GREED - BFI London Film Festival 2019 - Day Eight

GREED is a witty satire undone by heavy-handed politics and a Chekhov's Lion last act twist that is so obvious and absurd it can only be described as a Marxist masturbatory fantasy. It's a movie whose politics were perfectly in keeping with the anti-capitalist Millenarian rabble up the road on Trafalgar Square, with a similar level of intelligence and nuance. I didn't learn anything about Phillip Green and his ilk that I - and anyone else who reads a newspaper - didn't already know. And I didn't need a lecture on fast fashion at the end of the film. I also didn't need a very reductive version of how fast fashion exploits workers.  Those seeking a more nuanced view of what those jobs are worth to Asian women, and how they are empowering themselves, should watch MADE IN BANGLADESH instead.

That said, if, and it's a big if, you can ignore the final fifteen minutes of this film and Winerbottom's unsubtle politics, there's a lot to like about GREED.  Steve Coogan is very good as a preening narcissist. To use a line from the film, "but you're playing yourself, so it doesn't need to be method." Shirley Henderson is absolutely class as the mogul's Irish mother, both as a young woman and as a grandma.  There's something very convincing about her tirade at the priggish public school headmaster patronising the Irish immigrant. And some of that immigrant drives ring true to my family's desire to make good. Ambition is different/fiercer/stronger when you've been locked out and kicked down. But it's David Mitchell as the biographer writing McCreadie's life story who gets all the best lines, and one wonders how much of that was written by Winterbottom or ad-libbed by Mitchell. I also really liked a sub-plot about McCreadie's feckless daughter filming a reality show, with real-life reality star Ollie Locke. There's some really great social commentary here. Shame it gets so obvious when it comes to its immigrant and anti-capitalist politics. 

GREED has a running time of 100 minutes.  It played Toronto and London 2019 and will be released in the UK on February 21st 2020.

Overlooked DVD of the month - I COULD NEVER BE YOUR WOMAN

I COULD NEVER BE YOUR WOMAN is a very witty satire at the expense of the superficiality of TV studio execs, played out in the form of a romantic comedy. It features a star cast including Michelle Pfeiffer, Paul Rudd and Saiorse Ronan, who went on to win acclaim for her role in ATONEMENT. British comedy fans will be delighted with cameos from Graham Norton and Mackenzie Crook. And yet, this film went straight to video in the UK.

I have no idea why this movie bombed. I found it really hillarious, spot-on in its social critique and pretty insightful about how men and women approach ageing. Pfeiffer plays a forty something TV exec who writes a teen sitcom in the manner of SAVED BY THE BELL. She's trying to "moisturize her way back to her twenties" and believes that by wearing a Ramones t-shirt and maintaining her college weight she can fight off the ageing proces. Paul Rudd plays the twenty something cast-member who tries to date her. Already, you've got a movie that takes the piss out of the fact that all the supposed teens on US TV are actually married with kids. And then you have the meta critique with Rudd and Pfeiffer playing people ten years younger than they are.

All I can say is, that this movie is definitely worth seeking out. It far surpasses all those Judd Apatow movies on the laugh-out-loud-o-meter. If you liked CLUELESS or KNOCKED UP - this is one for you!

I COULD NEVER BE YOUR WOMAN opened in Spain, Belgium, Greece, Brazil, Turkey, Poland, the Netherlands, Russia, Hungary, Estonia, Indonesia and Israel in 2007. It opened earlier in 2008 in the Philippines, Hong Kong, Thailand and Mexico. It went straight to video in the US and UK.

MAGICIANS - way weaker than Peep Show

Mitchell and Webb are very funny British comedians best known for their bleakly comic TV series PEEP SHOW and more recently for the British version of the Mac versus PC ads. Sadly, their transition to the big screen is weak beyond belief. The laughable* premise is that they were two magicians who stopped performing together when one caught the other in flagrante delicto with his wife and then chopped off her head accidentally on purpose in a stage act. They reunite four years later out of sheer desperation to compete in a Magic competition that yields a £20k cash prize. This competition is set in Jersey for no apparent reason other than to allow a few weak jokes about the fear of flying. Don't get me wrong - there are some funny scenes. But no more than you'd get in your usual 30 minute TV episode. It's as though the writers have taken the regulation quota of funnies and filled in the other sixty minutes with an entirely predictable lame "plot" that could've been bought by the yard on Drury Lane. Towit, there's a half-hearted attempt to satirise "mind-monger" magicians like David Blaine and Derren Brown, but the writers don't make enough of it. Another interesting fact is that by far the funniest person in the movie is a magician's assistant played by Jessica Stevenson. So Mitchell and Webb have created a star vehicle in which they are not even the stars! Craziness.

THE MAGICIANS is on release in the UK. Do yourself a favour and just watch Peep Shown on Channel 4 for free.*At, not with.