H IS FOR HAWK****

H IS FOR HAWK is a deceptively simple, desperately moving, but never manipulative, film about a middle-aged woman coming to terms with the death of her father. Its success rests on a typically brilliant central performance by The Crown's Claire Foy as the protagonist, Helen. We spend so much time with her, trying to parse her feelings as she hides away from her grief, her family, her colleagues and her friends. Her distraction mechanism is caring for a goshawk called Mabel - a beautiful and fiersome creature of epic strength, who ties our protagonist back to her father's love of nature. At the peak of her depression, Helen literally hides away in a large cardboard box, and we are alone with her and Emma Levienaise-Farrouch's string-heavy ethereal score. This is a film that has the courage to allow grief its appropriate space, and to depict it in all its oppressive power. It takes quite the actor to take on this kind of role, and quite the director to understand what this kind of story needs.

The film is directed by Philippa Lowthorpe and is based on a tremendously successful book by Helen MacDonald.  Lowthorpe, who previously adapted THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL, adapted the book alongside screenwriter Emma Donoghue, who worked on the Oscar-winning ROOM. I wonder if there's something in the fact that a lot of the behind-the-lens talent is female, because this film is a rare depiction of how vital and at times life-saving true female friendship can be.  We should all wish for the kind of friendship that Helen has with Christine (Andor's Denise Gough).  In that respect, this film reminded be of Eva Victor's SORRY BABY, insofar as it showed how sometimes friendship is all about persistance.

H IS FOR HAWK has a running time of 119 minutes and is rated PG-13. It played Telluride and London 2025 and is released in the USA and UK today.

SHARPER**

A millennial trendy antiquarian bookdealer meets cute a pretty young girl and starts a love affair unreasonably quickly.  So begins a tricksy, slippery, addictive, knowingly post-modern thriller. 

Sadly, reader, I'm not here to tell you about Netflix' smash hit TV serial killer show You.  Rather, I am here to tell you about Benjamin Caron's distinctly mediocre crime "thriller", SHARPER.

The bookseller is an earnest trust fund kid called Tom (Justice Smith) and the girl is Sandy (Briana Middleton).  She needs a bunch of money to get rid of a personal entanglement, he hands it over, she leaves, he falls into a broken-hearted depression.  So ends the first act of this film. We then move back to Sandy's story, and this is a film about con artists so you get the play here. She is being groomed to the con by Sebastian Stan's charming psychopath Max, and he's apparently into another, bigger con, as his mother (Julianne Moore) is handily dating a billionaire (John Lithgow).

It's hard to say much about how and why this film doesn't work without ruining the plot. That said, if you watch a lot of thrillers or read a lot of detective fiction, you'll probably figure it out half way through as I did. Once that happens, it's just tab A into slot B to the end.

My issue with the film is that it doesn't have the ambition to do anything visually interesting or to make any social commentary or to interrogate the concept of the con. This is a very basic film once you get beyond the four part character-led structure. With all that plutocratic wealth on show, and all the sheen, one might expect more satire, or more wit. But no. This is rather basic. And the sum is less than its parts. 

SHARPER is rated R and has a running time of 116 minutes. It is available to stream on Apple TV.

MOLLY'S GAME

Molly Bloom is a real life criminal who ran an illegal high stakes poker game in Hollywood and then New York. She raked the game, laundered money for the Russian mob, and if not illegally then unethically, exploited men with a gambling addiction to enrich herself. Eventually she was caught up in a Federal investigation into the mob and without spoiling the ending, this film sees her battling those charges while recounting her history.  

Bloom is played by a characteristically high class Jessica Chastain, more or less reprising her role in the superb MISS SLOANE. Her Bloom is smart, no-nonsense, and unsympathetic - a woman whose profession is clearly both illegal and unethical - and the game is to guess whether underneath all that selfishness they're a moral compass. Bloom's lawyer, played by Idris Elba, and the director/writer Aaron Sorkin, are convinced.  They give us a film in which Bloom is portrayed as a heroine who refused to sell out her players and ruin their lives by giving the Feds her records. This might be more convincing if played with some nuance - if we didn't have bombastic TWELVE ANGRY MEN speeches from Elba - and if it didn't contradict everything we see of Molly in the film. Yes, she might offer to get a player help with his addiction, but only after she's soaked him for days on end.  Sorkin shows us someone who is a predator on the weak - but he tells us that after all, she really cares about their families. We're also asked to believe that Bloom, as smart as she is, as rapier-fast and witty as her Sorkin dialogue is, didn't realise that when Russian mafiosi turned up with cash in satchels that they weren't money laundering - that she wasn't aiding and abetting pretty nasty crimes from happening. Sorry I'm just not buying it.  The other thing that jarred was Sorkin's trademark mansplaining. We get both the lawyer character and Bloom's father (Kevin Costner) try to explain to her and us why she did what she did. There Sorkin goes again - setting up a smart female character only to cut her off at the knees.

Thus, for all the brilliant acting and snappy dialogue, I just couldn't get into a film whose central character premise I didn't buy in to. I just didn't believe in Sorkin's version of Molly.  And that made the film a long - too long - dull slog through the legal machinations, and an ending that felt unearned. If you want to see Chastain playing a strong female character who actually owns her fate, doesn't need men to explain it to her, in a tightly paced, beautifully photographed movie, check out MISS SLOANE instead. 

MOLLY'S GAME has a running time of 140 minutes and is rated R. In the UK it is rated 15 for strong language, drug misuse and brief violence.

The film played Toronto 2016 and was released last year in Croatia, the Netherlands and the USA. It opened earlier this year in the UK, Ireland, France, Argentina, Greece, Hungary, Kuwait, Portugal, Singapore, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and the USA. It opens on January 11th in Russia, on Jan 19th in Sweden, on Jan 25th in Australia, on Jan 26th in Finland, on Jan 27th in Mexico, on Feb 2nd in Taiwan, on Feb 22nd in Brazil, Denmark, Thailand and Norway, on March 1st in Hong Kong and on March 8th in Germany.

FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD

You can listen to a podcast review of this film here.

In late nineteenth century rural England a coquettish, strong-willed but ultimately kind young girl called Bathsheba Everdene rejects the earnest proposal of a good but apparently rather dull sheep-farmer called Gabriel Oak.  She goes on to inherit a large farm and surprises the county by running it herself, although relying very heavily on Oak's advice in his reduced position of shepherd.  Oak must watch guiltily fend off the proposals of the rich austere Mr Boldwood, to whom she has sent a valentine in a fit of pique little suspecting the deeply passionate and obsessive response it would provoke.  Worse still, both Oak and Boldwood have to watch her marry the feckless and cruel Sergeant Troy, a man who has already ruined the poor maid Fanny Robbin.

This is, of course, the story of Thomas Hardy's most famous novel, Far From The Madding Crowd, and the iconic 1967 film adaptation directed by John Schlesinger, starring Julie Christie as Bathsheba and Alan Bates, Peter Finch and Terence Stamp as her three lovers.  That film is so beloved and so well-acted and photographed that a remake felt almost superfluous, but I am pleased to report that it has its own charms.

London Film Fest 2012 - Top Picks - THE HUNT

This year, I'm trying to point the casual festival-goer to a handful of movies that are truly wonderful and CRUCIALLY, for which it is still possible to get tickets at the time of writing. After all, what's the point of reading Top Pick lists that tell you to go and watch AMOUR when it was sold out about a minute into the members' booking period? Not that you shouldn't still try to see AMOUR, or ARGO, or the other hot tickets - the BFI does a great job in releasing unused sponsor's tickets, and there are always Returns - keep an eye on the Festival website or follow the BFI on twitter for more info. That said, THE HUNT is a quality movie, fêted at Cannes, that you can still get tickets for, without all the hoop-la.

Danish director Thomas Vinterberg - of FESTEN fame - reunites the team behind his most recent quiet, austere drama SUBMARINO, to take a hard look at what happens when an innocent man in a small town is accused of sexually abusing a child.  There is no melodrama here - no wild hysteria - but the quiet destruction of a man's life and reputation, the frighteningly casual way in which a man can be ostracised, when a child "says something foolish" and it all gets out of hand.  The violence is mostly contained, and all the more frightening for when it does rear up through the façade of bourgeois life - all the more sinister and the more likely to leave a lasting paranoia.

There are no easy choices here.  The man accused - Lucas - is a humble, beloved kindergarten teacher. A sensitive man who one day offers to walk his best friend's daughter to school so as to escape her parents' argument.  No good deed goes unpunished - and to a sensitive child, this special attention, when suddenly coming up against the bounds of proprietary - leads to a heartbreak and a foolish vengeful thought - a thought whose power Klara can barely understand.  The poor parents and teachers of course have to take it seriously, even with the accused is their best friend.  Which parent has the fortitude to call their daughter a liar? 

The power of this movie lies in its closely observed, beautifully acted scenes of apprehension and concern.  The young actress who plays Klara, Annika Wedderkopp, delicately portrays a child who lies, becomes confused, tries to protest her innocence, simply can't remember, but only knows she's lost her friend.  And Mads Mikkelsen is typically superb as Lucas, playing so far within himself one almost forgets his impressive physicality.  He truly is an astonishing actor - able to go from hapless, buffoon in PUSHER, to Bond villain, to this almost passive Good Man. There's a particularly tense, cathartic scene near the end of the film, where you can see this two, separated by a movie's length of town panic, broking some kind of reconciliation - and it's quite simply magnetic.  Finally, one also has to praise cinematographer Charlotte Bruus Christensen for her richly coloured Danish landscapes and pristine digital lensing.  

THE HUNT aka JAGTEN played Cannes 2012 where Mads Mikkelsen won Best Actor and cinematographer Charlotte Bruus Christensen won the Vulcain Prize for the Technical Artist and director Thomas Vinterberg won the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury.  It also played Toronto and London 2012. It opens on October 25th in the Netherlands; on November 14th in Belgium, France and Russia; on November 30th in the UK; on January 10th in Denmark and Portugal; on February 1st in Norway and Sweden; on March 8th in Iceland and on March 28th in Germany.

Running time 110 minutes. Tough material but no explicit sexual content.

London Film Fest 2011 Day 14 - HUNKY DORY

Minnie Driver is the only recognised name in Marc Evans' musical drama HUNKY DORY.

Welsh director Marc Evans (SNOWCAKE, MY LITTLE EYE) bravely takes on a "concept" film with his new musical coming-of-age flick, HUNKY DORY. Minnie Driver (with impeccable Welsh accent) plays a teacher in a Welsh school, putting on a musical version of Shakespeare's The Tempest that incorporates the popular music of 1976 - David Bowie, Nick Drake, The Beach Boys - the year in which the movie is set. And while Driver is the only recognised name actor, she's actually not the person carrying the film. Rather, the young cast of talented kids steal the show, with the lead schoolboy Aneurin Barnard making an impressive debut. 

I found the movie earnest, joyful, but uneven and unsure of what it wanted to be. French writer Laurence Coriat (WONDERLAND) has penned a script that isn't an out-and-out big dance number musical in the manner of GLEE or HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL. Indeed, it seems to want to be one of those authentic realist teen flicks of the US indie movement - AMERICAN GRAFFITI or DAZED AND CONFUSED. And even then it can't resist one of those plot devices that seems totally out of scale with all that preceded it - stupidly clumsy deus ex machina. Combining social realism and musical numbers is a hard trick to pull off, and HUNKY DORY is no BILLY ELLIOT.

HUNKY DORY had its world premiere at London 2011 and has no commercial release date yet.

London Film Fest 2010 Day 14 - SUBMARINO

Nick and Martin are brothers living in contemporary Copenhagen, struggling to deal with the childhood trauma of their little brother dying of neglect as the result of their mother's alcoholism. Nick has served time, and now passes the day at the gym or drinking and the evenings with a hooker. Martin is a junkie who turns to pushing to support his little boy. Both of them, in their own fucked-up way, try to protect the kids in their lives, as a sort of penance for having failed their little brother.

The movie is austere, closely observed and unrelentingly grim. It is a return, if not in form, but in content, to the Dogme style of film-making that Thomas Vinterberg (DEAR WENDY) originated in. The lead performances are strong, and the stories of the two brothers - who are estranged for much of the film - are deftly inter-twined. However, I am not sure why, but I just couldn't get into the film. Something about the unrelenting self-annihilation kept me at a distance, just as the brothers try to distance themselves from their emotions, with alcohol and smack respectively. As a result, SUBMARINO is a film that I admired rather than enjoyed.

SUBMARINO played Berlin 2010 and was released in September in France, Finland and the Netherlands. It opens in Belgium on November 17th.