A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE*****

Director Kathryn Bigelow (THE HURT LOCKER) and writer Noah Oppenheim (JACKIE) have created a stunningly good film that keeps your pulse racing and your mind spinning in the most disturbingly brilliant film of 2025. It will be on Netflix on October 24th but I urge you to watch it in a cinema if you can, to take advantage of the stunning score and sound design, and brilliant lensing.

The film is Apocalypse Rashomon. Someone has fired a nuclear weapon at the USA. The military and political command scramble to figure out who did it, but it's unclear whether it's Russia, North Korea, China, a cyberattack or an IT malfunction. Even switching from Defcon 4 to 2 alerts the USA's enemies to the fact that they are on a war footing. The single point of decision making is the President. Within 18 minutes of the missile being fired - not even hitting its target - just fired - he has to decide whether to retaliate or wait. Should he knock out the command and control centres of the USA's enemies, with mass casualties, to prevent yet more US cities being lost? Or should he trust Russia when they say it's not them? Take a chance that it was just a rogue actor or an IT failure? And risk losing an all-out nuclear war in minutes? What would you decide?

We see this decision tree played out over three acts and from three perspectives. The first segment is in the White House situation room, helmed by Rebecca Ferguson's highly trained naval officer. The reactions are varied. Some flee, panicked. Others buckle down and do their jobs, knowing their families are at risk and that they cannot warn them. We see the news trickle out into the White House and panic spread. There's a moment when Ferguson's character thinks her colleague and friend has left her. We think he might have too. He was planning to propose to his girlfriend that evening. When he returns we feel her relief: if this is the end of the world she won't be alone. There's another scene where she turns her face from that colleague to momentarily experience, and then have to peg back, her grief. This is beautifully acted by Ferguson and captured by DP Barry Ackroyd. Kathryn Bigelow's admiration for the professionalism and duty that these men and women exude is palpable and affecting.

In the second segment we run the 18 minutes from the perspective of those in Stratcom - a US military compound in the middle of nowhere, deep underground. These generals have rehearsed this situation hundreds of times and are prepared to take tough decisions. Except the decision is not theirs to take. They are merely in an advisory role. The always superb Tracy Letts anchors this segment as a four star general advising the president to go for an all out retaliation. On the other side of the argument, and the conference call, is a ludicrously young national security advisor played by Gabriel Basso (HILLBILLY ELEGY). He believes that POTUS should hold back and try and calm the other nuclear nations. 

The final segment is when we actually meet the President, as played by Idris Elba, who has so far just been a black tile and a panicking voice in a conference call. He is the one who has to take in all the information, and in the final scene, make his decision accompanied only by a mid-ranking Naval officer who shadows him at all times, carrying the nuclear football. He presents the President with a book of laminated options and explains the severity of the outcomes. What an impossible decision! Meanwhile, the heart of the film is arguably the Secretary of Defense, as played by Jared Harris (Chernobyl), who learns that his estranged daughter (Kaitlyn Dever) is in the city under attack, and has to somehow be of service to his President when his world is falling apart. 

I cannot speak highly enough of the actors in this film who have to essay their characters and moral dilemmas in very limited screen time. The characters are all good people trying to do their best. Even the most hawkish of them - Tracy Letts' general - has a reasonable and rational response. But the situation is impossible. I spent much of the film petrified at what would happen with the current incumbents in the roles of SecDefense and Potus, but also reassured at the competence of those in positions around them. I think this is partly Bigelow's point. Admire the professionals. Vote knowing that in extremis these are the decision makers you are empowering. 

I feel strongly that she deserves to be Oscar-nominated for this film, as does her screenwriter. There is real skill in creating a film of such verisimilitude and unrelenting tension, as well as one that provokes so many vital and urgent questions. The way that Oppenheim doubles back on the same scene from different angles, and deepens our understanding over the three segments, is masterful. Gabriel Basso's character is a case in point. He starts off as a bit of a joke. A tile on a zoom call jogging to work and losing signal. By the end he has gravitas and our empathy.

I would also nominate Rebecca Ferguson and Jared Harris in the Supporting Actor categories for performances of deep emotional power created in a handful of minutes of screen time. This is Harris' film more than anyone else's. Kudos also to Greta Lee and Tracy Letts.

A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE has a running time of 112 minutes and is rated R. It played Venice and will be released on Netflix on October 24th.

A STAR IS BORN (2018)

What an absolute surprise to find that Bradley Cooper's remake of A STAR IS BORN is so well-made, so well-acted, so desperately moving and watchable! I approached it with caution, a sense of wonder that it was necessary at all, but all my fears were over-turned by this beautifully naturalistic, painfully raw depiction of an ingenue tragically in love with a traumatised, alcoholic old showman. 

As in the other versions of the film (see below) the film begins with a meet-cute between the two artists. The first is the alcoholic country rock star Mason Craine, played by a grizzled Cooper, and fairly close in tone to Kris Kristofferson's interpretation of the role.  Cooper adopts an accent that's so deep and southern I sometimes struggled to hear him through his mumbling, but later realised this was to make his being Sam Elliott's younger brother credible.  It's a superb impersonation.  Cooper doesn't hold back at all from showing the true depths of drug abuse and depression, and the rare moments when his eyes light up seeing Ally (Lady Gaga) sing are genuinely delightful.  We know that, as in other versions of the tale, he isn't jealous of her at all. Rather it's a relationship founded on the idea of a jaded, cynical, weary man, falling in love with is art again through the genuine joy of his protégée making the same journey he once did. I utterly believed in his character, and despite knowing how every beat would play out in this version of the film so faithful to the 1976 predecessor, I was genuinely tense at the set pieces.  And I really loved the fact that movie shifted its centre of attention a little from the leading lady to the man's story.  Kudos to Cooper as screenwriter for giving us this backstory. 

Lady Gaga is truly a revelation as Ally (the screenwriters have finally ditched the name Esther - a shame!) Stripped of the make-up and bleach blonde hair of her stage persona, Lady Gaga is truly beautiful, and delivers a performance of real nuance, strength and charisma.  But there's an added bizarre-o aspect as we see Gaga essentially act out the beats of her own career - the first experience on a big stage, the first Grammy nominations. There's also a meta discussion about Ally refusing to "pretty up" and then acquiescing to further her career. In all this I remain surprised that Gaga herself, reflecting on her experience making this film and how stunning she looks on screen, continues to market herself as a persona.  After all, she is not credited under her actual name but as Gaga. And she went back to blonde as soon as the film was over.

The meta narrative continues with a final reflection from Mason Craine - that the artist only plays with the same 12 notes over and over, and all he can do is offer up to the world his interpretation of them.  This is essentially what Cooper is doing with this well-worn material. But in centring it on a story of childhood trauma, rehab, youtube videos and SNL sketches, he has both made it contemporary and more profound. 

A STAR IS BORN is rated R and has a running time of 136 minutes.  It is on global release.

You can read reviews of the previous versions of A STAR IS BORN here:

The 1937 version starring Janet Gaynor and Fredric March [link]

The 1954 version starring Judy Garland and James Mason [link]

The 1976 version starring Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson [link]

MONSTERS AND MEN

New York.  A black kid is shot dead by a trigger happy racist cop.  The murder is captured by another young man on a cellphone.  MONSTERS AND MEN examines the consequences of events that have become sadly all too familiar, by focusing on three characters - a black cop who witnessed the murder and is himself subject to police harassment (John David Washington - BLACKKKLANSMAN) - the young father who captured the murder, has the courage to post his video online, and is then harassed by the police (Anthony Ramos - A STAR IS BORN) - and a teenage boy who can potentially have a very lucrative career with a sports scholarship unless he "causes trouble" by joining a protest (Kelvin Harrison Jr.)

For all three men, the murders causes a crisis of conscience and the drama lies in seeing whether they will have the courage to be "woke" and the provocation of the same question in ourselves.  Maybe I would join a protest.  I know I couldn't post a video, knowing the police have already been stalking my house, with my sleeping child next to me.  

For me, the most fascinating character is the cop, and it's interesting to contrast this character with Washington's role in BLACKKKLANSMAN.  In that movie, the most brutal racism is depicted on screen but Spike Lee also had the wit to give us moments of hilarity - walking a very fine tonal line. This movie - from talented first time writer-director Reinaldo Marcus Green - is far quieter and more interior, and so calls for a more nuanced, in some ways more powerful performance. The opening scene of this film is thus its best. We see a character we know is a cop, but off duty, pulled over and ID checked by a white cop. The camera focusses on Washington's reaction - quiet anger - knowing if he acts out he will be subject to brutality.  The same brutality his colleagues mete out onto other black men in the neighbourhood. 

The resulting film is beautifully acted and deeply powerful and doesn't shy away from tough questions and debates. It's sadly too relevant. It also paints an authentic picture of a community on the edge.

MONSTERS AND MEN has a running time of 96 minutes and is rated R. It played Sundance 2018 where Reinaldo Marcus Green won a Special Jury Prize for Outstanding First Feature - Dramatic. It also played Toronto. It was released in the USA last September and is currently on release in the UK in cinemas and on demand.