is a tough sell of a movie, a pained and painful examination of one woman’s headlong rush into self-pity, and the inappropriate behaviour that she uses to make herself feel better. It’s hard to think of another movie that has its central character behave in such a selfish fashion, and which still asks the audience to view her actions with sympathy and understanding. It’s a difficult ask, as Garcia paints Leigh as a victim right from the start, whether it’s in the way she throws away her job without a second thought, or the fact that she does nothing to express her anger at being so poorly treated by her boss. Back in her hometown there are plenty of moments where we see Leigh looking forlorn or thoughtful or pensive, but while you might expect these moments to be examples of Leigh planning her next move, instead, Garcia has her use Matt and Jason to score some pot. She also involves Mel, who with her husband, John (Harto), is trying to have a baby, and whose position as vice principal becomes instantly compromised.

That Leigh does all this – as well as just turning up at her parents’ house without notice – and without any consideration of her friends, or her family, and especially Jason, harms the movie irreparably. There’s no sense of responsibility, only a need for self-gratification that Garcia is unable to offset with any feelings of regret until it’s too late. This should have been a movie where the main character uses returning home as a chance to gather their thoughts and reconnect with a simpler time, but Leigh makes everything worse with every effort she makes. She makes fun of her mother’s attempts to start a new fitness business, she causes a wedge between Mel and John to develop, she keeps Jason in town out of selfish need, and enters into yet another illicit relationship. Sadly Bell, though she’s a more than capable actress, can’t find a way to mitigate against the choices Garcia has made for her character. Left stranded by the narrative, the actress does her best, but like her fellow cast members, she’s unable to make this memorable or affecting or even partway satisfactory.

Rating: 4/10 – with the indie clichés coming thick and fast, and in service to a script that lacks the depth needed to make it more compelling (or just agreeable), The Lifeguard wastes any opportunity it had to provide viewers with a convincing tale of one woman’s emotional downward spiral; passable if you’re in an undemanding mood, it’s a movie that tests the patience and the charity of the viewer at every turn.

There’s Always Woodstock (2014)

09 Monday Jul 2018

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aka Always Woodstock

D: Rita Merson / 97m

Cast: Allison Miller, James Wolk, Anna Anissimova, Jason Ritter, Rumer Willis, Katey Sagal, Finesse Mitchell, Richard Reid, Richard Riehle, Brittany Snow

For Catherine Brown (Miller), life means just chugging along. She has a self-absorbed actor boyfriend, Garrett (Ritter), a mid-level job at a record company, Abundant Records, that her best friend Ryan (Anissimova) got her, and a stifled ambition to be a singer/songwriter. She’s just getting by. But when she loses her job and discovers Garrett is having an affair – all on the same day – it triggers a tailspin that lasts for a week before Ryan stages an intervention. Faced with starting afresh, Catherine decides it’s time to go home, to Woodstock, where she grew up. There she meets local doctor, Noah Bernstein (Wolk), with whom she shares an instant attraction, and begins to work on her songs. Aided by new friend, Emily (Willis), and local singer Lee Ann (Sagal), Catherine begins to find her feet, but when a song of hers comes to the attention of her ex-bosses at Abundant Records – and Garrett shows up in her life again – her old life clashes with her new life, and causes even more problems than before…

Before settling down to watch There’s Always Woodstock, another caveat needs to be borne in mind: There’s Always the Stop Button. The first feature from writer/director Rita Merson, the movie is an ill-formed and poorly structured romantic comedy drama (with music) that does a disservice to each of its thematic components, and which asks its cast to behave in some very odd ways indeed. It’s the kind of romantic comedy with added moments of drama that has the ability to put people off from watching other romantic comedies with added moments of drama. It’s a bad movie made with good intentions, but a bad movie nevertheless. Nothing in it makes any kind of sense, from the opening scene where Garrett cries like a grossly affected man-child after he and Catherine have ludicrous looking sex, to the scene where Catherine and Ryan have their first argument and which sees Ryan ask Catherine if she’s “a mental” before Catherine tells Ryan, “I hate your baby” (Ryan has just revealed she’s pregnant). There’s much else besides, with moments where Catherine behaves like a spoilt child and does her best to antagonise everyone around her with her selfish motivations and crass insensitivity. That anyone in Woodstock likes her, especially for herself, is a miracle only the script could have come up with.

The characters and the situations they find themselves in lend themselves to absurdity at almost every turn, and even when the movie does try to be serious, it’s to offer the kind of cookie-cutter wisdom that has been done a thousand times before in other, better movies. The comedy is strained and relies heavily on Miller looking bewildered or anxious or a combination of both, while the romance is bland and insipid, something which isn’t helped by Wolk’s grin-happy, what-am-I-doing-here? performance. As for the songs – a collection of subdued observations on failed or failing relationships – these at least are bearable, and offer some relief from the reluctance to be fully engaging that the movie promulgates the rest of the time. Miller is left high and dry by the script’s demands on her character, while the likes of Willis, Sagal and Anissimova pop up every now and then, contribute some lines, and then fade into the background again. It’s indicative of the problems that plague a movie when none of the supporting characters make much of an impact, and the heroine is an infuriating nitwit who has to be force fed positive life lessons in order to achieve anything.

Rating: 3/10 – with its stock characters trapped in a mildly diverting storyline, and no real attempt being made to make Catherine even remotely likeable or sympathetic, There’s Always Woodstock is a disaster as a romantic comedy with added moments of drama; with a bland visual style as well, and Merson’s clumsy hand at the tiller, this is tonally uneven, dramatically banal, and undeniably terrible.

Love, Simon (2018)

23 Saturday Jun 2018

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D: Greg Berlanti / 110m

Cast: Nick Robinson, Jennifer Garner, Josh Duhamel, Katherine Langford, Alexandra Shipp, Logan Miller, Keiynan Lonsdale, Jorge Lendeborg Jr, Talitha Eliana Bateman, Tony Hale, Natasha Rothwell, Miles Heizer

Simon Spier (Robinson) is in high school. He has three best friends – Leah (Langford), Abby (Shipp), and Nick (Lendeborg Jr) – loving parents (Garner, Duhamel), a kid sister, Nora (Bateman), whose culinary efforts he praises whether they’re good or (usually) bad, an interest in drama, and a big secret: he’s gay. Being a teenager, of course, nobody knows that he’s gay, but when Leah tells him that another pupil at their high school has come out anonymously online, Simon begins talking to him via e-mail. Soon, he and “Blue” are exchanging their mutual thoughts and feelings on their personal circumstances. When another pupil, Martin (Miller), discovers Simon’s e-mails, he uses them to blackmail Simon into helping him get together with Abby. Afraid of being outed, Simon does his best to set them up with each other, while also trying to bring Nick and Leah together (because Nick is attracted to Abby). But his attempts at matchmaking backfire, and Martin does what Simon has feared all along: he outs Simon to the entire school…

Widely touted as the first movie by a major Hollywood studio to focus on a gay teenage romance (and it’s only taken until 2018 to happen – way to go, 20th Century Fox), Love, Simon is a tender, heartfelt, and overwhelmingly sweet movie based on the novel Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli. It features a good central performance by Robinson as the modest but likeable Simon, and it hits all the right notes in its attempts to focus on his struggle to deal with the implications of being gay, the fear of being outed, and what it means to have to protect that knowledge. And yet, once Simon’s secret is revealed to one and all, what has been a confidently handled, and sincerely expressed story – with a nice mystery sideline in trying to work out Blue’s identity – suddenly becomes an unexpected fantasy based somewhere between the world of John Hughes’ teen dramas and a return trip to the Land of Oz. All along, Simon has been dreading everyone finding out that he’s gay, and it’s at this point in the movie where you could be forgiven for thinking that things will start to get really difficult for him.

Au contraire, mon ami. Aside from a (very) brief moment of uninspired, and childish, leg-pulling (bullying is really too strong a word for it), the only other fallout from Simon’s outing is the decision of his three best friends to avoid him – he did manipulate them after all. Otherwise, his family prove to be mega-supportive, his teachers express zero tolerance for any homophobic behaviour by the other students, Martin apologises to him while admitting his own insecurities, and when Simon challenges Blue to meet him at an upcoming carnival, what seems to be the whole high school turns out to be there for them (oh, and his friends forgive him as well). Now, there’s nothing wrong with a happy ending, but this is like something out of the Thirties and early Forties when happy endings were guaranteed (back then it might have been called Andy Hardy Comes Out… of the Barn). If the movie’s message – coming out is easy-peasy – is intentional, then that’s fair enough, it’s still a piece of entertainment, and designed to do well in the mass market. But as a reflection of what is likely to happen in the real world when coming out, then Love, Simon is a far from perfect choice from which to take your cues.

Rating: 7/10 – a wish fulfillment tale that’s breezy and fun but also deliberately anodyne in places, Love, Simon is enjoyable and refreshing for its choice of topic, and benefits from good performances throughout – Rothwell’s drama teacher with attitude is a highlight – as well as Berlanti’s sensitive direction; becoming an entirely different movie altogether once Simon is outed, though, undermines the character’s emotional struggle, and paints first gay love in such rainbow-like colours that any real sense of drama is abandoned altogether.

Ali’s Wedding (2016)

15 Friday Jun 2018

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D: Jeffrey Walker / 110m

Cast: Osamah Sami, Don Hany, Helana Sawires, Robert Rabiah, Khaled Khalafalla, Asal Shenaveh, Rodney Afif, Ghazi Alkinani, Majid Shokor, Shayan Salehian, Ryan Corr

Ali (Sami) and his family live in Australia, but are originally from Iraq. His father (Hany) is the cleric of the local mosque, and wants Ali to become a doctor. Ali isn’t so sure that’s going to happen as he doesn’t have a natural aptitude for medicine and struggles with his studies; when he only gets 68.5 on his university entrance exam, it confirms what he already knows. However, because he doesn’t want to disappoint his father, Ali keeps the result to himself, but when another student boasts of getting a high score, Ali tells everyone he scored even higher. And when he learns that the girl he’s attracted to, Dianne (Sawires), has also passed, Ali determines to attend the university anyway. Meanwhile, Ali’s parents reveal that they are arranging a bride for him (now that he’s on his way to being a successful doctor), and are making plans for their upcoming wedding. As Ali fights to keep his secret from being revealed, he has to find a way of getting out of the arranged marriage, and ensuring that he and Dianne can be together – even though she’s Lebanese…

Based on Sami’s own experiences, Ali’s Wedding is something of a first: a Muslim romantic comedy that manages to be respectful of Muslim traditions and his family’s transplanted way of life, while also acknowledging that his generation may not be as “wedded” to those traditions as elder generations would expect them to be. It’s a movie that avoids the usual condemnation that you’d expect when young love rears its socially unacceptable head and challenges the status quo, or entrenched religious sensibilities, and part of the movie’s charm is that Sami, along with co-writer Andrew Knight, recognises the validity of both points of view. So there’s no demonising of the Muslim religion, no stereotypical characterisations, and no deciding if one side is “better” than the other. Arguments are made for both sides of the cultural divide, and it’s left to the viewer to decide which one they agree with most. That said, Sami’s unwavering fairness to both sides should be enough, as he makes sure that the movie’s nominal bad guy, a would-be usurper of his father’s role of cleric, is undone by an outburst of arrogant pride.

Having set the tone for the movie’s cultural and religious backdrop, Sami is free to build a lightweight yet likeable romance out of Ali’s relationship with Dianne, and to pepper proceedings with the kind of knowing humour that wouldn’t necessarily work outside of the movie’s framework. Hence we have Saddam The Musical (all true), and an abortive trip to the US to stage the show (the principal cast are all returned home in handcuffs). And that’s without a tractor ride that ends in disaster, and a joke about community service that is both beautifully timed and arrives out of the blue. Walker lets the narrative breathe, and doesn’t rush things, allowing the material and the performances to progress naturally and to good effect. As himself, Sami has a mischievous twinkle in his eye that at times is infectiously winning, and he’s supported by a great cast who all contribute greatly to the movie’s likeability (though Hany’s Aussie accent slips through from time to time, which can be off-putting). There are themes surrounding trust and respect, community and togetherness that are played out with a directness and simplicity that enhance the material, and though the ending is never in doubt, there’s still an awful lot of fun to be had in getting there.

Rating: 8/10 – an agreeable and amusing romantic comedy, Ali’s Wedding does what all the best rom-coms do, and puts its hero through the ringer before giving him a chance at coming up trumps; the romance between Ali and Dianne is entirely credible, as are the various inter-relationships within families and the wider Muslim community, making this an unexpected, but modestly vital, success.

The Ottoman Lieutenant (2017)

11 Monday Jun 2018

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D: Joseph Ruben / 110m

Cast: Michiel Huisman, Hera Hilmar, Josh Hartnett, Ben Kingsley, Haluk Bilginer, Affif Ben Badra, Paul Barrett, Jessica Turner

It’s 1914, and in Philadelphia, Lillie Rowe (Hilmar), the daughter of well-to-do society parents is trying to make her way in the world as a nurse. It’s not easy, what with class and racial prejudice making it more and more difficult to treat those needing treatment, so when she meets Dr Jude Gresham (Hartnett) at one of her parents’ soirées, and learns he works at a hospital in a remote part of Turkey that offers medical aid to anyone who needs it, Christian or Muslim, she decides to take a truck full of medical supplies there all by herself. Needing a military escort, Lillie is guided to the hospital by Lieutenant Ismail Veli (Huisman), who is stationed at a nearby garrison. They develop romantic feelings for each other, despite the difference in their faiths, and despite the objections of Gresham (who loves Lillie himself), and the advice of the hospital’s founder, Dr Garrett Woodruff (Kingsley). When World War I breaks out, their romance is put under further pressure thanks to the political upheavals the war brings, and the difficulty in keeping the hospital a neutral place for all…

Despite the tumultuous events that occurred during the period it covers, The Ottoman Lieutenant is largely unconcerned with such minor details as the Armenian genocide that began in 1915, or in exploring too closely the religious, political, ethnic and historical realities of the time. Instead, it sidesteps these issues (for the most part) in order to focus on one of the most excruciatingly bland three-way romances seen in quite some time. If you’re expecting the movie to be a grand, sweeping romantic drama set against a turbulent backdrop, and full of passion and fire, then be prepared: it’s not that kind of movie, and the combination of Jeff Stockwell’s anodyne screenplay, Joseph Ruben’s pedestrian direction, and three tired-from-the-word-go performances by Huisman, Hilmar and Hartnett, ensure that the movie never gets out of the starting gate. And that’s without Geoff Zanelli’s by-the-numbers score, and cinematography by Daniel Aranyó that only seems to fizz when depicting the beautiful Turkish countryside; any interiors appear drab and unappealingly flat in their presentation. Apparently, the movie was given a limited release in December 2016 to allow it to qualify for Oscar consideration. If so, the obvious question is: why?

All round, it’s a woeful lump of a movie, uninspired, straining for momentum and merit, and unable to raise any interest especially when its lacklustre love story is pushed to the forefront. It’s hard to care about Veli and Lillie when their love affair is played out with all the perfunctory flair of a dismal soap opera, and it’s worse that neither Huisman or Hilmar seem interested in doing anything more than going through the (e)motions (there’s certainly no chemistry between them). Hartnett is no better, which means that, performance-wise, it’s only Kingsley who appears to be putting any effort in. Making more out of his character, and some truly awful dialogue, than his three co-stars put together, Kingsley is the movie’s sole saving grace; without him it would be even more tortuous. Even when the movie throws in a couple of action sequences, the viewer’s pulse is unlikely to quicken, and any tension is dismissed early on when it becomes obvious that, one character aside, no one is in any real danger from the Turks, the Russians, or anyone else – though the viewer is at risk of succumbing to terminal lethargy. Best advice: if you have to make one trip to Turkey this year, make sure it isn’t this one.

Rating: 3/10 – what was probably intended to be a good old-fashioned romantic adventure yarn with a plucky heroine and a dashing suitor, is instead the opposite: trite, run-of-the-mill, and poorly executed; when it’s not addressing the issues of the period (which is most of its running time), The Ottoman Lieutenant remains firmly in dramatic limbo, unable to rouse itself beyond the mundane and the banal.

Mary Shelley (2017)

03 Sunday Jun 2018

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D: Haifaa al-Mansour / 120m

Cast: Elle Fanning, Douglas Booth, Stephen Dillane, Bel Powley, Tom Sturridge, Joanne Froggatt, Ben Hardy, Maisie Williams

London, 1813. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (Fanning) is the sixteen year old daughter of bookseller and political philosopher, William Godwin (Dillane). Mary is wilful, and more interested in reading and writing than contributing to the household chores, and this in turn causes bad feelings with her stepmother (Froggatt). Things come to a head and Mary is sent to stay with one of her father’s friends in Scotland. There she meets the young poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (Booth), and an attraction develops between them. When Mary returns to London, Shelley follows her and their relationship deepens, even though Mary learns Shelley is married and has a child. Leaving her family home along with her stepsister Claire Clairmont (Powley), the pair and Shelley at first live in less than impressive surroundings until Shelley comes into some money. An invitation through Claire to stay with notorious poet and philanderer Lord Byron (Sturridge) near Geneva in the summer of 1816 comes just at the right time: Shelley’s creditors are literally knocking at the door. Once there, a challenge from Byron to write a ghost story led Mary to begin writing the novel that would seal her fame and her reputation…

A heritage picture with all the attendant tropes that go with it, Mary Shelley focuses on the early romantic life of the creator of Frankenstein: or, the Modern Prometheus, and does its best to show the trials and tribulations that made up Mary’s life, but without connecting them convincingly with the writing of her classic novel. With any historical biography, the problem lies in recreating an acceptable and authentic sounding series of events to illustrate how a novel, a painting, or a similar work of art came into being. Emma Jensen’s original screenplay does its best – there’s the loss of Mary’s mother shortly after she was born, a theatrical display of galvanism, querulous thoughts on an afterlife – but it can’t quite make us believe that Mary was destined to write her “ghost story” in the way that the script would have us accept. There’s both encouragement and discouragement from Shelley, Mary’s own determination to prove a patriarchal society that it’s dismissal of the efforts of women is wrong, and inevitably, the support of her father at a crucial point in the novel’s publication. That these things happened is not necessarily in dispute, but the way in which they’re laid out is unfortunately quite mundane.

This proves a detriment to the movie overall, with al-Mansour’s efforts held in check by the demands of the feel and shape of the narrative, which is respectful without being passionate, and fluid though without feeling driven. There are the requisite setbacks and tragedies on display, and they come at their expected moments, and so much so that you can tick them off as you watch. This leaves Fanning somewhat adrift in a movie that her peformance dominates, and which allows her to show a greater range and skill in her portrayal of Mary than is usually the case. In support, Booth is a gifted yet emotionally petulant Shelley, Powley is terrific as the envious stepsister trying to make her own mark through an unfortunate dalliance with Byron, and Dillane does seemingly little, but to such good effect that he’s the focus of every scene he’s in. al-Mansour, following up her debut feature Wadjda (2012), is a great choice as director but again is defeated by the apparent requirements for making a period picture. It’s ironic then, that a movie about the creator of a literary figure brought to life by lightning, lacks the spark needed to bring it’s own tale fully to life.

Rating: 6/10 – it looks good (thanks to David Ungaro’s sterling cinematography), and it’s replete with good performances, but Mary Shelley is ultimately too pedestrian in nature and presentation to linger in the memory; the romance between Mary and Percy fizzles out in a perfunctory “that’s done” fashion, her stance as a proto-feminist (and the nominal ease with which she overcomes the gender prejudice of the times) is clunky, and is undermined by the movie’s end, where her fame and fortune is guaranteed by the intervention of her lover and her father – and there’s further irony for you.

Monthly Roundup – May 2018

02 Saturday Jun 2018

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Enemies Closer (2013) / D: Peter Hyams / 85m

Cast: Tom Everett Scott, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Orlando Jones, Linzey Cocker, Christopher Robbie, Zachary Baharov, Dimo Alexiev, Kris Van Damme

Rating: 5/10 – when a plane carrying drugs crash lands in the waters off King’s Island it’s up to ranger (and ex-Navy Seal) Henry Taylor (Scott) to stop mercenary Xander (Van Damme) and his men from retrieving the cargo; a bone-headed action movie with a flamboyant performance from Van Damme, Enemies Closer is saved from complete disaster by Hyams’ confident direction and cinematography, a script that often seems aware of how silly it all is, and an earnest turn from Scott that eschews the usual macho heroics expected from something that, in essence, is Die Hard on a Small Island.

From Hell to the Wild West (2017) / D: Rene Perez / 77m

Cast: Robert Kovacs, Alanna Forte, Charlie Glackin, Karin Brauns, Robert Bronzi, Sammy Durrani

Rating: 3/10 – a masked serial killer sets up home in a ghost town in California, until a Marshall (Kovacs) and a bounty hunter (Bronzi) team up to end his reign of terror; a low budget horror with an interesting premise, From Hell to the Wild West is let down by poor production values, terrible acting, the kind of Easter eggs that stick out like a sore thumb (Bronzi was a stunt double for Charles Bronson, and his character name is Buchinski), a threadbare plot, and occasional stabs at direction by Perez – all of which make it yet another horror movie that’s a chore to sit through.

Tremors: A Cold Day in Hell (2018) / D: Don Michael Paul / 98m

Cast: Michael Gross, Jamie Kennedy, Tanya van Graan, Jamie-Lee Money, Kiroshan Naidoo, Keeno Lee Hector, Rob van Vuuren, Adrienne Pearce, Francesco Nassimbeni, Paul de Toit

Rating: 4/10 – Burt Gummer (Gross) and his son, Travis (Kennedy), are called in when Graboid activity is discovered in the Canadian tundra, and threatens a research facility; number six in the series, Tremors: A Cold Day in Hell marks a serious downturn in quality thanks to dreary plotting, cardboard characters, and absentee suspense, and supports the notion that the franchise should be put to bed (even though there’s a TV series on the horizon), something that not even the continued presence of Gross can mitigate against, or the producers.

The Debt Collector (2018) / D: Jesse V. Johnson / 96m

Cast: Scott Adkins, Louis Mandylor, Vladimir Kulich, Michael Paré, Tony Todd, Rachel Brann, Esteban Cueto, Jack Lowe

Rating: 5/10 – a financially strapped martial arts instructor, French (Adkins), takes on a job as a debt collector for a local gangster, and finds himself elbow deep in unexpected violence and the search for someone who may or may not have swindled one of the debtors on his list; though breezy and easy-going, and replete with fight scenes designed to show off Adkins prowess as an action hero, The Debt Collector gets bogged down by its neo-noir-style script, and a plethora of supporting characters that come and go without making an impact, or contributing much to the story.

Air Hawks (1935) / D: Albert S. Rogell / 68m

Cast: Ralph Bellamy, Tala Birell, Wiley Post, Douglass Dumbrille, Robert Allen, Billie Seward, Victor Kilian, Robert Middlemass, Geneva Mitchell, Wyrley Birch, Edward Van Sloan

Rating: 6/10 – a small-time independent airline finds itself being sabotaged by a rival airline in its attempts to win a transcontinental contract from the government; a mash-up of aviation drama and sci-fi elements (Van Sloan’s character operates a “death ray” from the back of a truck), Air Hawks is the kind of sincerely acted and directed nonsense that Hollywood churned out by the dozens during the Thirties, but it’s enjoyable nonetheless, with eager performances from Bellamy and Kilian, nightclub scenes that don’t feel out of place at all(!), and a knowing sense of how silly it all is.

Supercon (2018) / D: Zak Knutson / 100m

Cast: Russell Peters, Maggie Grace, Ryan Kwanten, Brooks Braselman, Clancy Brown, John Malkovich, Mike Epps, Caroline Fourmy

Rating: 3/10 – at a TV/artists/superhero convention, a group of friends decide to rob the promoter and at the same time, stick it to an overbearing TV icon (Brown) as payback for the way they’ve been treated; somewhere – though buried deep – inside the mess that is Supercon is a great idea for a movie set at a fantasy convention centre, but this dire, uninspired comedy isn’t it, lacking as it does real laughs, any conviction, and consistent direction, all things that seemed to have been “refused entry” at the earliest stages of production.

The 15:17 to Paris (2018) / D: Clint Eastwood / 94m

Cast: Spencer Stone, Alex Skarlatos, Anthony Sadler, Judy Greer, Jenna Fischer, Ray Corasani, P.J. Byrne, Thomas Lennon, William Jennings, Bryce Gheisar, Paul-Mikél Williams

Rating: 6/10 – the true story of how three friends, two of whom (Stone, Skarlatos) were American servicemen, tackled and overcame a gun-toting terrorist on a train bound for Paris from Amsterdam in August 2015; with the terrorist incident being dealt with in a matter of minutes, The 15:17 to Paris has to pad out its running time, and does so by showing how the three friends met and grew up, and their progress through Europe until that fateful train ride, a decision that works well in introducing the trio, but which makes this in some ways more of a rites of passage-cum-travelogue movie than the incisive thriller it wants to be.

The Mask of Medusa (2009) / D: Jean Rollin / 73m

Original title: Le masque de la Méduse

Cast: Simone Rollin, Bernard Charnacé, Sabine Lenoël, Thomas Smith, Marlène Delcambre

Rating: 5/10 – a retelling of the classical story of the Gorgon presented in two parts; Rollin’s final project, The Mask of Medusa is much more of an experimental movie than you’ll find amongst his usual work, but it has a starkly defined approach that allows the largely idiosyncratic dialogue room to work, and the austere nature of the visuals has an unnerving effect that works well at times with the narrative, but it’s also an experience that offers little in the way of intellectual or emotional reward for the viewer, which makes this something of a disappointment as Rollin’s last movie.

Jeepers Creepers 3 (2017) / D: Victor Salva / 101m

Cast: Stan Shaw, Gabrielle Haugh, Brandon Smith, Meg Foster, Jordan Salloum, Chester Rushing, Jason Bayle, Ryan Moore, Jonathan Breck

Rating: 3/10 – the Creeper targets anyone who comes near the truck he collects his victims in, as well as the members of a family he terrorised originally twenty-three years before; set between the first and second movies, Jeepers Creepers 3 suffers from tortuous sequelitis, with Salva stretching the franchise’s time frame out of whack, and failing to provide viewers with the scares and thrills seen in the original movie, something that, though predictable, doesn’t bode well for the already in gestation Part Four.

Navy Blue and Gold (1937) / D: Sam Wood / 94m

Cast: Robert Young, James Stewart, Florence Rice, Billie Burke, Lionel Barrymore, Tom Brown, Samuel S. Hinds, Paul Kelly, Barnett Parker, Frank Albertson

Rating: 7/10 – three new recruits to the United States Naval Academy (Young, Stewart, Brown) battle their own individual problems, as well as trying to make the grade; a patriotic flag waver of a movie, and cinematic recruitment drive for the US Navy, Navy Blue and Gold features likeable performances from all three “cadets”, the usual soap opera elements to help keep the plot ticking over, and Barrymore doing yet another variation on his crusty old man persona, all of which, along with Wood’s erstwhile direction, ensure the movie is pleasant if undemanding.

Bedelia (1946) / D: Lance Comfort / 90m

Cast: Margaret Lockwood, Ian Hunter, Barry K. Barnes, Anne Crawford, Beatrice Varley, Louise Hampton, Jill Esmond

Rating: 7/10 – a woman (Lockwood), married for the second time, comes under the suspicion of an artist (Barnes) who believes her husband (Hunter) is likely to end up dead – just as her first husband did; a clever piece of melodrama from the novel by Vera Caspary, Bedelia doesn’t quite ratchet up the suspense as it goes along, but it does offer a fine performance from Lockwood as a femme with the emphasis on fatale, and occasional psychological details that help keep Bedelia herself from appearing evil for evil’s sake.

Peter Rabbit (2018) / D: Will Gluck / 95m

Cast: James Corden, Rose Byrne, Domhnall Gleeson, Margot Robbie, Sam Neill, Elizabeth Debicki, Daisy Ridley, Sia, Colin Moody

Rating: 7/10 – when the farmer (Neill) who continually tries to stop Peter Rabbit (Corden) and his friends stealing from his vegetable garden drops dead, so begins a war of attrition with his grandnephew (Gleeson); as a modern updating of Beatrix Potter’s beloved characters, purists might want to stay away from Peter Rabbit, but this is a colourful, immensely charming (if occasionally cynical) tale that is both funny and sweet, and which falls just the right side of being overwhelmingly saccharine.

Insidious: The Last Key (2018) / D: Adam Robitel / 103m

Cast: Lin Shaye, Leigh Whannell, Angus Sampson, Kirk Acevedo, Caitlin Gerard, Spencer Locke, Josh Stewart, Tessa Ferrer, Bruce Davison, Javier Botet

Rating: 6/10 – Elise Rainier (Shaye) is forced to come face to face with a demon from her childhood, as it targets members of her brother’s family; another trip into the Further reveals signs of the franchise beginning to cannibalise itself in the search for newer, scarier installments, though at least Insidious: The Last Key has the ever reliable Shaye to add a layer of sincerity to the usual hokey paranormal goings on, and one or two scares that do actually hit the mark, but this should be more way more effective than it actually is.

Deadpool 2 (2018) / D: David Leitch / 119m

Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Josh Brolin, Morena Baccarin, Julian Dennison, Zazie Beetz, T.J. Miller, Leslie Uggams, Karan Soni, Brianna Hildebrand, Stefan Kapicic, Eddie Marsan, Rob Delaney, Lewis Tan, Bill Skarsgård, Terry Crews

Rating: 8/10 – everyone’s favourite Merc with a Mouth is called upon to protect a teenage mutant (Dennison) with pyro abilities from a time-travelling half-man, half-cyborg called Cable (Brolin); any worries about Deadpool 2 not living up to the hype and being a letdown are dispensed with by more meta jokes than you can shake a pair of baby legs at, the same extreme levels of bloody violence as the first movie, and the opening title sequence, which gleefully advertises the fact that it’s directed by “one of the directors who killed the dog in John Wick”.

Vapors (1965) / D: Andy Milligan / 32m

Cast: Robert Dahdah, Gerard Jacuzzo, Hal Sherwood, Hal Borske, Richard Goldberger, Larry Ree

Rating: 7/10 – set in a bath house for homosexuals, first-timer Thomas (Jacuzzo) ends up sharing a room with married man, Mr Jaffee (Dahdah), who in between interruptions by some of the other patrons, tells him a disturbing personal story; an absorbing insight into both the freedom of expression afforded gay men by the confines of a bath house, as well as the personal stories that often have a tragic nature to them, Vapors is a redolent and pungent exploration of a milieu that few of us will have any experience of, and which contains content that is still relevant today.

Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) / D: Ron Howard / 135m

Cast: Alden Ehrenreich, Emilia Clarke, Woody Harrelson, Paul Bettany, Joonas Suotamo, Donald Glover, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Thandie Newton, Jon Favreau, Linda Hunt

Rating: 6/10 – Han Solo (Ehrenreich), a pilot for the Imperial Empire, breaks away from the Empire to work with smuggler Tobias Beckett (Harrelson) in an attempt to rescue his lover Qi’ra (Clarke) from their home planet – but it’s not as easy as it first seems; a movie that spends too much time reminding audiences that its main character has a chequered history, Solo: A Star Wars Story is a series of admittedly entertaining action sequences in search of a coherent story to wrap around them, but hamstrung by a bland lead performance, and another round of secondary characters you can’t connect with.

Prankz. (2017) / D: Warren Dudley / 71m

Cast: Betsy-Blue English, Elliot Windsor, Ray d James, Isabelle Rayner, Sharon Drain

Rating: 3/10 – six vlogs, two of which were never uploaded, show a footballer (Windsor), his girlfriend (English), and his best friend (James), playing pranks on each other, until a planned prank backfires with horrific consequences; an object lesson in how not to make a found footage horror movie, Prankz. is low budget awfulness personified, and as far from entertaining, or scary, or credible, or worth your time as it’s possible to be, which is the only achievement this dire movie is able to claim.

Ibiza (2018) / D: Alex Richanbach / 94m

Cast: Gillian Jacobs, Vanessa Bayer, Phoebe Robinson, Michaela Watkins, Richard Madden, Nelson Dante, Anjela Nedyalkova, Jordi Mollá

Rating: 3/10 – tasked with clinching a business deal in Barcelona, Harper (Jacobs) not only takes along her two best friends (Bayer, Robinson), but falls for a DJ (Madden) whose next gig is in Ibiza – where she determines to find him, even if it puts the deal in jeopardy; a romantic comedy that is neither romantic or funny – desperate is a more appropriate description – Ibiza is so bad that it’s yet another Netflix movie that you can’t believe was ever given a green light, or that Will Ferrell and Adam McKay stayed on board as producers once they saw the script (or what passes for one).

Every Day (2018)

27 Sunday May 2018

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D: Michael Sucsy / 97m

Cast: Angourie Rice, Justice Smith, Lucas Jade Zumann, Jacob Batalon, Colin Ford, Owen Teague, Maria Bello, Michael Cram, Debby Ryan

Rhiannon (Rice) is a sixteen year old schoolgirl whose boyfriend, Justin (Smith), surprises her one day by convincing her to skip classes and go to the beach. It’s a wonderful day, one that ends with Rhiannon believing that Justin, who isn’t normally so spontaneous or thoughtful, has changed for the better. However, the next day sees Justin finding it difficult to remember what happened the day before, and back to his usual self. Over the next few days, Rhiannon meets a handful of new people, all of whom are different but who also exhibit similar behaviours. One girl she meets tells her that these people have all been one person, inhabiting each body for a day, and that day at the beach has caused this person – who calls himself A – to want to spend more time with Rhiannon. Though at first she’s incredulous, Rhiannon begins to believe A’s story, and in the process starts to fall in love with him, despite the obstacles between them. But it’s when A finds himself able to stay in a body for more than a day that things become even more complicated…

A Twilight Zone-style scenario given a teen soap opera makeover, Every Day is the kind of inoffensive, and somewhat blandly presented movie that wants its characters to be better versions of themselves, but through the intervention of a body swapping entity instead of going on a personal journey of self-discovery. Rhiannon’s parents have their issues – dad had a breakdown some time before, mom now “works late” a lot – but it’s only when Rhiannon is substituted by A for a day that “she” does anything about these problems. Similarly, a teenager with suicidal thoughts is saved by A’s stepping up and saving the day. Every Day wears its wish fulfillment heart on its sleeve, and Jesse Andrews’ adaptation of David Levithan’s novel is keen to ensure that any drama is cleared away as tidily as possible, and as soon after it’s introduced, as if real life is ever that simple. What this means is that the material remains mostly good natured throughout and any lows are compensated for by the next high waiting around the corner. With the structure and the plotting laid out in such a straightforward, no frills way, the movie rarely moves out of second gear, or gains any real dramatic traction.

However, one area where the movie does excel is in its assembled depiction of A. Played by a total of fifteen actors and actresses (including Rice), it’s this aspect of the movie that works best. Watching so many different people playing the same character, and with all of them, even those with a limited amount of screen time, providing a consistent personality and mannerisms, is the movie’s trump card. A is handled with a great deal of care and attention throughout, and Sucsy and his talented cast ensure that his predicament is handled with a degree of sensitivity and even gravitas that is both unexpected and sincere. With A’s character feeling and sounding so grounded from the beginning, it helps the rest of the movie in terms of the drama surrounding his relationship with Rhiannon. As romances go, it’s not ideal, or practical, and the script doesn’t shy away from the likelihood that not everything will work out as it does in most other teen romantic dramas. But again, things run a little too smoothly, and any tension or close examinaton of A’s condition is passed over, making this a teen romance that can’t quite muster enough passion or depth to stand out from the crowd.

Rating: 6/10 – though the challenge of having fifteen different actors play the same role is achieved with a great degree of skill and confidence, it’s the overall story of Every Day that stops it from being better than it is; lacking in substance and/or dramatic thrust, it’s a movie that ambles along comfortably, while offering just enough to keep viewers interested until the end.

Broken Gardenias (2014)

17 Thursday May 2018

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D: Kai Alexander / 89m

Cast: Alma S. Grey, Jack Morocco, Caroline Heinle, Louis Dezseran, Nathan Douglas, Khelsy Raymond, Marlyse Londe, Geoffrey Kennedy, Amanda S. Hall

For Jenni (Grey), life isn’t something that she feels entirely comfortable with. She’s shy, has a somewhat childish attitude to her work in a plant nursery (she tells awful jokes to the plants), lives with a housemate (Heinle) who thinks she’s weird, and has a crush on a fellow nursery worker (Hall) that she’s too insecure to act on. When circumstances result in her losing both her home and her job, Jenni decides that suicide is her only remaining option. She goes to the park to hang herself but is stopped from doing so by Sam (Morocco), a free spirit who gets Jenni to open up about herself. Jenni tells Sam about her father, who she hasn’t seen since she was six years old. All she has is an old photo of him outside the house they used to live in in Los Angeles. Sam persuades Jenni to try and find him, and they travel to L.A. There, a number of distractions hold up their search, and their new-found friendship is put to the test…

A comical quasi-road movie that features a brace of enjoyable performances from its leads, Broken Gardenias is a good-natured comedy drama that doesn’t provide viewers with anything out of the ordinary, and which isn’t trying to be too profound either. It’s an indie movie with a surplus of charm that is in service to a script (by Grey) that sets out its stall very early on. It’s about acceptance, and on various levels. Jenni is afraid of taking chances, so travelling to L.A. is a big deal for her, especially as she has no idea if tracking down her father will be successful, or provide her with some, or all – or nothing – of the answers she’s looking for. Sam has a more positive outlook, but that’s because she’s compensating for Jenni’s lack of confidence, and her own nature allows her to accept Jenni’s uncertainty without necssarily supporting it. For once, the script isn’t concerned with whether or not both women learn from each other and grow as individuals accordingly, but with the singular journey that Jenni takes in gaining the confidence that has eluded her for so long. There’ll be tears, there’ll be laughs, and there’ll be unexpected sexual encounters, but above all, there’ll be emotional, cathartic outbursts.

Grey and Morocco play off and against each other with considerable skill, which is beneficial on those occasions when Grey’s script wanders off course (an encounter with a stoner lady who gives Jenni and Sam a lift), or scenes that drag on without adding anything to the narrative. There’s also a risible sub-plot involving Jenni’s housemate – and her boyfriend – who are visiting L.A. at the same time, a set up that has a less than satisfying, and very contrived resolution. With this in mind, though, Broken Gardenias has much more to offer, from the aforementioned performances, Alexander’s relaxed yet en point direction, some colourful L.A. locations, Meena Singh’s bright and airy cinematography, and a winsome, whimsical score by Tiffanie Lanmon. It’s very much a movie that wears its lesbian laurels on its sleeve, but it’s also a story that could be just as enjoyable and just as relevant if both Jenni and Sam were straight (though the romantic aspects might need adjusting). In the end, Grey has fashioned a knowing script that doesn’t take either Jenni or Sam for granted, and makes their growing relationship – with all its stumbles and strides – something to cherish, and relish, for its easy simplicity.

Rating: 7/10 – a small triumph of LGBTQ+ movie making, Broken Gardenias overcomes a handful of narrative hiccups to provide an engaging and entertaining look at one woman’s journey to gaining self-confidence and self-reliance; Grey and Morocco are an attractive pairing, there’s a good mix of drama and comedy, and it’s all set against a familiar indie backdrop that helps anchor some of the more wayward aspects of the script.

Monthly Roundup – April 2018

12 Saturday May 2018

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They Made Me a Killer (1946) / D: William C. Thomas / 64m

Cast: Robert Lowery, Barbara Britton, Lola Lane, Frank Albertson, Elisabeth Risdon, Byron Barr, Edmund MacDonald, Ralph Sanford, James Bush

Rating: 5/10 – a man (Lowery) drives across country after the death of his brother and gives a lift to a woman (Lane) who tricks him into being the getaway driver in a bank robbery, a situation that sees him on the run from the police but determined to prove his innocence; a gritty, hard-boiled film noir, They Made Me a Killer adds enough incident to its basic plot to keep viewers entertained from start to finish without really adding anything new or overly impressive to the mix, but it does have a brash performance from Lowery, and Thomas’s direction ensures it’s another solid effort from Paramount’s B-movie unit, Pine-Thomas.

Proud Mary (2018) / D: Babak Najafi / 89m

Cast: Taraji P. Henson, Billy Brown, Jahi Di’Allo Winston, Danny Glover, Neal McDonough, Margaret Avery, Xander Berkeley, Rade Serbedzija, Erik LaRay Harvey

Rating: 3/10 – a female assassin (Henson) finds herself protecting the teenage boy (Winston) whose father she killed years before, and at a time when her actions cause a murderous dispute between the gang she works for and their main rival; as the titular Proud Mary, Henson makes for a less than convincing assassin in this modern day blaxploitation thriller that lets itself down constantly thanks to a turgid script and lacklustre direction, and which has far too many moments where suspension of disbelief isn’t just required but an absolute necessity.

Children of the Corn: Runaway (2018) / D: John Gulager / 82m

Cast: Marci Miller, Jake Ryan Scott, Mary Kathryn Bryant, Lynn Andrews III, Sara Moore, Diane Ayala Goldner, Clu Gulager

Rating: 3/10 – arriving in a small Oklahoman town with her teenage son, Ruth (Miller) attempts to put down roots after over ten years of running from the child cult that nearly cost her her life, but she soon finds that safety still isn’t something she can count on; number ten in the overall series, Children of the Corn: Runaway is yet another entry that keeps well away from any attempts at providing anything new, and succeeds only in being as dull to watch as you’d expect, leaving unlucky viewers to ponder on why these movies still keep getting made when it’s clear the basic premise has been done to death – again and again and again…

Johnny on the Run (1953) / D: Lewis Gilbert / 68m

Cast: Eugeniusz Chylek, Sydney Tafler, Michael Balfour, Edna Wynn, David Coote, Cleo Sylvestre, Jean Anderson, Moultrie Kelsall, Mona Washbourne

Rating: 7/10 – after running away from his foster home in Edinburgh, a young Polish boy, Janek (Chylek), unwittingly falls in with two burglars (Tafler, Balfour), and then finds himself in a Highland village where the possibility of a new and better life is within his grasp; an enjoyable mix of drama and comedy from the UK’s Children’s Film Foundation, Johnny on the Run benefits from sterling performances, Gilbert’s astute direction, excellent location work, and a good understanding of what will interest both children and adults alike, making this one of the Foundation’s better entries, and still as entertaining now as when it was first released.

Ferdinand (2017) / D: Carlos Saldanha / 108m

Cast: John Cena, Kate McKinnon, Anthony Anderson, Bobby Cannavale, Peyton Manning, David Tennant, Jeremy Sisto, Lily Day, Gina Rodriguez, Daveed Diggs, Gabriel Iglesias

Rating: 8/10 – a young bull called Ferdinand (Cena) whose disposition includes a fondness for flowers and protecting other animals, finds himself temporarily living with a supportive family, until events bring him back to the world of bullfighting that he thought he’d left behind; the classic children’s tale gets the Blue Sky treatment, and in the process, retains much of the story’s whimsical yet pertinent takes on pacifism, anti-bullying, and gender diversity, while providing audiences with a rollicking and very humorous adventure that makes Ferdinand a very enjoyable experience indeed.

The Hurricane Heist (2018) / D: Rob Cohen / 98m

Cast: Toby Kebbell, Maggie Grace, Ryan Kwanten, Ralph Ineson, Melissa Bolona, Ben Cross, Jamie Andrew Cutler, Christian Contreras

Rating: 4/10 – thieves target a US Treasury facility during a Category 5 hurricane, but don’t reckon on their plans going awry thanks to a Treasury agent (Grace), a meteorologist (Kebbell), and his ex-Marine brother (Kwanten); as daft as you’d expect, The Hurricane Heist continues the downward career spiral of Cohen, and betrays its relatively small budget every time it sets up a major action sequence, leaving its talented cast to thrash against the wind machines in search of credibility and sincerity, a notion that the script abandons very early on as it maximises all its efforts to appear as ridiculous as possible (which is the only area in which it succeeds).

The Monster of Highgate Ponds (1961) / D: Alberto Cavalcanti / 59m

Cast: Sophie Clay, Michael Wade, Terry Raven, Ronald Howard, Frederick Piper, Michael Balfour, Roy Vincente, Beryl Cooke

Rating: 6/10 – when his uncle (Howard) returns home from a trip to Malaya, David (Wade) gets to keep a large egg that’s been brought back, but little does he realise that a creature will hatch from the egg – a creature David, his sister Sophie (Clay), and their friend, Chris (Raven) need to protect from the authorities until his uncle returns home from his latest trip; though the special effects that bring the “monster” to life are less than impressive, there’s a pleasing low budget, wish fulfillment vibe to The Monster of Highgate Ponds that allows for the absurdity of it all to be taken in stride, and thanks to Cavalcanti’s relaxed direction, that absurdity makes the movie all the more enjoyable.

Rampage (2018) / D: Brad Peyton / 107m

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Naomie Harris, Malin Akerman, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Jake Lacy

Rating: 5/10 – a gorilla, a wolf, and an alligator are all exposed to an illegal genetic engineering experiment and become massively bigger and more aggressive thanks to the corporation behind the experiment, leaving the gorilla’s handler (Johnson) to try and help put things right; based on a video game, and as brightly ridiculous as any movie version of a video game could be, Rampage uses its (very) simple plotting to bludgeon the audience into submission with a variety of exemplary digital effects, while also trying to dredge up a suitable amount of emotion along the way, but in the end – and surprisingly – it’s Johnson’s knowing performance and Morgan’s affected government spook that trade this up from simple disaster to almost disaster.

Unhappy Birthday (2011) / D: Mark Harriott, Mike Matthews / 91m

aka Amen Island

Cast: David Paisley, Christina De Vallee, Jill Riddiford, Jonathan Deane

Rating: 4/10 – Rick (Paisley) and his girlfriend, Sadie (De Vallee), along with their friend Jonny (Keane), travel to the tidal island of Amen to reunite Sadie with her long lost sister, only to find that the islanders have a secret that threatens the lives of all three of them; a low budget British thriller with distinct echoes of The Wicker Man (1973) – though it’s not nearly as effective – Unhappy Birthday highlights the isolated nature of the island and the strangeness of its inhabitants, but reduces its characters to squabbling malcontents pretty much from the word go, which makes spending time with them far from appealing, and stops the viewer from having any sympathy for them once things start to go wrong.

Avengers: Infinity War (2018) / D: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo / 149m

Cast: Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Pratt, Josh Brolin, Scarlett Johansson, Don Cheadle, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Holland, Chadwick Boseman, Zoe Saldana, Karen Gillan, Tom Hiddleston, Paul Bettany, Elizabeth Olsen, Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan, Idris Elba, Danai Gurira, Peter Dinklage, Benedict Wong, Pom Klementieff, Dave Bautista, Vin Diesel, Bradley Cooper, Gwyneth Paltrow, Benicio Del Toro, William Hurt, Letitia Wright

Rating: 8/10 – Thanos (Brolin) finally gets around to collecting the Infinity stones and only the Avengers (and almost every other Marvel superhero) can stop him – or can they?; there’s much that could be said about Avengers: Infinity War, but suffice it to say, after eighteen previous movies, Marvel have finally made the MCU’s version of The Empire Strikes Back (1980).

The King of Escape (2009) / D: Alain Guiraudie / 90m

Original title: Le roi de l’évasion

Cast: Ludovic Berthillot, Hafsia Herzi, Pierre Laur, Luc Palun, Pascal Aubert, François Clavier, Bruno Valayer, Jean Toscan

Rating: 6/10 – when a middle-aged homosexual tractor salesman (Berthillot) falls in love with the daughter (Herzi) of a rival salesman, this unexpected turn of events has further unexpected repercussions, all of which lead the pair to go on the run from her father and the police; as much a comedy of manners as an unlikely romance, The King of Escape is humorous (though far from profound), and features too many scenes of its central couple running across fields and through woods, something that becomes as tiring for the viewer as it must have been for the actors, though the performances are finely judged, and Guiraudie’s direction displays the increasing confidence that would allow him to make a bigger step with Stranger by the Lake (2013).

Every Reason to Forget (2018)

19 Thursday Apr 2018

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Original title: Todas As Razões Para Esquecer

aka All the Reasons to Forget

D: Pedro Coutinho / 90m

Cast: Johnny Massaro, Bianca Comparato, Regina Braga, Maria Laura Nogueiro, Victor Mendes, Thiago Amaral, Rafael Primot

Antonio (Massaro) is an ad designer whose relationship with Sofia (Comparato) comes to an abrupt end after two years. Convincing himself that she made him end it, Antonio stays temporarily with his cousin, Carla (Nogueira), and her husband, Felipe (Primot). Carla and Felipe are having marriage problems and are seeing a couples therapist, Dr Elisa (Braga). When it’s suggested that Antonio should see her so he can make sense of his break-up from Sofia, he goes along with the idea without considering if therapy will really help him. While Dr Elisa challenges Antonio to open up and express his feelings, he takes advice from Carla and his friends, neighbour Deco (Amaral), and would-be writer Gabriel (Mendes), and tries to win Sofia back. His efforts don’t work as planned, and it’s not until Dr Elisa prescribes a certain mix of medication that Antonio finds his life improving, and things getting arguably better. But will Antonio’s newly found peace of mind help in winning back Sofia…?

A romantic comedy about one man’s tragic inability to understand the nuances and particularities of romantic relationships, Every Reason to Forget is an amiable, pleasant enough movie that somehow makes a virtue of its main character’s vapid intelligence and startling short-sightedness. Antonio isn’t just clueless, he’s actively clueless. He’s like a child who keeps burning his fingers on the stove but can’t work out why it keeps happening. He knows there’s a reason why he and Sofia are no longer together but he can’t work out what it is. This makes it nigh impossible for him to move on with his life, and why he makes so many mistakes in trying to do so. Faced with such an uphill struggle, Antonio resorts to measures such as finding a match on Tinder, and using relationship questions from a teen magazine to highlight how much more in tune he is. Amusing as much of this is though, writer-director Coutinho – making his feature debut – never really clarifies if Antonio is doing all this to win Sofia back (initially most likely), or for himself (increasingly most likely). And why he’s the way he is isn’t explored at all, leaving the viewer to wonder just how his relationship with Sofia lasted for two whole years in the first place.

As the emotionally switched off Antonio, Massaro has a certain vulnerable charm that works well for the character, and when the movie gets a little darker – which isn’t too often – he’s not afraid to make Antonio appear selfish and inconsiderate. Massaro also has a knack for keeping Antonio sympathetic in these moments, and though he’s someone for whom the art of poorly focused navel-gazing seems to be a built-in personality trait, Massaro’s portrayal of Antonio is effective without feeling contrived. There’s good support too from Braga as Antonio’s sex obsessed therapist, and Nogueira as the cousin who, in a US remake, would likely be the character he ends up with. Coutinho keeps things moving at an even pace, but in doing so, makes this occasionally feel like it’s dragging, and it’s not as willingly dramatic as it could have been. Despite this, and despite Antonio’s perpetual misunderstanding of his own imperfections, Coutinho does his best to make this an amusing and somewhat pleasant diversion, even though you might be wondering if there’s ever going to be any depth to the proceedings. The answer is yes, but with reservations as to when they do.

Rating: 5/10 – too monotone in its dramatic and visual approach – Joao Padua’s cinematography sometimes feels as if there wasn’t enough time for a proper set up – Every Reason to Forget is genial enough but lets its main character off the hook for his behaviour once too often; still, Coutinho shows promise, and with a tighter script in the future, should do much better, but until then this outing will have to serve as a fair attempt at putting a Brazilian twist on a well established genre.

NOTE: Currently there isn’t a trailer with English subtitles available.

I Can’t Think Straight (2008)

18 Wednesday Apr 2018

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D: Shamim Sarif / 79m

Cast: Lisa Ray, Sheetal Sheth, Antonia Frering, Dalip Tahil, Nina Wadia, Ernest Ignatius, Siddiqua Akhtar, Amber Rose Revah, Anya Lahiri, Kimberly Jaraj, Sam Vicenti, Rez Kempton, Darwin Shaw

The daughter of wealthy Christian Palestinians (Frering, Tahil), Tala (Ray) is preparing to get married. Hani (Shaw) is a handsome young businessman, and her fourth fiancé. The wedding is due to take place in Jordan, but Tala lives and works in London. There she meets Leyla (Sheth), the girlfriend of Ali (Kempton), one of Tala’s old college friends. There’s an instant attraction between the two, and soon they are finding excuses to spend time together. A trip to Oxford with one of Tala’s sisters, Lamia (Lahiri), leads to Leyla and Tala sleeping together. But where this emboldens Leyla to acknowledge and embrace her sexuality, Tala cites her family and cultural traditions as reasons why she can’t commit to a relationship with Leyla, and this causes a wedge between them. They go their separate ways, with Tala preparing to enter into a marriage that isn’t what she wants, and Leyla choosing to make a life-changing decision. Time passes, but though both women retain their feelings for each other, it takes one more life-changing decision to allow them the chance of being happy together…

A lighter, less dramatic (and contemporary) version of Sarif’s previous movie, The World Unseen, I Can’t Think Straight is also another adaptation by Sarif of one of her novels. It’s a semi-autobiographical tale where Leyla represents Sarif, and reunites Ray and Sheth in similar roles from The World Unseen. It’s a breezy effort, more concerned with applying humour to events than focusing on the drama, and making the romance between Tala and Leyla more predictable. It’s a movie where the outcome can be guessed within the first ten minutes, and where each character fits neatly into a prescribed stereotype, particularly both sets of parents, with the mothers portrayed as controlling, and resistant to truly supporting their daughters’ happiness, while the fathers are entirely accepting and sympathetic. With the majority of the characters being so agreeable, Sarif has to work hard to make Tala and Leyla’s burgeoning relationship the source of any conflict. And when she does, the same issue that hampers the script elsewhere also comes to the fore: it’s all too inevitable to be completely convincing.

Along the way we’re treated to picture postcard shots of London and Oxford, a battery of supporting characters who are all painted in broad brush strokes, and a polo match where Tala’s hair and make up are immaculate – after she’s taken part (the script does acknowledge this, but even so…). But what really doesn’t help is the dialogue. Clunky and awkward, and often proving the better of the cast – including Ray and Sheth – Sarif and co-screenwriter Kelly Moss have concocted some truly cringeworthy lines that  call attention to themselves when they’re uttered. It’s not helpful either that the script is peppered with lumbering references to the Israeli-Palestinian divide, and Tala’s mother voices as many anti-Semitic remarks as she can manage in any given scene. Thankfully, Ray and Sheth manage to make more of Tala and Leyla than is on the page, though the rest of the performances remain perfunctory throughout. As that commonplace conundrum, the difficult second movie, I Can’t Think Straight lacks the persuasiveness and focus of Sarif’s first movie, and suffers accordingly. It’s lightweight and somewhat superficial, and unsure if it’s a rom-com or a rom-dram. In the end it’s an ungainly combination of the two, and though there are occasional moments where the script does work, there aren’t enough of them to make this anything more than disappointing.

Rating: 4/10 – a movie that betrays its low budget production values, and gives the impression its script needed more of a polish, I Can’t Think Straight tells its lesbian love story like it was a meringue, i.e. light and insubstantial; Sarif does her own novel a minimum of justice, and there’s a complacency to the material that hampers it further, making this something of a curio and nothing more.

The World Unseen (2007)

12 Thursday Apr 2018

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D: Shamim Sarif / 90m

Cast: Lisa Ray, Sheetal Sheth, Parvin Dabas, Nandana Sen, David Dennis, Grethe Fox, Colin Moss, Natalie Becker, Rajesh Gopie, Bernard White, Avantika Akerkar

Cape Town, 1952. Amina (Sheth) is a young Indian woman who owns and runs the Location Cafe, a haven for both the local Indian community and the blacks. Miriam (Ray) is an Indian housewife and mother of three who visits the cafe and finds herself fascinated by Amina’s seemingly carefree, yet proud attitude. Her husband, Omar (Dabas), opens a general store on the outskirts of the city, and for a while, things progress as expected. Omar’s sister, though, puts them in danger when she comes to visit from Paris with her white husband. The police discover their presence, and Omar’s sister, Rehmat (Sen), is only saved from arrest by Amina’s hiding her. This helps to build Amina and Miriam’s friendship, something that is aided by Omar’s decision to hire Amina to create a vegetable garden behind the store. The two women spend more and more time together, and their friendship deepens until each begins to acknowledge the attraction they have for each other. But how can their love flourish when they have to contend with the social, sexual, cultural and political milieu they’re a part of?

A romantic drama set in a time and place that would have heavily condemned the sexual love of two women for each other, The World Unseen is a carefully paced, judiciously mounted movie that isn’t too interested in putting its central characters in too much jeopardy, while it explores themes related to the racism and homophobia of the period. Adapted from writer-director Sarif’s own novel, her tale of fledgling love amidst the trials and tribulations of apartheid South Africa is a low-key affair, telling its story simply and with due care and attention to the characters of Amina and Miriam. Thanks to Sarif’s script and the performances of Ray and Sheth, both women are sharply drawn, and their thoughts and feelings expertly expressed through covert looks, cautious body language, and coded language. The slow reveal of their feelings for each other is hidden behind a veil of subterfuge, and Sarif shows the mounting tension between Amina’s longing for Miriam and Miriam’s hesitancy over what it will mean to her marriage and her children, in such a way that the sincerity of their emotions is never in doubt.

With the movie’s central relationship locked in, Sarif is free to build around it, adding sub-plots and minor incidents to help flesh out the running time. Sadly, not all of these sub-plots are as successful as they could have been, and though they don’t do anything to hurt the pace of the movie – Sarif’s measured direction ensures everything proceeds at an even pace – there are too many that feel as if they’ve been lifted from a soap opera. Amina’s silent partner in the cafe, Jacob (Dennis), has a predictably short relationship with a white postmistress (Fox), Omar has a secret that Miriam has no choice but to tolerate (at first), and Amina’s grandmother tries to push her into an arranged marriage. Most of these elements end as quietly as they began, and lack any appreciable impact, but thanks to the engaging quality of the material as a whole, the movie doesn’t suffer as dramatically as it might have done. The rest of the performances are adequate (though Moss’s permanently aggressive policeman is particularly one-note), and the visual style is consistently muted in terms of colour and light, something that robs it of any further appeal, but overall this is a quietly persuasive movie that does very well by its central characters.

Rating: 7/10 – with its well conceived romance, and passive recreation of the time period it’s set in, The World Unseen is exemplary when focusing on its central characters’ hopes and dreams, but less so when the focus switches elsewhere; Sarif’s first outing as a writer and a director shows promise, and there’s a clear message about female empowerment, but in the end, there’s too much that feels perfunctory instead of important.

Barakah Meets Barakah (2016)

06 Tuesday Mar 2018

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Original title: Barakah yoqabil Barakah

D: Mahmoud Sabbagh / 88m

Cast: Hisham Fageeh, Fatima AlBanawi, Sami Hifny, Khairia Nazmi, reem Habib, Abdulmajeed Al-Ruhaidi

Barakah (Fageeh) works for Riyadh’s Municipal Police, issuing fines for minor offences such as selling goods outside a store’s permitted area. He’s single, amiable, and despite the overbearing intentions of the local midwife (and his surrogate mother) Daya Sa’adiya (Nazmi), not in any hurry to find a wife. A report of a civil disturbance brings him into contact with Bibi (AlBanawi), a fashion model who uses carefully cropped images of herself on Instagram as a way of promoting her own political and social agendas (while staying within the law). Barakah is instantly smitten, and thanks to some unwitting help from his friend Maqbool (Al-Ruhaidi), he’s able to meet Bibi at an art exhibition. As their relationship develops, obstacles arise such as the controlling nature of Bibi’s mother – and head of the fashion chain Bibi is the face of – Madame Mayyada (Habib), Barakah’s own naïve approach to romance, and Saudi Arabia’s strict laws regarding public interaction. But it’s a misunderstanding over a push-up bra that may just prove to be the biggest obstacle of all…

When you think about the rom-coms churned out by Hollywood, there’s always something that keeps true love from conquering all (until the last five minutes, that is), but one of the most refreshing things about Barakah Meets Barakah is that the “something” in question is Saudi Arabian law. The very real threat of imprisonment that hangs over the heads of Barakah and Bibi gives the movie a depth and a resonance that you rarely see in an average rom-com. First-time writer-director Sabbagh rarely alludes to it head on, happy to let it hover in the background while his script concentrates on providing viewers with one of the sweetest, and most endearing romantic comedies of recent years. Barakah is simply one of the nicest protagonists you’re ever likely to encounter: good-natured, a pleasure to spend time with, and like a puppy that’s eager to please in his pursuit of Bibi. She’s more fiery, able and willing to challenge the accepted order of things, but in such a way that she builds support for her efforts through her careful manipulation of social media. As a way of expressing female empowerment, it’s a clever conceit, and Sabbagh is equally clever enough not to wield the idea like a big stick.

In many areas of the movie the key word is restraint, as Sabbagh tells his story with admirable economy of style, and a minimum of fuss. His talented cast ensure that each character appears fully formed from the moment we meet them, with Fageeh proving that gauche and awkward can be charming as well, and AlBanawi investing Bibi with a seductive vulnerability (like Barakah, you can’t help but be captivated by her). Sabbagh peppers his script with wry observations on contemporary Saudi culture, has Barakah co-opted into a local amateur production of Hamlet to play Ophelia, provides unnecessarily pixellated images as a barb to state censors, and gets overtly political by contrasting the more liberal Saudi Arabia of the 60’s and 70’s with the restrictions that have been in place since 1979. But none of this is to distract from the central romance that anchors the movie and makes it so appealing. The movie brings its chaste lovebirds together at the end, but not in the traditional “love has conquered all” way that Hollywood approves of. Instead, Sabbagh offers us a reunion that speaks of hope for the future, a message that is both simple and powerful, and as much about Barakah and Bibi, as it is about Saudi Arabia itself.

Rating: 8/10 – an example of what can be achieved when you don’t have to follow a clichéd narrative pattern or formula, Barakah Meets Barakah is beautifully shot by Victor Credi, and hugely entertaining; by keeping things natural and straightforward, Sabbagh has created a movie where you never feel like you’re being led by the hand, and where you’re more than happy to share in the journeys undertaken by the characters.

Monthly Roundup – February 2018

28 Wednesday Feb 2018

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‘C’-Man (1949) / D: Joseph Lerner / 77m

Cast: Dean Jagger, John Carradine, Lottie Elwen, Rene Paul, Harry Landers, Walter Vaughn, Adelaide Klein, Edith Atwater

Rating: 5/10 – a US Customs agent (Jagger) finds himself looking for the killer of his best friend (and fellow Customs agent), and the person responsible for the theft of a rare jewel – could they be the same man?; an odd noir crime thriller that betrays its low budget production values, ‘C’-Man is short on character but long on action, and is fitfully entertaining, though the performances vary wildly and the script contains some very po-faced dialogue, making it a movie you can’t really take your eyes from – and not in a good way.

When We First Met (2018) / D: Ari Sandel / 97m

Cast: Adam Devine, Alexandra Daddario, Shelley Hennig, Andrew Bachelor, Robbie Amell

Rating: 3/10 – Noah (Devine) falls for Avery (Daddario) and winds up in the friend zone, but thanks to a magic photo booth, he gets the chance to go back and change their relationship into a romantic one; a dire romantic comedy that struggles to be both romantic and funny, When We First Met can’t even make anything meaningful out of its time travel scenario, and is let down by a banal script and below-par performances.

The Phantom (1931) / D: Alan James / 62m

Cast: Guinn Williams. Allene Ray, Niles Welch, Tom O’Brien, Sheldon Lewis, Wilfred Lucas, Violet Knights, William Gould, Bobby Dunn, William Jackie

Rating: 3/10 – a reporter (Williams) tries to track down the titular criminal mastermind when he targets the father of his girlfriend (Ray), but finds it’s not as simple a prospect as he’d thought; an early talkie that shows a lack of imagination and purpose, The Phantom struggles from the outset to be anything but a disappointment, what with its unconvincing mix of comedy and drama, its old dark house scenario, and a clutch of amateur performances that drain the very life out of it at every turn.

Black Panther (2018) / D: Ryan Coogler / 134m

Cast: Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Martin Freeman, Daniel Kaluuya, Letitia Wright, Winston Duke, Sterling K. Brown, Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker, Andy Serkis, Florence Kasumba, John Kani

Rating: 7/10 – the king of outwardly poor but inwardly technologically advanced Wakanda, T’Challa (Boseman), faces a coup from an unexpected source (Jordan), while trying to work out whether or not his country’s scientific advances should be shared with the wider world; though Black Panther does feature a predominantly black cast, and speaks to black issues, this is still a Marvel movie at the end of the day and one that adheres to the template Marvel have created for their releases, making this an admittedly funny and exciting thrill ride, but one that’s also another formulaic entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Atomic Blonde (2017) / D: David Leitch / 115m

Cast: Charlize Theron, James McAvoy, John Goodman, Toby Jones, Eddie Marsan, James Faulkner, Roland Møller, Sofia Boutella, Bill Skarsgård, Sam Hargrave, Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson, Til Schweiger

Rating: 6/10 – in the days before the fall of the Berlin Wall, a spy (Theron) must find a list of double agents that are being smuggled into the West, a task complicated by the involvement of the Americans, the Russians and a number of other interested parties; an attempt to provide audiences with a female John Wick, Atomic Blonde does have tremendous fight scenes, and a great central performance by Theron, but it’s let down by a muddled script, an even more muddled sense of the period it’s set in, and by trying to be fun when a straighter approach would have worked better.

Beauty and the Beast (2017) / D: Bill Condon / 129m

Cast: Emma Watson, Dan Stevens, Luke Evans, Josh Gad, Kevin Kline, Ewan McGregor, Ian McKellen, Emma Thompson, Nathan Mack, Audra McDonald, Stanley Tucci, Gugu Mbatha-Raw

Rating: 5/10 – the classic fairy tale, and previously a classic animated movie, is given the live action treatment by Disney; if the latest installment of a certain space opera hadn’t been released in 2017, Beauty and the Beast would have been the number one movie at the international box office, but though the House of Mouse might point to this as a measure of quality, the reality is that Watson was miscast, the songs lack the emotional heft they had in the animated version, and the whole thing has a perfunctory air that no amount of superficial gloss and shine can overcome.

The Case of the Black Parrot (1941) / D: Noel M. Smith / 61m

Cast: William Lundigan, Maris Wrixon, Eddie Foy Jr, Paul Cavanagh, Luli Deste, Charles Waldron, Joseph Crehan, Emory Parnell, Phyllis Barry, Cyril Thornton

Rating: 6/10 – a newspaper reporter (Lundigan) gets involved in a case involving a master forger (the Black Parrot), an antique cabinet, and a couple of mysterious deaths; an enjoyable piece of hokum, The Case of the Black Parrot gets by on a great deal of understated charm, a whodunnit plot that doesn’t overplay its hand, and by having its cast treat the whole absurd undertaking with a sincerity that is an achievement all by itself.

Murder on the Orient Express (2017) / D: Kenneth Branagh / 114m

Cast: Kenneth Branagh, Tom Bateman, Lucy Boynton, Olivia Colman, Penélope Cruz, Willem Dafoe, Judi Dench, Johnny Depp, Josh Gad, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Derek Jacobi, Marwan Kenzari, Leslie Odom Jr, Michelle Pfeiffer, Sergei Polunin, Daisy Ridley

Rating: 5/10 – the famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot (Branagh) is faced with a complex mystery: which one of a dozen passengers killed an infamous kidnapper, and more importantly, why?; yet another version of the Agatha Christie novel, Murder on the Orient Express strands its capable cast thanks to both an avalanche and a tepid script, leaving its director/star to orchestrate matters less effectively than expected, particularly when unravelling the mystery means having the suspects seated together in a way that clumsily replicates the Last Supper.

The Boss Baby (2017) / D: Tom McGrath / 97m

Cast: Alec Baldwin, Steve Buscemi, Jimmy Kimmel, Lisa Kudrow, Tobey Maguire, Miles Bakshi, James McGrath, Conrad Vernon, ViviAnn Yee, Eric Bell Jr, David Soren

Rating: 6/10 – when seven year old Tim (Bakshi) finds he has a new baby brother, Theodore (Baldwin) – and one dressed in a business suit at that – he also finds that Theodore is there to stop babies from being usurped in people’s affections by puppies; a brightly animated kids’ movie that takes several predictable swipes at corporate America, The Boss Baby wants to be heartwarming and caustic at the same time, but can’t quite manage both (it settles for heartwarming), and though Baldwin may seem like the perfect choice for the title character, he’s the weakest link in a voice cast that otherwise sells the performances with a great deal of enthusiasm.

Game Night (2018) / D: John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein / 100m

Cast: Jason Bateman, Rachel McAdams, Kyle Chandler, Billy Magnussen, Sharon Horgan, Lamorne Morris, Kylie Bunbury, Jesse Plemons, Danny Huston, Michael C. Hall

Rating: 5/10 – when a group of friends led by Max (Bateman) and Annie (McAdams) are invited to a game night at the home of Max’s brother, Brooks (Chandler), the evening descends into murder and mayhem, and sees the group trying to get to the bottom of a real-life mystery; like an Eighties high concept comedy released thirty years too late, Game Night has a great cast but little direction and waaaay too much exposition clogging up its run time, all of which makes a couple of very funny, very inspired visual gags the only reward for the viewer who sticks with this to the end.

Brakes (2016)

26 Monday Feb 2018

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D: Mercedes Grower / 85m

Cast: Julian Barratt, Kelly Campbell, Seb Cardinal, Juliet Cowan, Julia Davis, Noel Fielding, Jess-Luisa Flynn, Kerry Fox, Roland Gift, Salena Godden, Mercedes Grower, Martin Hancock, Kate Hardie, Siobhan Hewlett, Oliver Maltman, Paul McGann, John Milroy, Steve Oram, Daniel Roch, Morgan Thomas, Peter Wight

In Mercedes Grower’s debut feature, we’re introduced to a number of couples whose relationships are on the verge of breaking up, or which have actually reached the point of no return (or further investment by one or both parties). There’s Elliot (Barratt) and Raymond (Maltman), whose unexpected fling in Spain has been misinterpreted as something more permanent by Elliot. There’s Rhys (Gift) and Brinie (Fox), a couple who can’t spend time together without trading veiled insults or outright criticism, and there’s Livy (Davis) and Alan (Wight), a would-be actress and her theatrical producer partner who are finding themselves at odds over the types of roles that Livy can play. And then there’s Daniel (Fielding) and Layla (Grower), a couple expecting a child but being forced apart by his apathy and intransigence. These and several other stories show the various ways in which relationships can come to an end, and how differently people allow themselves to be affected.

All of this makes up Part II of Brakes, and is shown first. We see the characters often at their worst, and Grower shows just how selfish and uncaring we can be when we want to extricate ourselves from a relationship we no longer want to be a part of. On the flip side, we see the pain and the hurt that this approach can cause, and Grower wades through a variety of emotions and responses, from anger to disbelief, to sadness and resignation, and denial and regret. Inevitably, some stories fare better than others, with Daniel and Layla’s break up in a public toilet coming across as too absurd to be credible, and hampered by the decision to have Daniel behave like a six year old. Conversely, the austere yet stinging conversation between Rhys and Brinie is so tense and uncomfortable that it’s a relief when he goes out for beers (it also helps that Fox’s performance is particularly impressive). Most of the other scenarios fall somewhere in between, but the necessity of keeping things short (for the most part), means that if one story disappoints there’ll be another one along quite soon.

Once Part II is out of the way, then Grower presents us with Part I, in which we see how these relationships began originally. It’s a neat idea, and having seen the outcomes of each one already, the viewer can judge for themselves if any might or should have turned out differently, and it does allow the movie to end on a positive note, but the knowledge that none of these promising, hopeful unions is going to end well also leaves a bitter after-taste. With the script proving to be a hit or miss affair in terms of the stories, the performances fall into the same category. Alongside Fox, there are fine portrayals from Davis, Wight, and Barratt, while some of the cast – e.g. McGann, Milroy, Hewlett, and Oram – are hamstrung by clichéd dialogue and unconvincing set ups. Grower does show promise, and she’s able to inject some much needed humour when it’s required, but she needs an idea that she can focus on exclusively instead of a number of different ones all at the same time. That said, the movie does feature some appropriately gloomy cinematography by Denzil Armour-Brown and Gabi Norland in Part II, and a brighter, more upbeat tone in Part I, something that gives rise to the notion that if more time had been available, then this could have been so much better.

Rating: 6/10 – with a sixty per cent success rate in regard to the stories themselves, Brakes is often a frustrating movie to watch, but it does have singular moments where the breadth of Grower’s ambition is met and exceeded upon; in the end, though, it’s a movie that makes a number of telling points about our inability to communicate with each other when it matters, but which doesn’t always find the right context to express itself fully.

Wonder Wheel (2017)

23 Friday Feb 2018

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D: Woody Allen / 101m

Cast: James Belushi, Juno Temple, Justin Timberlake, Kate Winslet, Max Casella, Jack Gore, David Krumholtz

At one point in Wonder Wheel, Mickey (Timberlake), a lifeguard at Coney Island (and the movie’s narrator), gives Ginny (Winslet), the married woman he’s having an affair with, a book of plays by Eugene O’Neill for her birthday. Once upon a time, Ginny was an aspiring actress, until she met and married a drummer. That relationship ended when she had an affair, and now she’s in the process of cheating on her second husband, ‘Humpty’ (Belushi), a carousel operator. Ginny works as a waitress in a restaurant on the boardwalk; she’s already unhappy in her marriage, and has a young son from her first marriage, Richie (Gore), who likes to set fires. She’s struggling to hold onto her hopes and dreams, and Mickey’s attentions are a way for her to do that. Fast approaching forty, and trapped in a marriage of convenience, Ginny is desperately looking for happiness. But a book of O’Neill’s plays? How much more of a clue as to whether or not Ginny will find the happiness she seeks does an audience need?

Woody Allen’s latest is one of his serious movies, a drama that starts off by showing the surface glamour of Coney Island in the 1950’s, before quickly going behind the scenes and revealing the hardships and the despair that exist just a short distance from the lights and the attractions. ‘Humpty’ has a daughter, Carolina (Temple), who left home five years before to marry a gangster. Now she’s back, having left him but also having been “marked”; she’s hoping her established estrangement from her father will mean no one will look for her there. But when Carolina meets Mickey, Ginny sees her chance for happiness coming under threat. Ginny’s desperation increases, and her behaviour becomes more erratic than usual. Unable to help herself, Ginny begins to alienate everyone around her, and when the opportunity arises to do the right thing, the decision she makes has profound, and irreversible, consequences. It’s a simple premise, confidently set up and handled by Allen, but also one that feels more like an abandoned stage play than an original screenplay. This also means the movie has the look of a theatrical production at times, and Vittorio Storaro’s cinematography stutters back and forth between interior and exterior scenes with all the dexterity of an artist who can’t decide on natural or artificial light.

But production issues aside, this is Winslet’s movie through and through. Ginny is an emotional trainwreck, only taking responsibility for her actions when it will bring her sympathy, and defending herself by attacking others. She’s an ersatz Blanche DuBois, hurting instead of loving, and Winslet gives a driving, intense performance that is in many ways out of place within the movie because it overhadows everything else that Allen comes up with. And Winslet is on such tremendous form that her co-stars have no choice but to run to keep up. Belushi and Temple are good in roles that aren’t quite as well developed as Winslet’s, but Timberlake is the odd man out as Mickey. He never looks comfortable in the role, and in his scenes with Winslet, the gulf between them is highlighted every time. In the end, Allen elects to leave many of the sub-plots and storylines unresolved, especially the one involving Richie, which goes nowhere and seems included just to pad out the running time. Otherwise, the movie’s open-endedness proves unexpectedly satisfying, and though this may not be a prime example of Allen’s more recent output, thanks to Winslet’s superb performance, it’s a movie that deserves a look, if for no other reason than that.

Rating: 7/10 – featuring Winslet on incredible form, Wonder Wheel tells its story as if it had been written in the 1950’s but has been given a modern day makeover; the milieu has been lovingly recreated by production designer Santo Loquasto, Allen remains a dependable if unexciting visual artist, and for once the romance doesn’t have such a pronounced age gap.