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.

THE INCREDIBLE JESSICA JAMES

THE INCREDIBLE JESSICA JAMES is a wonderfully funny, socially aware comedy starring The Daily Show's Jessica Williams as a smart, funny playwright struggling to find professional success and love in contemporary New York. Written and directed by Jim Strouse (GRACE IS GONE), the movie has wit, courage and infectious optimism.  

Williams plays Jones as a confident, opinionated but never obnoxious young woman of talent and flair.  As the movie opens she's teaching kids theatre and helping them work out the issues in their lives while papering her wall with rejection letters for a play that she's writing.  She's also trying to get over her ex boyfriend (LaKeith Stanfield) while starting to date Chris O'Dowd's loveable but slightly banal app developer.  By the end of the film she's found fulfilment on both fronts, even though the ending places female friendship ahead of relationship success.

The bare bones of the plot sound quite simplistic - and indeed the stuff of many romantic comedies. And poor Chris Dowd effectively plays the loveable schlub that he always plays. But as with LANDLINE, the focus here is on the female friendships and in exploring familiar movie plotlines with greater authenticity, audacity and sexual honesty.  In all that, it's Jessica Williams who carries the day.  The result is a film that is hugely funny and heart-warming but that isn't a memorable classic. 

THE INCREDIBLE JESSICA JAMES has a running time of 85 minutes and is not yet rated.  It played Sundance and the San Francisco film festivals and does not yet have a release date. 

THE PROGRAM - BFI London Film Festival 2015 - Day Four

You can listen to a podcast review of this film here or subscribe to Bina007 Movie Reviews in iTunes.

Stephen Frears’ new fictional retelling of the now sadly familiar Lance Armstrong story is NOT a great film, but it does contain a great performance. And if Ben Foster doesn’t win an Oscar for his turn as the disgraced seven times Tour de France cheat, then there’s a really outstanding movie out there that I have yet to see.

Hugely informed by USADA’s investigation, Floyd Landis’ testimony and the heroic David Walsh’s investigative journalism, this film is not a straightforward biopic. We never meet Lance’s mum, or spend time with his wife or children. This movie is, to invert the book title, all about the bike, and all about the dope. We meet Lance as a young racer in the early nineties literally getting mud splashed in his face by dopers he will never beat unless he “gets with the programme” - and that’s the programme of micro-doping, EPO, testosterone and cortisone invented by the ever-proud and morally deficient Michele Ferrari. John Hodge’s script loses no time in taking us on a fast paced tour through Lance’s early failure, cancer, that fateful and contested meeting with Andrieus, and onto his Tour success. We’re an hour in and he’s the ultimate sports hero. But we see vanity cut him down as much as it drove on - both in returning to the Tour and in cutting Floyd Landis lose.

London Film Fest 2012 - Day 5 - THE SAPPHIRES

So I went to what I thought was going to the press screening of the Sundance acclaimed John Hawkes starrer, THE SESSIONS, but it turned out I was actually at the press screening for THE SAPPHIRES.  My bad, but ins way good, because it meant I came to the film without a clue, with no preconceptions, and totally open to it. And what a ride it was!  Because while dressed up in the narrative structure of a romantic comedy, this movies just unique:  telling the true story of a 1960s Aussie aborigine girl band and their feckless Irish manager performing soul music for the US troops in Vietnam.

The result is a genuinely funny, feel good movie that's full of great tunes, but that doesn't gloss over the grim politics of the time: he racism towards Aborigines, and African Americans, and the horrors of Vietnam.  It even touches on perhaps the most shameless chapter in Aussie history, when fairer skinned Aborigines were forcibly separated from their parents and "civilised". 

Kudos to Aussie director Wayne Blair and to writers  Tony Briggs (real life son of one of the Sapphires) and  Keith Thompson for finding that perfect balance between joyful energy and political awareness.  I also thought the production design of wartime was impressive, particularly given the film's low budget. In front of the camera, Chris  is utterly charming as the Irish manager - seriously, is he the most charming man in cinema today?  And as the four girls, Deborah Mailman, Jessica Mauboy,  Shari Sebbens and Miranda Tapsell all do a fine job.

Of course there are gripes.  The girls often resolve arguments by singing, even in the much flagged unescorted drive to a gig, the sense of peril is never that high, and more often that not it's painfully obvious that the girls are lip synching.  Still, it's testament to the film's energy and joy that one of that bothered me too much.

THE SAPPHIRES played Cannes, Toronto, Telluride and London 2012. It was released earlier this year in Australia and France and is currently on release in New Zealand. It opens in the UK and Ireland on November 7th, in Germany on February 7th and in the Netherlands on 21 February 2013.

FRIENDS WITH KIDS

FRIENDS WITH KIDS, like FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS, is a movie that wants to seem transgressive and "real" but can't resist it's Hollywood rom-com ending.  The result in both cases is a rather banal 2 hour wait for the hero and heroine, so obviously in love with each other, to realise it at the same time, allowing a conventional loved up ending.

The opening is promising.  Jason (Adam Scott) and Julie (Jennifer Westfeldt) are two singletons in a group of friends that have had kids, and are blissfully smug about how their friends are just tired, frustrating kid-centric banalities.  Of course, this movie, written and directed by Jennifer Westfeldt, doesn't have the balls to really examine what would happen if you rejected that lifestyle, but instead decided to make the two singletons unite to have a baby, while trying to date independently.  Of course, as soon as the baby is born they both find what they might have previously thought was their Ideal 0 he gets the young hot chick (Megan Fox) and she gets the sensitive nice guy (Ed Burns). But because the movie can't end after an hour, Julie has to realise she's in love with Jason a few years before he reciprocates her feelings.  As if that were ever in doubt.

The movie is not without its delights.  There are a few scabrous and raucous scenes - typically involving John Hamm and Kristen Wiig as a deeply unhappy couple.  But the movie just isn't as transgressive as it thinks it is, and it's about as authentic as Chris O'Dowd's American accent.  The second hour really is a struggle too wade through.  In short, just another will-they-won't-they-oh-please-get-on-with-it rom-com.  I'm sad to say that Jennifer Westfeldt has form with this.  She pulled the same tease in KISSING JESSICA STEIN, a rom-com in which a girl thinks she's gay - which is a really interesting set up - but the movie then devolves into banality.  Not a director who's work I'll be seeking out in future. 

FRIENDS WITH KIDS played Toronto 2011 and was released earlier this year in the USA, Greece, Israel, Sweden, Russia, Mexico, Portugal, Brazil, Australia, Peru and Slovenia. It opens this weekend in the UK, Ireland, Finland and Serbia. It opens on July 5th in the Netherlands, July 12th in Argentina nad Bulgaria, August 1st in France, August 22nd in Belgium and Chile, on September 5th in Hong Kong and on November 9th in Turkey.

The film is rated R and has a running time of 107 minutes. 

iPad Round-Up 2 - GULLIVER'S TRAVELS

When I was a pre-teen and we all obsessively watched the lo-rent sci-fi TV comedy, RED DWARF, the phrase "almost Swiftian in its rapier-like subtlety" became a standard term of praise, long before we'd read Swift in class and fully appreciated the radical, deliriously scabrous nature of his political satire. That was back in the day when schools taught children useful shit like calculus and Latin.  Nowadays, family audiences have no use for political satire - although one might have thought that in the post global financial crisis world - with governments insolvent and political systems ossified by special interests - now would be EXACTLY the time for it.  And so, dear reader, we get the movies we deserve. Towit, Rob Letterman's utterly banal children's movie, GULLIVER'S TRAVELS - a film based on Swift only insofar as it incorporates a man who wakes up in a land filled with tiny little people called Liliputians.

So, Swift aside, how does it fare as simple family entertainment? Shockingly poor.  A mindlessly simple plot, piss-poor CGI effects, hammy acting from the largely British cast of character actors, and Jack Black playing the character he always plays - the childish, rock-obsessed but ultimately love-able frump. Director Rob Letterman and writer Joe Stillman display none of the wit or imagination seen in MONSTERS VS. ALIENS or SHREK. Must try harder.

GULLIVER'S TRAVELS was released over the 2010/2011 holiday season. It is now available to rent and own.

BRIDESMAIDS - chicks aside, pretty conservative

BRIDESMAIDS is getting massively hyped because, contra-vention, it's a bromance starring chicks and, shock, horror, chicks sometimes talk about sex! The reality is that, once you get over the shock of the all-female cast, BRIDESMAIDS is actually a deeply, boringly, conventional movie with a predictable plot, pedestrian direction, and over-written jokes. (Not to mention a random Irish cop - they try to make a joke about it - but seriously, why?) It all just makes me deeply depressed about how reactionary Hollywood is that such a simplistic gender-switcheroo can have everyone salivating.

Anyways, on to the plot, such as it is. Kristen Wiig plays Annie, a thirty something woman whose life is falling apart. Her business failed, she is divorced, her fuck-buddy treats her like shit, her house mates are kicking her out, and her boss is about to fire her. When her best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) becomes engaged and, despite picking Annie to be her Maid of Honour, seems to be gravitating toward her new glamorous friend Helen (Rose Byrne), Annie has a mini-breakdown. The pressures of the wedding combined with Annie's low self-esteem, lead to her pissing off everyone who cares for her, not least Lillian and Officer Rhodes - a sweet police-officer whose attentions she scorns. Still, this being Hollywood schmaltz, you just know that all this pain is leading toward a moment of self-revelation, a last minute reconciliation with Lilian, and a Happy Ever After with Rhodes.

I didn't have a totally bad time watching this flick. It was funny enough to get me through the two-hour run-time, although I didn't as many did, laugh at Kristen Wiig's physical comedy and the gross-out humour of the entire cast. Rather, I was kept in play by Jon Hamm's hilariously oleaginous turn as the fuck-buddy; by Matt Lucas and Rebel Wilson as Annie's fat flat-mates; and by the normally very pretty Melissa McCarthy ugly-ing up as the butch Megan. I also liked how Rose Byrne managed to transform Helen from an out-and-out baddy into a really sympathetic character, whose insecurity was far more pitiable than Annie's. After all, Annie gets Rhodes while Helen stays where she is. Take a look at Rose Byrne's subtle double-take as she sees Annie look at Rhodes for what she thinks is the last time. Now that's good acting.

BRIDESMAIDS is on release in the USA, Canada, Romania, Slovenia, Iceland, Australia, Hungary, Ireland, Kazakhstan, Russia, Norway and the UK. It opens on July 7th in Greece, Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Portugal, Singapore and Estonia. It opens on July 22nd in Germany, Finland, Lithuania and Sweden. It opens on July 29th in Poland. It opens on August 4th in Denmark; on August 10th in France; on August 10th in France; on August 19th in Italy; on August 25th in Thailand; on August 28th in Spain and on September 9th in Brazil.

THE BOAT THAT ROCKED - a lot of fuss about nothing

In general, I hate movies by Richard Curtis. He has created a mythical London in which smug middle-class bastards live in pretend-bohemia and have the emotional maturity of pre-teens. In Richard Curtis movies, the sun is always shining, unless someone has just broken up with you, in which case it rains. Everything happens for the best in the best of all worlds. It's a world I neither recognise nor find entertaining. Now, all this being said, the one thing you couldn't accuse Richard Curtis movies of was being poorly structured and lacking in narrative drive. Indeed, what irritates me so much about them is that they work so much like a Rubik's Cube of dappy fops. Everyone knows everyone else - everything is connected. Imagine then, my complete surprise in finding that THE BOAT THAT ROCKED has no point and no story. (I was less surprised to find that it had no jokes.)

What Curtis is trying to do is to make a movie about an epic clash between freedom-loving pot-tastic DJs and the reactionary, heartless British establishment. He wants the stakes to be high - freedom of expression and the very future of popular music. But he also wants to make jokes about poo and have a character called "Twatt". In reality, there wasn't an epic clash over pop music. Pirate radio stations weren't doing anything illegal. When the government realised this, instead of being all skull and dagger and Bond-villain about finding clever loopholes to shut them down, they just outlawed them. Pop didn't die. The establishment didn't win. Rather, a very typically British revolution happened. Pop was co-opted by the BBC, with many of the best DJs turning up on legitimate airwaves.

Curtis mistakenly tries to turn a rather banal set of events into A Matter of Life and Death. Kenneth Branagh and Jack Davenport play the establishment stiffs trying to shut down Radio Rock. The performances are excruciating to watch - hammy, unfunny, poorly directed and under-written. Meanwhile, a motley band of British comedians plus the brilliant Rhys Darby and Philip Seymour Hoffman play the DJs aboard Radio Rock. They make misogynistic jokes, shag a lot, play some decent records and that's about it. For nearly two hours we just get montages set to 60s hits; a piss-poor attempt at emotional drama via a paternity story; and no real laughs.

All this would be bad enough but in the final twenty minutes, Curtis decides to go in a direction that is just ludicrous. I can only hope he is satirising a very famous and very rubbish movie but I suspect that he was deliberately going for an ending that is as schmaltzy as the original.

The only possible reason to see this film is for Rhys Darby. And that's not enough. Even Bill Nighy's mannered delivery is starting to get on my nerves. As for Philip Seymour Hoffman, in general, he is a genius at picking great roles in superb dramas, but this is his worst choice since the abysmal ALONG CAME POLLY.

THE BOAT THAT ROCKED is on release in the UK and opens next week in Australia and New Zealand. It opens on April 16th in Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. It opens on April 30th in Russia; on May 1st in Estonia; in May 6th in Belgium, France and Iceland. It opens in Spain on May 29th; on June 5th in Bulgaria; on June 11th in Italy and Hungary; on June 19th in Turkey; on July 30th in the Czech Republic; in Argentina, Brazil and the USA on August 28th.