BLUE MOON***** - Berlin Film Festival 2025

Ethan Hawke (TRAINING DAY) gives his career-best performance as the charismatic but despairing lyricist Lorenz Hart in Richard Linklater's latest film, BLUE MOON.  

The entirety of the film takes place in the iconic Broadway restaurant Sardi's lending the film the air of a filmed play, but no worse for that.  This is because Hart's kinetic wit and a clever use of different sections of the restaurant keep us enlivened and riveted.

The entire movie also takes place on a single evening in the early 1940s.  Hart's old composing partner Richard Rodgers is debuting his latest musical with his new lyricist, Oscar Hammerstein II. Just this little thing you may have heard of called Oklahoma!  Hart is in despair because he recognises that the musical will be a smash hit - bigger than anything that he wrote with Rodgers - and also that it's not very good.  He is also in despair because both of his loves are unattainable.  

The first of these loves is the beautiful 20-year old college girl Elizabeth Weiland (Margot Qualley - THE SUBSTANCE).  Elizabeth uses Hart for his connections and basks in his flattery but has no real interest in him.  The idea that they could ever be a real couple is a delusion that Hart knows is a delusion but indulges all the same.  Their scenes snap and fizzle in the same way that gossip between young female best friends snaps and fizzles.  Hart feels more like a gay best friend than a putative lover. The inevitable blow is well telegraphed and (literally) pathetic.

The second, and more significant unattainable love is that of Hart's friend and long-time collaborator Richard Rodgers. Their scenes are far more delicate and heart-breaking  than those between Hart and Elizabeth because the love has lasted longer and the break-up was more devastating.  Andrew Scott's Rodgers is a man with incredible respect for Hart as a lyricist, and his evident love for the man is signalled in every look and line. But Rodgers is also a man who has lived with the pain of being let down and let down again by an alcoholic and who cannot bear to see Hart himself more.  It's a performance of rare subtlety. In the wrong hands their scenes could have been soapy and melodramatic.  But the genuine love and hurt and need for self-protection are telegraphed with a delicacy and tenderness that moved me greatly.

I cannot speak highly enough of a film that will has the confidence to sit comfortably within its single location, that allows Rodgers to be the quiet straight man to Hart's brilliant and performative showboat, and that trusts its audience with its Easter Eggs - the inspiration for E.B. White's Stuart Little, or a cameo from Little Stevie (Sondheim).

Kudos to all in front of the camera but most of all to Robert Kaplow (ME & ORSON WELLES) for a script of rare insight and humanity.

BLUE MOON has a running time of 100 minutes and is rated R. It had its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival.

BLONDE*****

 

Andrew Dominik is a director of rare talent. THE ASSASSSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD remains one of my all-time favourite films, and its worth considering BLONDE in that context. Because as with that film, BLONDE is about exploring the reality behind an avatar, a myth, an icon, and about trying to find some kind of emotional truth in a story that everyone thinks they know.

It is also worth stating, given some of the criticism that has been levelled at this film, that neither the film nor the book by Joyce Carol Oates upon which it is based, are meant to be straight biographies. Oates states very clearly in her prologue that if you want a factual, historic book about Marilyn Monroe, then this isn't what Blonde provides. Instead, she and Dominik are creating broad categories of experience, inspired by the known facts, and partly by speculation, to interrogate the myth of Marilyn Monroe and the lived emotional experience of what it could have been like to be Norma Jeane. If you approach both the book and film from that perspective, you will reap dividends.

The film is faithful to the book but adds something further thanks to a sensitive, vulnerable, brave performance from Ana De Armas as Norma Jeane, and Dominik's deep knowledge of, and visual invention around Monroe's iconic films, looks and performances. There's a moment where we see Armas' character in tears facing herself in a mirror and putting on the megawatt smile of Marilyn. It's a masterclass in acting the part of a woman who feels alienated from her own creation. Behind the lens, Dominik's use of black and white versus colour and different shooting techniques adds to the impression of a woman so divorced from her own image that the centre cannot and does not hold.

We begin with Norma Jeane's horrific childhood in Hollywood - at first at the hands of a mentally ill mother, then in and out of foster homes, and escaping early into a marriage. We then fast forward to Marilyn in Hollywood, a pin-up star who is raped by Mr Z at her first audition. This movie does not shy away from the sexual empowerment of Norma Jeane and the sexual exploitation of Marilyn Monroe. She isn't always a victim. She chooses her first polyamorous relationship and her two marriages. She also chooses to leave The Former Sports Star (Bobby Cannavale) when he beats her. And in her professional life, as in that aforementioned scene, Norma Jeane is able to put on Marilyn the character for her own financial advantage and is also able to out argue The Writer about his plays. We see her negotiating pay with her agent. Norma Jeane has agency and control.

But as Marilyn, she is serially exploited on and off screen, by producers who rape her, directors who condescend to her, and finally by the President who rapes her, then aborts her child. This last flight of imagination is the most controversial in reviews of the film, but I feel gets to the emotional truth of how the inspiration for The President treated the women in his life, and how powerful men treated Marilyn. Did JFK actually knock her up then abort the baby? I have no idea. What this film is saying is something truthful about power-relationships then and now. I also found it painful to watch how graphic the scene with the President was, but it felt it was absolutely right to show it that way. The film shows the reality of sexual exploitation. It does't cut away. But it also doesn't frame it in a way that is fetishising the actor's body. It focuses on her face, her reactions, her internal monologue as she's experiencing the abuse. How can you tell a truthful story about this woman without showing that?

As you can tell, I both really admired this film and got really frustrated by the reactions to it. I feel that people aren't judging it on its own terms but as something that it isn't: a truthful by the numbers biopic. And in doing so, they are missing out on a vital, provocative and incredibly well-acted account of a woman who attempted to wrestle Hollywood to the floor and got stomped on in the process. 

BLONDE has a running time of 166 minutes and is streaming on Netflix.

THE IRISHMAN - BFI London Film Festival 2019 - Closing Night Gala

Who killed Jimmy Hoffa? Does anyone care? Martin Scorsese sure does. He spends three and half arse-numbing hours answering who and why. We only put up with this because it's Scorsese. And even then barely just.  If created for theatrical release, then this film is just too long.  It could easily lose twenty minutes of its opening hour and thirty minutes of its closing hour. Once Hoffa's dead, do we really care about his assassin's lonely old age?  I would argue that the indulgence Netflix afforded Scorsese is a hindrance here.  It has allowed him to be baggy where a conventional studio would have demanded a sub-180 minute cut.  Still, this is a Netflix release so I guess people will watch this at home over a few evenings. If so, that's a shame because Scorsese is at the top of his game when it comes to his visual style, choice of music, kinetic editing, and brilliant evocation of mood and era.  This film really does deserve to be seen on a big screen, for all the physical discomfort that arises.

Of course, no-one really cares who killed Jimmy Hoffa anymore.  I don't know many people of my generation who know how powerful he was in 1960s America, or the mystery surrounding his death, let alone those younger than me.  Scorsese's screenwriter Steve Zaillian seems to acknowledge the problem a couple of times in his screenplay, as aged up versions of characters try to explain to younger interlocuters that Hoffa was the second most powerful man behind the President - a powerful Union leader who could make or break a political campaign, and whose multi-billion pension fund could and did bankroll the mafia. He disappeared in 1975.  Everyone acknowledges it was a mafia hit.  You don't threaten mafia funding and survive. But the precise facts around who did the job remain unsolved. The Feds have their suspicions. But we'll never know. This film, however, posits a theory based on the late-in-life confession of long-term mafia hitman Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran.

And so this film tells us the story of The Irishman, beginning with not one but two framing devices. The outer device shows us Sheeran (an aged up Robert de Niro) narrating his sins to what we'll later find out is a Catholic priest - his sole visitor in a nursing home, given that Sheeran has alienated his family.  This reminded me a bit of AMADEUS - having the murderer confess, but not particularly seek atonement, to murdering a man who was purportedly his friend.  Because Sheeran wasn't just a mob hitman - he was also sent by the mob to be Hoffa's protection. Their relationship was one of trust and intimacy, even sleeping in twin beds like Burt and Ernie. It certainly makes the killing emotionally brutal.

The framing device within the framing device is watching Sheeran on a road-trip from Philly to Detroit with his mentor, mob boss Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci), and their wives. This is meant to be a trip to a wedding, but it becomes apparent in the final third of the film that Bufalino is going to call on Sheeran's higher loyalty to him than to Hoffa, by making him kill Hoffa personally. "I have to put you in this" he says.  

And then finally, we get to the meat of the film, which is a linear re-telling of Sheeran's story from the time he met Bufalino to his life in the nursing home. He starts of as a truck driver who steals for the mafiosi, then starts driving for them, then "painting walls" aka murdering people, and providing protection for Hoffa. The fact that Sheeran even makes it to the nursing home is already a gag, as time and again, we see darkly humorous subtitles telling us how various mafiosi were brutally killed shortly after the action we're witnessing. Sheeran is literally the last man standing.

The resulting story is - as I said - baggy in its first and especially final hour - but when it's solidly in the meat of its 1960s and 1970s storyline it's as pacy and compelling and stunningly put together as anything Scorsese has ever done.  The way in which he frames a shot, or explicitly moves a lens as if its our eye panning a room, or jump cuts from a violent shot to a stylish lounge scene - the way in which he uses incidental music - it's just another league from the other films at this festival, or on release, period.  The performances are also tremendous, and I have to say the subtle use of CGI de-ageing tech is an absolute success.

For me, the star of the show is Joe Pesci. His performance is so quiet, so powerful, so menacing, and so controlled.  He can condemn a man to death with the slightest, barely noticeable, nod of his head. It's also interesting to compare him with Harvey Keitel as the even more powerful Angelo Bruno. He barely says a word in the entire movie. The two characters are quiet, understated and petrifying.  Contrast this with Al Pacino's Jimmy Hoffa - perfect casting as Hoffa needs to be (at times) bombastic, to contrast with the mafiosi's quiet menace. Hoffa's problem is a complete lack of self-awareness. Even when they're all turning on him, he just doesn't get it. He still obsesses over "my union".  He doesn't understand he sold it to the mafia years prior.  But this isn't one of those pastiche Pacino large performance. Sure, Hoffa has elements of that. But he can also be quiet and fragile. There's also a lovely contrast between Hoffa, who's downfall is that he's so emotional, seeing the benefits of that in a beautiful family life. He's even close to Sheeran's daughter Peggy (lovely facial acting in an almost wordless and thankless role).  By contrast, Peggy instinctively withdraws from her father and Bufalino.  They are left alone.  As for De Niro, his performance is strong, as we come to expect, but his character is in some ways the least interesting of the "big three". I would nominate Pesci for the awards, every time.

In smaller roles, and I really can't state this highly enough, can we get some awards love for Stephen Graham as the dangerously explosive mafiosi Tony Pro?  There are a couple of scenes where he has to go toe to toe with Pacino's Hoffa at his most powerful and domineering and my god, Graham's Tony Pro gives as good as he gets.  Graham is in no way outclassed by Pacino, and Pacino is pretty fucking classy.  Best Supporting Actor? No doubt.

THE IRISHMAN is rated R and has a running time of 209 minutes. The movie played New York and London 2019. It opens in cinemas on limited release on November 1st in the USA and November 8th in the UK, and will be released globally on Netflix on November 27th.

ANT-MAN

ANT-MAN.  Gotta admit, not a massive comic book fan, never heard of him.  But, seeing how great Marvel have been in reviving properties and having loved GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY despite no prior knowledge of the characters, I had high hopes. And with Paul Rudd cast in the lead role, I was expecting a similarly fun-filled, effects heavy action movie. But no. While ANT-MAN is certainly full of special effects and enhances and extends the Marvel Universe, it's the most unmemorable entry in the franchise. This is actually quite an achievement given that it stars Michael Douglas who retains his charisma.  But the problem is that the movie just isn't funny  - and in not being funny it wastes Paul Rudd. Worse still, the movie isn't interesting. It feels like it's being played exactly by the book with nothing new, nothing subversive, no real chemistry between any of the characters.  All of this made sense when I recalled that ANT-MAN was originally meant to be written and directed by Edgar Wright - a script that Joss Whedon called the best Marvel movie ever.

SPY

SPY is a genuinely funny spy movie spoof starring Melissa McCarthy as a frumpy back office analyst allowed to go on a mission to save James Bond-esque boss (Jude Law).  On the way, she's hindered by an ultra-macho but feckless spy played by Jason Statham and poses as a bodyguard for a bitchy evil villain played by Rose Byrne, who frankly steals the show.  The film rolls along at a frantic pace taking us through the glamorous capital cities of Europe. The running jokes are at the expense of slick heroes, and champion the under-dogs. Byrne gets all the best lines and McCarthy's charm carries along the rest of the film. But kudos to Law and Statham for having the comic timing and general good humour to rinse their screen personae so well.  Another hit from writer-director Paul Feig (BRIDESMAIDS).  I could happily watch a sequel.

SPY has a running time of 119 minutes and is rated R. The movie is on global release.

ANNIE (2014)

I love big Hollywood musicals - everything from the deeply sinister OKLAHOMA! to the modern glitz of CHICAGO via the genius that is CABARET.   I have a fundamental respect for hoofers - old fashioned song and dance entertainers right back to Vaudeville.  Nothing pleases me more than seeing a musical theatre artist in their prime - not least Ann Reinking in pretty much everything she did, and Liza Minelli in Cabaret.  So despite my reverence for the original 1982 John Huston ANNIE - I was really looking forward to this remake. I didn't quite see the point of it, but I figured the original Strouse-Charmin-Meehan musical could take the reinterpretation. All the best texts can.

I guess I realised something was off with this new movie with the opening number - now, as then, "Maybe" - a song that should be poignant and emotional.  Instead it was delivered by a bunch of apparently well-fed and well-dressed kids doing this kind of finger-snap dance ripping off the "Cups" song from PITCH PERFECT.  Worst of all, I'm not sure if I'm right, but it felt like the lead actress Quvenzhané Wallis didn't have a strong voice and/or was being heavily auto-tuned.  Worse still, her lip-synching was off.  Things got worse with Cameron Diaz' outsized but somehow messy performance as the modern-day Miss Hannigan - now a drunken foster mom - and the STOMP rip-off choreography for "Hard Knock Life."

CHEF

First a public service announcement: do not go to see CHEF on an empty stomach or with a vegetarian friend! Not since Stanley Tucci's glorious BIG NIGHT have I seen a movie more in love with food and the process of cooking - that photographs sumptuous sides of pit beef and steaming piles of spaghetti with more indulgent care. It's a movie that's passionate above being passionate about what you eat - and that wraps us up in that mission to eat authentic, but not over-complicated, food. Which is not to sound precious - this is also a movie that is at its heart a simple family story - about a father reconnecting with his son when his career hits a road bump by quitting his fancy restaurant and driving a food truck serving simple Cuban food from Miami to LA.

I can imagine a lot of critics getting quite sniffy about the basic simplicity of the story. There's nothing particularly new about seeing a workaholic divorced dad (Chef Carl Caspar - Jon Favreau) struggling to reconnect with a cute, emotionally wise kid (Emjay Anthony - IT'S COMPLICATED). There's although nothing particularly new about the mid-life crisis movie in which an apparently successful middle-aged man throws it all in to fight the Man (think Jerry Maguire). And of course, there's something almost annoyingly ungrateful in the obvious analogy between Chef Carl and the writer-director-lead actor of the movie. Jon Favreau started off in the indie hit SWINGERS, but ended up helming the mega franchise IRON MAN movies. It's no great leap to think that he too dreamed of giving it up (albeit temporarily) for smaller scale, more authentic tales/films, and CHEF is the literal and metaphorical result. And while we're on a downer, it did get ever so slightly irritating how every woman in this movie was there as a loving, supportive two-dimensional pretty young thing to swoon over Chef's food and ease him through his existential crisis. I mean, in the modern era, is there any excuse for the shot of Maitre D Molly (Scarlett Johanson) wearing little more than an over-sized jumper ogling Chef's spaghetti? Oh, and do we really need such full on product placement for Twitter?!

So why, given the trite emotional journey and 2-D female characters should one still watch CHEF? Because despite all that nonsense the sheer enjoyment of authentic food drips off of the screen. Favreau is writing about what he loves and it shows. And it's not just the food but the cultures and communities that create it and nurture it - the idea that eating something in its place of birth is special and unique and to be protected. It's also worth giving a shout out to the music in this movie. The soundtrack is just hands-down the most fun you can have in a cinema, and put together with the sun-kissed cinematography from DP Kramer Morgenthau (THOR: DARK WORLD and the movie just wills you to have a good time. The second thing to enjoy in this movie is the sweet and occasionally spiky relationship between father and son. I love that Jon Favreau allows himself to look as mean as he does - shouting his evidently emotionally distraught son out of the food truck and serially undercutting touching moments with his debbie-downer attitude. Other occasional joys: the sheer energy John Leguziamo brings to the screen as Sous-Chef Martin; the classic gonzo cameo from Robert Downey Junior at the centre of the movie; a use of cornstarch that you just can't forget once you've seen it.

So, despite it's well-worn path to emotional enlightenment, and the rather cloying product placement, CHEF is a wonderfully feel-good movie, full of love, authentic spikiness and a real passion for food, family and community.

CHEF is rated R in the USA and X in the UK and has a running time of 115 minutes.

CHEF played SXSW 2014 and was released earlier this year in New Zealand, the USA, Kuwait, Lithuania, Portugal, Vietnam, Singapore and Hong Kong. It goes on release in Estonia in June 20th, in the UK on June 25th, in Ireland on June 27th, in Brazil on July 10th, in Greece on August 21st, and in the Netherlands on September 4th.

BLUE JASMINE

Woody Allen's latest movie, BLUE JASMINE, isn't better than ANNIE HALL or MANHATTAN, as some over-sugared critics have claimed. But it is the best of his late films, featuring as it does a superlative performance by Cate Blanchett in the title role.  She plays the spoiled, self-deluding wife of a hugely rich financier (Alec Baldwin), who we discover was actually a Bernie Madoff character.  He swindled his clients, including Jasmine's earnest sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins), gets taken by the Feds, and leaves Jasmine crushed, shocked, a borderline alcoholic with severe mental problems.

This is how we meet Jasmine - talking to herself on a plane to San Francisco, fashioning a narrative of her life that is elegant and graceful - where she is the victim.  This seems to be her only way of coping.  By struggling through courses to become computer literate she can kid herself that she'll become an interior designer, and resume her place in society as something "substantial". When she lies to her wealthy diplomat suitor (Peter Sarsgaard, thankfully not in a sleazebag role), it isn't so much that she's wilfully lying to him, but that my projecting an image of elegant accomplishment, she can reclaim herself.  It's a survival strategy.

The darker side of this vulnerability manifests itself in how far Jasmine was complicit in her downfall - how much did she really know about her husband's affairs and criminality?  Her stepson certainly judges her harshly, and part of the journey of this film is to get to the root of that problem.  Jasmine also proves to be a hugely disruptive influence on her sister, who under Jasmine's criticism of her current squeeze Chilli (Bobby Cannavale) reaches for something apparently better in Louis C.K.'s romantic sound engineer.   Ginger plays, in a minor key, the same theme as Jasmine - with her issues of self-invention and self-delusion.

The movie is dominated by Blanchett, and rightly so. She alternates between serene confidence and broken vulnerability and everything in between.  But there are other, surprising, moments of brilliance. For instance, seeing Andrew Dice Clay - a figure of menacing fun in Entourage - play a wise, angry ex-husband.  Or Louis C.K. play a soft, romantic.  Or Bobby Cannavale as a loveable rogue.  But the real praise has to go to Woody Allen who, after years of being the most environmentally sustainable of screenwriters, has done something genuinely new and genuinely brilliant.  Many people have tried to put the story of the financial crisis on screen,  but this sideways look at the psychological and emotional fall-out is perhaps the best depiction of its real impact, away from Wall Street.  And one would be hard-pressed to find such a rounded, nuanced and sympathetic middle-aged female character in cinema. 

A podcast review of this film is available here:

BLUE JASMINE has a running time of 98 minutes and is rated PG-13 in the USA and 12A in the UK for infrequent strong language & moderate references to sex & suicide.

BLUE JASMINE opened in August in the USA, Slovakia, Canada, Norway, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Greece, Hungary, Finland and Romania. It is currently on release in Australia, Portugal, Estonia, Iceland, Lithuania, France, South Korea, Russia, Ireland, Turkey and the UK. It opens on October 10th in Argentina and Singapore; on October 17th in Hong Kong; on November 7th in Germany and on December 5th in Italy. 

LOVELACE

The weird thing about LOVELACE is that it isn't a film about the porn industry. It isn't BOOGIE NIGHTS.  It's a film about domestic abuse. It's WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT. And like that Tina Turner biopic, this Linda Lovelace biopic is rather melodramatic and grim and over-wrought - it moves you, and features a very good leading performance, but it it often feels like a TV afternoon movie.

So for anyone under a proverbial rock, Linda Lovelace was the 1970s porn star of DEEP THROAT, the commercial success that popularised a certain type of fellatio and made it chic to take a date to a porno.  She achieved a cross-over fame, but not success, and for a brief moment was a pop-culture icon.  However, she later wrote a book claiming that her abusive husband had long since been pimping her out, even forcing her to star in animal porn, and that she made DEEP THROAT under duress. She never saw a dime, eventually found the courage to leave him, and tried to make some kind of normal life as a wife, mother and anti-porn campaigner.  This story has been told before, in Linda's own best-selling book, Ordeal, as well as in the documentary INSIDE DEEP THROAT.

In this movie, writer Andy Bellin sticks closely to Ordeal but definitely leaves out a lot of the harsher material concerning the early years of hooking, the bestiality - which apparently, shockingly, involved Hugh Heffner - and the weird affair with Sammy Davis Junior.  Bellin focuses on the story of domestic abuse and uses a clever conceit to contrast this with the public image of Linda as a smiling, willing porn star.  So the first half of the film shows us the headlines - innocent naive loved-up Linda trips and falls into porn, has a blast, becomes famous! We then revisit those same events and see her husband Chuck Traynor's manipulation, abuse and coercion. In this view, Linda did porn under the threat of a gun, with bruises on her legs, and the crew knew about it. 

The resulting movie plays as a deeply affecting melodrama.  Amanda Seyfriend is utterly convincing and utterly desperate as Linda. Peter Sarsgaard seems typecast but efficient in his portrayal as Traynor, effectively amping up his performance from AN EDUCATION. The real scene stealer is Sharon Stone as Linda's mother - almost unrecognisable in her ageing domineering prude role. She has very little screen time and has to do some horrible things but we always understand her complicated motivations.  The rest of the cast just feels like a parade of famous faces in over-the-top 70s costumes - and this becomes, at times, distracting. Did we really need James Franco as the Hef, or Chloe Sevigny? As for the direction, other than the conceit of the folded back narrative, it's pretty pedestrian, but I did like DP than choosing to use a kind of sun-bleached 16mm look to give the movie some nostalgia contrasted with the higher-def look of the later "real" scenes. 

You can hear a podcast review of this movie here, or subscribe to Bina007 Movie Reviews in iTunes.

LOVELACE has a running time of 93 minutes and has been rated R in the USA and 18 in the UK for strong sex and sex references and domestic abuse.

LOVELACE played Sundance and Berlin 2013 and is currently on release in the USA, Canada, Croatia, the UK and Ireland. It opens in Brazil and Taiwan on August 30th, in Estonia on September 6th, in the Netherlands on September 19th, in Denmark on November 21st and in Sweden on November 29th. 

PAUL BLART: MALL COP - harmless, disposable fun

Steve Carr, director of DADDY DAY CARE and ARE WE DONE YET?, has produced an utterly disposable, utterly ridiculous family action movie that succeeds purely because of the innate like-ability of Kevin James. James plays a love-able loser: fat, hypoglycemic, lame sense of humour, but a heart of gold. The audience wills him to win at every turn, whether that means getting the girl of his dreams, putting down the obnoxious watch salesman, or foiling the robbery that's taking place in his mall. The action is tame, the humour tamer, but the movie is surprisingly watchable and you can't but help have a smile on your face at the end. It's no INDIANA JONES, but for a harmless afternoon family DVD session, perfect.

PAUL BLART: MALL COP opened earlier this year in the US, Canada, Mexico, South Africa, Venezuela, Australia and Singapore, the UK, Egypt, the UAE, Iceland and Spain. It opens on April 9th in Portugal; on April 17th in Belgium, Brazil and Romania; on April 23rd in Kazakhstan, Russia and Sweden; and in Estonia on July 10th.

FAST FOOD NATION - the agit-doc is dead! Long live the non-fiction fiction film!

I am getting a little bit tired of earnest liberal agit-docs that usually have little visually to do with cinema, could equally well be shown on TV, and tend to preach to the converted. Michael Moore may have increased the sale-ability of documentary cinematic releases and part of me is happy about that but the other part bemoans the seemingly homogenous product now flooding arts cinemas across the land. I've written too many reviews starting: "this week's self-explanatory documentary..." or "the point being...?" That's not to say that I don't agree with everything these docs are trying to say. I do. I just wonder how effective they are. Clearly no nasty evil polluter is going to slap down ten squid at his local cineplex to say a movie called "Nasty evil capital bastards are raping the rainforest!"?

So it was with real interest that I watched Richard Linklator's new movie, FAST FOOD NATION. And appropriate since I just watched INFAMOUS - a movie about how Truman Capote invented a new form of novel - non-fiction fiction. Capote's idea was to "bring alive" the facts of the case by applying fiction techniques such as emotional insight and inter-cutting narrative structures. Richard Linklater is pretty much following the same logic here. He takes a popular non-fiction book by Eric Schlosser that tackles the murky, hidden world of the industrial food industry in the USA. Linklater opts not to make another earnest documentary out of this material. Instead he gives us a feature length movie.

So, FAST FOOD NATION is not a documentary. It's also not a comedy or satire, although it contains the odd funny line. Rather it is a straight movie that contains three inter-twining stories.

The first story is about a group of Mexican illegal immigrants, including Wilmer "Fez" Valderamma and Catalina Sandino Moreno, who are helped over the border by Luis Guzman's pimped-out van driver and taken to a meat-packing plant in Colorado. There, watched over by the sleazy Bobby Cannavale, they earn a pittance which feels like a fortune to them and put their lives at risk in horrific jobs, turning live cows into frozen meat patties. This strand is brilliantly acted - showing for instance that Valderama and Canavale can play it straight. But be warned, the footage is not for the weak of stomach.

The second story is about some teenagers - played by Ashley Johnson and Paul Dano who work in a fast-food joint in the same Colorado town. The strand shows Ashley's character becoming politically aware thanks to her hip uncle, played by Ethan Hawke and, I kid you not, Avril Lavigne.

The final story is about a Vice President of Marketing at the same fast food company played by Greg Kinnear. He is sent to the same Colorado town to find out - quite simply - why there is cow shit in the meat patties. It's not hard to find out why. Everyone in town knows - from Kris Kristofferson's wise old rancher, to his maid, to the morally-challenged realist who brokered the deal - played in a chilling cameo by Bruce Willis.

The advantages of the non-fiction fiction structure is that it gives the viewer some emotional engagement with the issues. I know we should care as much about employees losing limbs at a meatpacking plant in real life, but thanks to the way our brains are wired, it's easier to care and to "get it" if we have some charismatic characters on screen. The other advantage is that we get a proper movie with proper production values, visual style (which in fairness is not that spectacular in this particular film) and sound-track. The disadvantage is that on occasion characters say stuff which is just not credible, because they are basically making a speech. It doesn't happen often but it does happen, especially when the Ethan Hawke character is on screen or when a radical student says, "The patriotic thing to do at this point is to break the Patriot Act". A gloriously seditious sentiment. Similarly, there is an extended discussion between the students as to why the cows won't leave their pens even when the fence is broken - a rather clumsy extended metaphor for humans who know fast food is made from shit-infused meat but still eat it.

Still, for all its flaws and clumsiness, I think FAST FOOD NATION is far more successful in conveying its message and simply entertaining its audience than the usual agit-docs. To that end, it's a noble experiment and hopefully one that will be influential.

FAST FOOD NATION played Cannes and London 2006. It is already on release in Australia and Germany and opens in the US and France at the end of November. It opens in Israel and Belgium in January 2007 and in the Netherlands in March.

ROMANCE AND CIGARETTES - crazy beautiful

I have a feeling that ROMANCE AND CIGARETTES is one of those films that you either find pretentious and indulgent or love to pieces. I am firmly in the latter camp. Written and directed by John Turturro (the actor featured in many a Coen Brothers movie) we are firmly in that kind of weird and wonderful world, populated by odd-ball characters and capers.

The movie focuses on a family headed up by a fat fireman called Nick (James Gandolfini.) He is married to a wedding dress-maker called Kitty (Susan Sarandon) and has three daughters. His wife pines for a former lover and his daughters are obsessed with a hilarious wannabe rock-star called Fryburg (the brilliant Bobby Canavale.) To add to the complication, Nick is attracted to a dirty-talking red-head (Kate Winslett) and is being egged on by his lewd best mate Angelo (Steve Buscemi). The subject matter of the movie is therefore all the messy stuff that happens in life - mid-life crises, weary marriages, obnoxious teenagers, first love. And the down-and-dirty texture is built up with brilliant suburban locales, costumes and a whole cast of eccentric supporting characters - notably Christopher Walken as the Elvis-loving vengeful friend of Kitty.

I've seen the movie described as a musical, not least by the producers. But I think that's a bit misleading. It's not a full on musical where the action periodically stops and the movie breaks into a staged musical number. Rather, at certain points in the story, the characters sing along to kitschy songs of the '60s - Englebert Humperdinck, Tom Jones and the like. It's rather like the camera follows the characters into their little day-dreams before spinning back into the reality of the flick. I guess it really is a matter of taste, but I thought the music was used brilliantly to add to the sense of whimsy and wonder. Plus, any chance to see the crazy genius that is Christopher Walken doing his dance schtick is a bonus.

I can perfectly see how some will find the project indulgent or eccentric for the sake of it, but to my mind, ROMANCE AND CIGARETTES is one of the most touching, funny and genuinely crazy movies I have ever seen and I would strongly urge you to give it a try.

ROMANCE AND CIGARETTES showed at Venice 2005 and is now playing in the UK. I don't know if it will get a US release.