THE THING WITH FEATHERS**** - Berlin Film Festival 2025

Whether or not you enjoy writer-director Dylan Southern's new film THE THING WITH FEATHERS will probably depend on how far you buy into his visual rendering of the high concept at the heart of the beautiful book upon which it was based.  Because novelist Max Porter chooses to tell the story of a grieving widower and his two small sons by imagining their grief as a large black crow who pokes, prods and even punches them into accepting their devastating loss.  What can be imagined from the page often appears clunky or laughable on screen and I was desperately worried that seeing a man-sized crow with a thick Northern accent wouldn't work. But I am delighted to say that for me, at least, it really did.

I found myself deeply engaged with this small family in its brutal fight for survival.  Benedict Cumberbatch is in almost every scene and perfectly embodies a dad who wasn't hands on before his wife's death and struggles to navigate family breakfast. And what superb work by casting director Shaheen Baig to find two young boys - Richard and Henry Boxall - to play the two sons -  who are rambunctious and confused and sad and angry and tender by stages.

Southern's script, closely following the book, captures the banal and sometimes insulting cliches of the grief industry and the well-meaning but prying acquaintances.  How many times was Cumberbatch's dad asked "how he was doing?" How does one even put it into words?  But these tone-deaf inquiries are balanced by Sam Spruell's cameo as a caring brother, Vinette Robinson as a good friend, and of course, Crow, voiced by David Thewlis - masterful as always.

I came through the film feeling both that I really knew and cared for this family, and also that I had seen a raw and vulnerable exploration of grief. The book is wonderful and this film probably comes as close as one can to translating it to the screen. 

THE THING WITH FEATHERS has a running time of 98 minutes. It played Sundance and Berlin 2025.

ENOLA HOLMES 2****

I was an enormous fan the original Enola Holmes film and I’m please to report that the sequel, reuniting most of the talent in front of and behind the lens, is just as smart and funny. It’s even more pleasing that the central murder-mystery is really well-constructed, and that the movie manages to incorporate its real history of the rise of the women’s labour movement with a light touch that is genuinely moving, rather than being crude or too on the nose.

The film opens with Enola (Millie Bobby Brown) struggling to find customers who take her detecting skills seriously. In desperation she takes the case of a missing match-girl which leads to the wider mystery of why so many of these factory workers are dying of typhus and why the profits at the factory have mysteriously rocketed. This brings Enola into the path of her famous elder brother Sherlock (Henry Cavill) whose case about corruption at the highest levels of government and industry is seemingly connected with Enola’s.  

Along the way, we get to re-connect with Enola’s aristocratic love interest Lord Tewkesbury (Louis Partridge), the martial arts supremo Edith (Susan Wokoma) and of course the proto-feminist that is Enola’s mum (Helena Bonham Carter).  And of the new cast members, David Thewlis is particularly scene-chomping as the nasty policeman, Inspector Grail. We also get a marvellous cameo from Sharon Duncan-Brewster, who was so impressive as Liet-Kynes in the recent DUNE remake.

The resulting film is fast-paced and often Guy Ritchie-inspired in its kinetic fight scenes.  There’s plenty of fun and even some meta-comedy at the expense of the knowing fourth-wall breaking catchphrase “Tis I!”

The only character I can’t get my head around is Cavill’s Sherlock, playing against type because his character has far less action than the female characters. He mostly looks grave and concerned and doesn’t entirely convince in his early scene as a drunk.  It’s interesting to see that the writers have given him a sidekick - Dr Watson - in the final credits scene. Let’s see how Cavill does in a more conventional buddy-comedy role.

ENOLA HOLMES 2 has a running time of 129 minutes and is rated PG-13. It is released on Netflix today.

THE MERCY

THE MERCY is the latest in a long line of treatments of the infamous 1968/69 round the world yacht race called The Golden Globe. It captures the imagination because it's a pure challenge between man and the elements - to sail a boat with rudimentary equipment around the world single-handed over many months - a test both of the boat and man's ability to deal with extreme isolation and peril. I have long been fascinated by the type of people who are driven to face such challenges - whether climbing mountains above the "death zone" - or sailing into peril. And the Golden Globe, more than other races, epitomises the strange pull on a certain type of man to prove himself. It attracted both professional sailors and rank amateurs - and that too is one of its attractions. The idea that anyone could simply get into a boat and sail around the world appeals to a sense of old-fashioned adventure.

THE MERCY focuses on just one of the nine entrants to the Golden Globe race - the most notorious - Donald Crowhurst. It may well be best to watch it knowing absolutely nothing about him, but as the story is going to 50 years old next year, I'm going to go ahead and discuss its broad outlines in order to review the film. Crowhurst was a talented electronic engineer and weekend sailor in coastal waters. But he was struggling with his business, and was reliant on an investment from local entrepreneur Stanley Best to stay afloat. Crowhurst saw entering the race as a chance to gain the kind of fame and fortune that Sir Francis Chichester had earned when he went round the world with just one stop the year before. If he could prove the value of his pioneering electronic gadgets on board a famous voyage, regardless of winning, Crowhurst would be set up for life. But, because he was reliant on yet more sponsorship from Best to build his boat, if he failed to sail, or dropped out early, he would lose his house, boat and business. The stakes could not, therefore, have been higher.

The film shows Crowhurst in a sympathetic light - a charismatic family man with real smarts - but out of his depth in preparing for such a voyage against a very tight deadline. The boatbuilders can't always get first choice materials, his design is untested, and he hasn't got the time to build the electronics that should make a trimaran able to right itself when capsized (it's chief safety problem). Sponsors are hard to come by, but he does get recording equipment from the BBC and instructions to send back updates to his rapacious press agent. Money is tight. The stress builds, and he spends much of his final night before sailing in tears. The omens are bad - the champagne bottle won't crack against the hull, the test voyage takes two weeks rather than three days, and even when he sets sail on the race, he has to tow back to sort out his sails.

It's very clear from early on that he neither the open water sailing experience nor a suitable boat for the voyage. The early parts of the film show him to be very honest and logical in laying out the problems he has to solve. As he slips down the coast of Portugal and onto Africa his speeds are underwhelming and he spends his time manually bailing out the hulls. At some point he decides to make a simple deception - and fakes a speed record. But that does't yet mean that he's decide to fake the entire voyage. The film shows beautifully the slow slipping into fakery. But there's a moment when he takes the plunge - when he starts genuinely faking his progress, using enigmatic radio messages and refusing to give his precise bearings. At this point, though, it's a logical reaction to desperation. He wants to give us, but is in an invidious financial position. Another problem for Crowhurst, as the film so clearly shows, is that slight fakery is exacerbated by his press agent Ronald Hallworth - a man with shady ethics who takes Crowhurst's deliberately vague reports and exaggerates and firms them up with fake accuracy. This puts Crowhurst in as much of a bind as his financial problems, because he can’t very well drop out of the race in a position on the map where he’s not meant to be anywhere near! And so the film shows a man under insupportable pressure decide to fake his voyage, and because this means complete radio silence, slip into madness. I’ll say no more here, although I have written my thoughts on how this is handled below the episode notes for those who are interested.

THE MERCY succeeds because of the central performance of Colin Firth (THE KINGSMEN)- showing a range and nuance that makes this perhaps his finest performance since A SINGLE MAN. It’s a sympathetic but harrowing portrait of a good, intelligent and earnest man who desperately needs to speak to his wife in private and seek solace and advice but cannot. Yes he told a lie, but to save his family from ruin, and in the absence of any emotional support. And who then sails for months, in isolation, and becomes unmoored from reality. It’s also, despite it’s specific context, a deeply relatable story about what loneliness and stress can do to one. The film also benefits from being shot on the open sea, and on celluloid - an authenticity that’s hard to replicate in a tank - and than creates one or two really quite beautiful images. By contrast, when it comes to the land-based scenes, director James Marsh (THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING) seems to get through them in a rather workmanlike manner.

Because this is Firth’s film - rightly so - those cast in smaller roles are little more than quickly essayed character traits. Rachel Weisz (THE LOBSTER) is merely there to be deeply sympathetic as Crowhurst’s supportive wife Clare, unwilling to tell him not to proceed because she wants to support his dreams, even if it means ending up on the dole and alone. Clare is also given a rather bombastic final scene which, in its (bizarre, to my mind), condemnation of the press, felt anachronistic, and certainly didn’t happen. David Thewlis is mono-dimensionally creepy as the press agent Hallworth. And we get a cameo from Simon McBurney as Sir Francis Chichester, but he’s bizarrely unused as the film develops even though his reaction to Crowhurst’s voyage was one of the more interesting.

The film suffers from a lack of context. Crowhurst’s struggles are easier to understand and sympathise with when you realise how far the other sailors suffered from stress and isolation - the story of Moitessier in particular shows how easy it is to become unmoored. And although unprepared, he was by far not the most amateur of the sailors - that honour goes to Chay Blyth who literally had to learn to sail as he went. But perhaps that would’ve taken too much time to explore? What the screenwriter, Scott Z Burns (THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM), could’ve done quickly and easily was introduce a scene where we learn that both the pumping hose and the box of spare parts was left onshore by mistake, making Crowhurst’s voyage harder to sustain. I also feel that more time could’ve been spent on establishing Crowhurst’s philosophy of life as a kind of game before the race, to help give content to the 25,000 words of Philosophy written in his logbooks at sea. Because even as he became unmoored, there was a through line from earlier beliefs, and again that speaks to his intelligence.

Overall, I did enjoy the film, mostly for Firth’s performance, and because even when done narrowly, it’s a fascinating tale. I suspect that for people who truly want to understand the psychology of not just Crowhurst, but all the men who took part in the race, and its dramatic emotional consequences, the 2006 documentary, DEEP WATER,  reviewed here, will remain the first port of call. I can also heartily recommend reading The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst by the Sunday Times journalists Nicholas Tomalin and Ron Hall. This was published immediately after the race, in 1970, and benefited from the authors being able to comb over the log books and other documents that came off Crowhurst's boat, as well as interviewing those involved in the race. I found it to be an incredibly well researched and fair-minded book, deeply sympathetic to Crowhurst and quoting liberally from his writings. The makers of this film seem to disagree, which I find odd. Another valuable book is Chris Eakin's A Race Too Far. This covers the race in its entirety, looking at all the participants. It therefore goes into less depth on any one of them, and quotes liberally from the Tomalin and Hall book. It was published just last year and therefore can interview participants and their families.

THE MERCY has a running time of 101 minutes and is rated 12A in the UK for infrequent strong language. It will be released in Portugal on November 23rd, in the Netherlands on December 14th, in Australia on February 8th, in the UK on February 9th, in Poland on March 2nd, in France on March 7th, in New Zealand on March 8th and in Germany on March 29th. 

WONDER WOMAN

Beating an admittedly low bar, WONDER WOMAN is unquestionably the best movie in the DC franchise. It has some of the darkness of BATMAN VS SUPERMAN but never feels pretentious or portentous; and in the place of SUICIDE SQUADS' maddeningly shifting tone and offensive objectification of Harley Quinn we have a movie with a straightforward compelling story and a courageous and often subtle take on modern sexual and racial politics.  The result is a film that's both highly enjoyable and yet deeply meaningful  - a long overdue strong heroine in a universe full of macho posturers. 

The movie opens in contemporary France with Batman reaching out to Diana/Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), but it's essentially a long flashback and origins story, told in live action and with beautifully designed animation and the most seamless use of CGI.  We see the young child growing up on an island of Amazonian woman - fierce warriors created by Zeus to protect humanity from the corrupting influence of his son Aries, the god of war.  Diana herself is moulded from clay by her mother Queen Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen - GLADIATOR), and made live by Zeus himself. Accordingly, she is herself a god, sister to Aries, although this fact seems to escape her logical notice.  The Amazons have been holed up on a magical island while World War One is raging around them, until US spy Steve Trevor (Chris Pine - STAR TREK reboot) crash lands in their midst.  A brave Diana then returns with him to wartime Europe, supposedly to bring an end to war by killing Aries, whom she believes is German General Ludendorff (Danny Huston.)

LEGEND

2015 was the year of Krays films and the one I anticipated was LEGEND, starring as it did Tom Hardy and both Ronnie and Reggie, beloved 1960s East End gangsters who infiltrated the highest levels of English society until they finally got banged up.  But I'm sad to say that the movie is boring to the point of switching off, bar a few good set pieces.  Unlike most critics I don't think it's the fault of Hardy.  Some have called his portrayal of Ronnie - a heavily doped up, heavy drinking, violent paranoid schizophrenic - too broad.  On the contrary, from the books I've read and documentaries I've watched, Hardy seems to get Ronnie just right. He loved his brother. He loved being a gangster. He loved the protection his aristo lover gave him.  But he was very very sick and almost impossible to control. I think there's no doubt that Reggie would have had a long and successful career as a criminal if it weren't for his brother running around with impossibly ambitious American schemes and generally running successful ventures into the ground.  And then, of course, there were the murders. That Hardy also manages to portray Reggie is a testament to his skill at essaying a subtler but still menacing character who was unfailingly loyal to his brother, even at the expense of his tragically doomed wife Frances.

MACBETH (2015)

Justin Kurzel's new adaptation of Shakespeare's violent tragedy is visually arresting, and beautifully scored by the director. The language may not always be as crisp and beautifully enunciated as a theatre production, but that is secondary to creating a film where emotion is conveyed on the face and physically, creating an atmosphere of tortured intentions and motivations that is rightly sinister and tragic. The result is a movie that isn't slavish to the text and has a unique vision of how this well-worn story should be told. 

MACBETH opens with husband and wife burying their children in a scene that makes explicit what many readers have often guessed at. It explains something of Lady Macbeth's language regarded her femininity and also how they would turn inward and pin all their hopes on a political future. Accordingly, they are ready for the seeds sown by the three witches - here not macabre obviously mystical creatures but deceptively straight-coward Scottish peasant-women. Shockingly quickly this turns into a murder plot that escalates and yet gives no satisfaction. 

Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard bring real depth and nuance to their performances as the couple ripped apart by mutual guilt and paranoia. But I almost feel that the performances are overshadowed by the general production design and cinematography. What I remember from this film aren't specific performances or even soliloquies but individual visual moments. Adam Arkapaw's cinematography is gorgeous. He captures a delicate sunlight through mist and fog. But at key moments in battle, director Justin Kurzel slows down the authentically grim battle footage with freeze-motion shots that look like tableaux. It's quite stunning and resurrects the use of a technique that Zack Snyder has done so much to cheapen. This is lush sensory film-making of the highest quality.

MACBETH has a running time of 113 minutes and is rated R. The movie played Cannes 2015 and is currently on release in Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Ireland and Greece. The movie will open in Germany and Hungary on October 29th; in Iceland on November 6th; in Vietnam on November 13th; in France on November 18th; in Russia, Singapore, Mexico and Poland on November 27th; in South Korea, Lebanon, the USA, India, Kuwait, Bulgaria, Canada and Turkey on December 10th; in Argentina and Denmark on December 17th; in Bosnia, Brazil, Estonia, Spain, Finland and Norway on December 25th; in Italy and Sweden on January 6th 2016; in the Philippines and Chile on January 14th; in Indonesia on January 27th and in Japan in June.

THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING

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

THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING is a well-acted but ultimately banal biopic of the famous physicist Stephen Hawking (Eddie Redmayne) as told from the perspective of his first wife Jane (Felicity Jones).  As it opens, the young couple meet at Oxford University in the 1960s and are immediately smitten with each other.  Almost simultaneous with their courtship over the first half hour of the film is the discovery that Stephen suffers from Motor Neurone disease with perhaps only two years left to live.  It is testament to Jane's courage that she refuses to be shut out of Stephen's life and drops her own studies to marry him, raise his children and nurse him as he makes his reputation as one of the great scientists of our age.  But as we move into the second half of the film, while they both clearly still love each other, the cracks are starting to show.  Jane, who has always been religious in contrast to Stephen's atheism, falls in love with her Church choir leader, an earnest widower who becomes a kind of surrogate husband and father with Stephen's apparent blessing.  And then Stephen, forced to have a tracheotomy, and before he gets the computer voice we have come to associate with him, falls for his physical therapist.

THE ZERO THEOREM - LFF 2013 - Day Five

Aaargh! I wanted to love ZERO THEOREM, I really did! And I loved the satirical visual in-jokes, the rambling shambolic wonderfully inventive Terry Gilliam trademark production design. There were individual moments of genius - Tilda Swinton's cyber-psychologist starting to rap her advice when her programme gets buggy - Matt Damon as the evil totalitarian overload "Management" wearing suits that camouflage against his furnishings - singing pizza boxes - oh the list goes on!  But I just found it so hard to grab hold of the movie.  It kept slipping through my fingers.  I just didn't empathise with the protagonist, or get an idea of what the stakes were, or know who I wanted to win, or what winning even was. And without any kind of anchor, the visual tricks became tiresome, after a while.

The movie stars the charismatic Christoph Waltz against type as Qohen Leth - a kind of mad Uncle Fester, shaved and paranoid, living in a ramshackle old church, working for some kind of tyrannical company, waiting delusionally for the phone call that will give him the meaning of life. Into this world comes the fantasy girl Brainley (Melanie Thierry) - a kind of cyber-punk take on the "hooker with a heart of gold" trope - as well as what turns out to be Management's son (Lucas Hedges) - a smart-talking IT genius - both of whom have been sent to help Qohen Leth with his mission.  And what is that mission? To solve the Zero Theorem, proving all life as meaningless. 

That's about as much plot as we get.  What this movie is really about is satire on contemporary society - the paucity of modern relationships in a world of cyber-communication - the trashiness of online sex - the wince-inducingly naff adverts - the  dependence on therapists and pills - the alienation of atomised man. All this amongst visuals that give us a feeling of childlike whimsy and a society disappearing up its own proverbial. If only Richard Ayoade's dystopia in THE DOUBLE had had one percent of the imagination of this film. And if only this film had had one percent of the true emotion that Ayoade found at the heart of his story. Alas, it was not to be. 

THE ZERO THEOREM has a running time of 107 minutes.

THE ZERO THEOREM played Venice and London 2013 and opens in Italy on December 19th and in Russia on January 2nd. 

THE FIFTH ESTATE

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

I rather enjoyed the new Wikileaks movie, THE FIFTH ESTATE, despite its rather cartoonish characterisation of the two protagonists.  Julian Assange is very much painted as an odd fish: egomaniacal, deceptive, paranoid, with a casual disregard for human life.  By contrast, his early collaborator Daniel Berg, upon whose book this movie is partly based, is portrayed as a man of conscience and humanity.  Where Assange wants to publish and be damned, arguing that THAT is the very mission of Wikileaks, Berg wants to protect innocent sources and take the time to do actual fact-checking.  He sees the irony of Assange: a liberator of secrets who is himself secretive;  a noble idealist who treats those around him ignobly; the man who would bring institutions to account, but is accountable to no-one.

I'm not sure how much truth there is to such an account, and while it seems to mesh with other reports of Assange's idiosyncrasies and ego, one must also remember that he is subject to a smear campaign.  What I CAN say is that it makes for a highly compelling movie, with every broad stroke characterisation over-ridden by the voyeurs joy at seeing inside (supposedly) the most important news organisation of our time.  This is helped by a charismatic and note perfect impression of Assange by Benedict Cumberbatch, and another fine and sympathetic performance from Daniel Bruehl (RUSH) as Berg.  I also thought that just as David Fincher found an imaginative way to present programming in THE SOCIAL NETWORK, so director Bill Condon (TWILIGHT: BREAKING DAWN) has found a really neat visual trick to show us how Wikileaks operates.  He uses the metaphor of a room filled with old fashioned desks with computers and name plates.  By showing us who is sitting at them., what they are doing, how they are being destroyed at various points in the film, he helps us understand the various shifts in power no the reality behind Assange's facade.

I guess my frustration is that with the movie starting at the point at which Assange meets Berg, and given that our only view on his past is mediated by Assange, I'm not sure we get at the truth of what motivates him.  He clearly had a weird childhood, to put it mildly, and maybe it's too early to really get the full perspective on what makes him tick.  Still, as a biopic suffering from the fact that the sources only gives us one side of the story. THE FIFTH ESTATE, still manages to give us what seems to be an authentic and fascinating picture. It's well worth a watch.

THE FIFTH ESTATE has a running time of 128 minutes and is rated R in the USA.

THE FIFTH ESTATE played Toronto 2013 and is on release in the UK and Ireland. It opens next weekend in the USA, Canada, Estonia and Lithuania. It opens on October 25th in the Czech Republic, Italy, Brazil, Finland, Poland, Spain; on October 31st in Germany and Norway; on November 8th in Australia, Denmark and Iceland; on November 14th in Argentina and Singapore; on November 21st in Belgium and Hong Kong; on November 28th in Greece; on December 4th in France; on December 6th in Sweden and on December 19th in the Netherlands.

WAR HORSE

I have neither read Michael Morpurgo's children's novel nor seen the acclaimed National Theatre production of War Horse. I came to the material fresh, though wary of Steven Spielberg's attachment to it.  To my mind, Spielberg is a supremely flawed director, for whom story is subservient to sentiment.  His films are peopled with father-less children; heroic underdogs; and they have a quite risible tendency to refocus history on the few good acts rather than the wider evil. I find this inability to look bleak truth in the eye somehow insulting to those that lived through those times - a slippery fiction - and sadly, WAR HORSE is no exception.  For Spielberg has created a drama about a war in which millions died that continually cuts away from tragedy and focuses on sun-dappled scenes of goodness. It is emotional manipulation of the most vulgar kind, despicable, and dishonest. 

The story is meant to be one of the triumph of the underdog, and the triumph of love and loyalty.  Ted Narracott (Peter Mullan) is a poor farmer who buys a beautiful thoroughbred rather than a plough-horse to spite his landlord (David Thewlis) and palliate the pain of surviving the Boer War. His son Albert (Jeremy Irvine) turns "Joey" into a working horse against everyone's expectations, but the pony is requisitioned by Captain Nicholls (Tom Hiddleston) and taken to war.  As the cavalry is decimated by German mechanised units, the horse passes into the hands of a deserting German boy (David Kross, THE READER), then into the hands of a sweet French farm-girl and her grandfather (Niels Arestup) before being captured by the Germans to pull artillery.  It is thus fully a hundred minutes before our War Horse finally makes it to the front line, stranded in no-man's land, and cut free by a German and a Geordie (Toby Kebbell) in a scene clearly meant to evoke the common plight of the honest soldier. Finally, she is reunited with Albert, in an ending as endless as THE RETURN OF THE KING - first a reprieve from the doctor (Liam Cunningham), then a reprieve from an auction, and finally a ludicrously over-coloured reunion with mother (Emily Watson) and father back in Devon.  

This film is technically accomplished, particularly in its depiction of the front line. But its substance is confused and contradictory - the fault of Spielberg and his screenwriters Lee Hall (BILLY ELLIOT) and Richard Curtis (of all those awful fantasy-London films such as NOTTING HILL and LOVE ACTUALLY).   On the one hand, Spielberg wants us to sympathise with honest working folk - Ned Narracott and the Grandfather in France who bid in auctions against evil capitalist materialists.  Then again, he has an almost Downton-esque deference towards descent upper-class chaps who promise "man to man" to take care of horses.   No-one is really evil here.  Ned Narracott isn't really a feckless drunk.  Grand-pere isn't a coward but a principled pacifist. Even the German generals just have a job to do.  No-one is killed on screen. And of course, we never believe a major character is really in peril.

There are two scenes in this drawn-out farce that are worth a damn. The first is a scene where Major Jamie Stewart (Benedict Cumberbatch) - a gentleman cavalry officer of the old school - is unhorsed by a German artillery attack and mocked by his opposing officer. This moment - Major Stewart's resignation and realisation - sums up the tragedy and stupidity of the Great War. A generation that had been bred to gallantry - that should have learned from Crimea - finally had their illusions shattered by the first mechanised war.  The second scene is the depiction of going over the top at the Somme and the aerial pull-back showing body upon body impaled on barbed-wire wooden fences and trampled into the mud.  There is the horror of the war.  One doesn't need the deliberate emotional manipulation of a stranded horse to provoke the audience's pity.

WAR HORSE is on release in the US, Canada, UK, Australia, Singapore, Thailand, Brazil, Hong Kong, Israel, Ireland, Malta, Poland and Spain. It is released on the 19th January in Greece; on January 26th in Denmark, Kazakhstan, Russia, Slovenia, Estonia and Lithuania. It is released on February 2nd in Belgium, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Norway and Turkey; on February 9th in Argentina, Hungary and Romania; on February 17th in Germany and Italy; on February 23rd in France, Portugal, Finland and Sweden; and on  March 2nd in Japan. 

London Film Fest 2011 Day 15 - ANONYMOUS

The use of the interrogative tense in the poster for ANONYMOUS is misleading. Director Roland Emmerich and writer John Orloff aren't asking whether Shakespeare was a fraud. They are telling us, without doubt, with complete certainty, that he was. Their theory is that it is inconceivable that a poorly educated provincial dolt could have written plays of such genius and erudition. Rather, they posit that the Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere, a man of great wealth and learning, wrote the plays. But at a time when theatres were next to brothels, and plays seen as seditious, it would have been degrading for Oxford to be publicly acknowledged as an author.  He therefore allowed the boorish, illiterate actor, Will Shakespeare, to take the credit, and the cash, with Ben Jonson as the unwilling go-between.  If this weren't scandalous enough, the movie further raises the stakes by positing that Oxford was at the centre of a conspiracy by his enemy, the puritan Cecil family, that involved the line of succession, incest and bastards. 

Taken on its own terms, ANONYMOUS is a great success. Indeed, I was quite amazed that Roland Emmerich - director of such dubious, mainstream disaster movies as 2012; 10,000 BC; and THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW - could direct something with such elegance and beauty. Because, make no mistake, ANONYMOUS is a brilliantly directed film. The way in which Emmerich deftly handles the transitions between different periods in Oxford's life is elegant and never confuses.  The conspiracy is woven with great delicacy so that even in the final act, we are genuinely surprised and saddened by the turn of events.  In front of the camera, Emmerich coaxes a career best performance from Rhys Ifans as the older Oxford, and uses CGI to create a completely engrossing and compelling Tudor London.  I was absolutely delighted to see Southwark and the Tower recreated, complete with squalor and grandeur.  Kudos to cinematographer Anna Foerster, shooting with the Arri Alexa (the first feature to do so).  She manages to create a colour palette of warmth and depth, beautifully capturing candelit pageants, and snow-covered country mansions. Most importantly, I cared. I deeply cared about the battle between Oxford and the Cecils - I cared about the fate of young Essex, the Queen's bastard son and pretender to the throne - and I cared about the Queen herself, wonderfully portrayed by Vanessa Redgrave as frail and vulnerable and hounded on all sides. 

Of course, when I stand back from the film, the whole thing seems a bit pointless. I've always thought that these debates - who wrote Shakespeare; was Shakespeare a crypto-Catholic; was the Dark Lady really a boy - pretty pointless, as there simply isn't the documentary evidence to decide it either way. So you're just left with dogmatic people using thin supposition.  In particular, the idea that Shakespeare couldn't have written the plays because they required great education strikes me as peculiarly class-ist. Just because someone is provincial and working class doesn't mean they aren't capable of genius - I mean, isn't the whole point of genius that it's like a lightning bolt. And anyway, according to Rene Weis' superb book "Shakespeare Revealed", Shakespeare attended a local grammar school and was taught by a string of Oxbridge graduates in all the subjects and to the very same standard that the movie suggests Oxford was tutored in and to....

But as I said, there's no point quibbling about the truth. I am perfectly happy to believe Will Shakespeare was indeed Shakespeare.  That didn't stop me having a cracking good time watching ANONYMOUS.  To that end, this movie falls firmly in the same category as SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE - a pleasing fiction.

ANONYMOUS played Toronto and London 2011. It is currently on release in Portugal, Finland and Norway. It opens on October 28th in Canada, Ireland, the UK and the USA. It opens on November 3rd in Germany; in Spain on November 11th; in France, Russia and Singapore on November 17th; in the Netherlands, Mexico and India on December 1st; in Sweden on December 16th; in Hong Kong and Hungary on February 2nd.

Late Review - MR NICE

Director Bernard Rose takes a break from contemporising Russian literature, with his straight-ahead adaptation of Howard Marks' autobiography, MR NICE. The charm of Marks' story is that he stands against the cliché of the drug dealer typically seen in films. He doesn't grow up in a mean urban setting - he doesn't push drugs to survive - he isn't particularly flash - he doesn't do whores - he's faithful to his wife and kids - and he studiously avoids Class A drugs - both dealing them and taking them. In fact, he is rather more like a hero of an Ealing Comedy - stumbling into drug dealing quite by accident and permanently amused that he is getting away with it.

Marks was basically just another middle-class kid studying at Oxford and smoking hash when a mate asked him to do a favour and drive a car stuffed with drugs back from Germany. Marks was quite happy to quit teaching for easy money-making and soon hooked up with the Provos to bring his hash into UK airports without the inconvenience of customs checks. Before long he's got the biggest outfit in the UK and tries to crack America. Moreover, he's been recruited by his old college chum to be a spy in Kabul - after all, he moves in circles they can't penetrate! The first time he's busted for dealing he gets off on grounds so spurious he seems to be amazed, but he does eventually serve time - and not because of hubris, or narcissism, or betrayal - but basically because he was too bored to quit.

The film is charming and fun, and uses a deliberately lo-fi amateurish style, with live action footage digitally inserted into grainy old vintage footage of the 60s and 70s. Rhys Ifans is suitably bumbling and charming as Marks and he and Chloe Sevigny as his wife seem genuinely in love. I also love David Thewlis - who has just that edge of danger required to play the Provo, Jim McCann. The charm and the fun is entirely in keeping with Marks' carefully cultivated persona as Mr. Nice. Yes, that was his real alias, but he also wants to be seen as basically a good guy. To that end, this movie drips with family values, and to watch it, one would think that his wife and daughters never blamed him for one second for being absent from their lives. The film also refuses to question how far his involvement with the Provos was morally pretty nasty - after all, the dodgy money they were earning wasn't going into real estate, was it? And there is a deliberately cultivated equivocation about how far he ever really did any spying for the British.

So, MR NICE is basically a rather fawning film - frothy, light, charming, disposable. It doesn't get to grips with Howard Marks - but provides him with a yet another self-justificatory platform. Is that bad? Who knows. But there is something rather, well, distasteful in an international drug dealer who consorted with the IRA palming himself of as a charming rogue.

MR NICE is currently on release in the UK.

THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS - an immaculately-made, disturbing film (*spoilers*)

THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS is, deep breath, a film about the Holocaust for children, based upon a book that is now being taught in British schools. The fact that it may be on your child's book list shouldn't make you complacent about taking them to see it. It's a disturbing picture and seeing things on the big screen can be more horrific than reading them on a page. It's important to teach this history but please be aware that the film-makers do not pander to their audience in the final ten minutes. If you need further information you can check out the PBBFC information here.

Ok. Public Service Announcement over, we can get back to the review. THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS is a deeply affecting, well-made drama aimed at children, but worth watching as an adult. The movie is told from the point of view of an eight-year old boy called Bruno, and the film-makers are careful to introduce the details of the Holocaust very slowly. The first time we see Bruno's father he isn't in uniform. He just looks like a normal dad. And it helps that the mostly British cast choose not to play it with caricature German accents. Still, Bruno is an observant child and he can tell that his grandma isn't happy with his father's decision to move the family to the countryside. Once in the new house, Bruno is frustrated and lonely. He manages to sneak out of the house and stumbles upon the electric fence of a "farm" where everyone wears "striped pyjamas".

The clever thing is that none of the adults lie to Bruno. The assumptions that he makes about the prisoners and the nature of the camp are all logical and plausible when viewed from the perspective of an innocent young boy who falls back on the presumption that his dad is a good man. Even when Bruno starts speaking to Schmuel, an 8-year old prisoner, he is slow to catch on. So long as you can grant the film-makers the initial conceit that these two boys could have met, the rest of the movie flows naturally. Their conversations, rationalisations, mistakes and reconciliation have an air of authenticity.

The denouement comes swiftly and, for adults, with a grim sense of what the end will be. The grim inevitability and sheer horror is enhanced by James Horner's tremendous orchestral score which builds to a literal scream. I was surprised by just how straightforward the film was and just how affecting the end was. This is surely as it should be. This is the sort of film that you don't leave the cinema talking about with your friends. You walk home in silence, considering what you've seen.

Kudos to novelist John Boyne and screen-writer, director Mark Herman for having the judgement to bring this to the screen. Herman in particular deserves praise for getting good performances from the two young boys, Asa Butterfield and Jack Scanlon. David Thewlis and Vera Farmiga are typically good as the parents, but we also get a very powerful cameo from Sheila Hancock as the grandmother. I also thought this was the first film in which Rupert Friend gave a very convincing and nuanced performance.

THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS is on release in the UK. It opens on September 26th in Spain; on October 3rd in Ireland; on November 7th in the USA; on January 23rd in Norway; on February 12th in Argentina; and on April 2nd in Germany.

THE OMEN 666 - It's official! The EU will destroy mankind!

You know what, I am all about the Omen remake. Not because it’s a great movie but because I have seen so many piss-poor un-scary ‘70s horror remakes of late that it’s a huge relief to see anything remotely competent on screen. And this version is competent. More than that, it fulfilled the genre contract of making me jump out of my skin around 5 times in the two hour stretch, despite the fact that I had seen the original and so knew the plot. I think this comes down to the fact that the central story of THE OMEN is fascinating and terrifying, and no matter how hard you try, it is pretty hard to balls it up. In addition, we get some nice character actors giving strong supporting performances – from Pete Postlethwaite, David Thewlis and Michael Gambon to the iconic Mia Farrow. It’s all good.

Except when it isn’t. Hard-core 70s horror fans are bound to find plenty to be disappointed by, not least the weak casting of the main roles. Liev Schreiber – usually a fine actor – gives a bizarrely understated, or should I say comatose – performance as Robert Thorn. Schreiber has obviously made a choice to play Thorn as a hard-as-nails, bottled up kind of guy. However, it seems a bit unsatisfactory that his face barely ever registers emotion given that pretty much all Thorn does in this movie is get a lot of shocking and bad news, usually related to how people he knows and love have suffered agonising deaths and how his own son may in fact be the devil’s spawn. His wife, Katherine Thorn, is played by Julia Stiles – again a fine actor, but around fifteen years too young for the role. My final quibble is that while this seems like a fairly lush, blockbuster-stylee production there are one or two glaring errors. In the climactic car chase a character rushes through the streets of England only to pass buildings with conspicuously Central European signage. Nice.

Anyways, like I said, I have a fondness for this flick. It is what it is – an above-average remake of a horror classic that, despite its manifold flaws, still managed to scare me silly a couple of times. Job done.

THE OMEN 666 is on global release. P.S. The reference in the title of this review is to the assertion in the movie that one of the portents of Armageddon is the rising of the Roman Empire. David Thewlis' character interprets this as the signing of The Treaty of Rome.

BASIC INSTINCT 2 - My not-so-secret shame

So I found myself in the West End with a couple of hours to spare and I decided to check out BASIC INSTINCT 2. My motives were pretty miserable: curiousity and a sort of malevolent will to laugh at something bad. So, I slapped down my ten squid, armed myself with some happiness-inducing ice-cream and braced myself for the worst. Two hours later I left the theatre in a state of shock and shame - my entire worldview had been shaken - I had to admit to myself that I *really* enjoyed this movie. Which is, as far as I can tell, a minority view. When something like this happens you have to ask yourself: is the rest of the world completely wrong about BASIC INSTINCT 2 and/or was I smoking crack?

Well, as painful as it is, let's try and work out exactly why I think you too should go see BASIC INSTINCT 2 this weekend. BASIC INSTINCT 2 is an erotic thriller. And before you think that sounds sleazy, you have probably seen and enjoyed more erotic thrillers than you think: Fatal Attraction, Where The Truth Lies, Mulholland Drive, In The Cut....And this sequel is far less erotic and far more a thriller than the original. (I am not saying that this is a good or a bad thing, just noting it for the record.) There is far less explicit sexual content, no obligatory lesbian sex-scene. Indeed, most of the time, sex is hinted at, off-screen, or we just see the sordid consequences of it. In many ways, then, BASIC INSTINCT 2 has taken its relocation to London seriously, and while the content hints at dark-doings, these are no worse than your average British political sex-scandal. (And no, I am not *just* talking about the spoofing of the famous Christine Keeler photo.)

A big sales factor for me is that the movie is shot not just in generic London but in precisely the part of London in which I live. And London looks bloody brilliant: all hyper-modern blade-runner skyscrapers in Canary Wharf and the City contrasted with claustrophic Gothic trophy buildings. It captures everything that I love about this town - that you can walk through the medieval glory of the Tower of London and five minutes later amble by the Lloyds building. And Soho (which these days is rather a gentrified tourist trap) has never looked more like a page from an Alan Moore novel.

But anyways, on to the plot and performances. The plot is pretty similar to the original movie. Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone) is a successful author of pulp fiction. Her novels involve sex, drugs, murder: "the basic instincts", and usually describe sleazy crimes that later just happen to occur. In the first five minutes of this movie she speeds off a road into the Thames while having sex with C-list British footballer, Stan Collymore, leaving him to die. This brings her to the attention of the local police, one of whom (David Thewlis) wants to bang her up (ho-ho) whether or not he has the evidence. Catherine is referred to the state's psychologist, Dr Michael Glass (David Morrissey). Glass diagnoses her as a "risk addict" whose own death will be the only final boundary to her reckless actions. He then takes Catherine on as a private patient. A tangled web of affairs and evil-doings unfold involving David's ex-wife, her lover - a tabloid journalist threatening to expose murky secrets in Dr Glass' past - and David's mentor, played by the ever-amazing Charlotte Rampling. As in the first Basic Instinct, as the murders pile up we ask whether Catherine really is a psychopath, or whether Dr Glass, or even the dirty cop, are committing them to save their respective assess.

So far, so good. The plot ticks all the right boxes. How about the execution? Like I said, director Michael Caton-Jones (who bizarrely has the diametrically opposite movie, SHOOTING DOGS in UK cinemas at the same time as this) creates the perfect backdrop in London. London shimmers and seduces in exactly the same way that Catherine should. And, to my mind, Sharon Stone really does pull it off - although I am a "gurl" so clearly am no judge compared to all those moronic guys on blogs posting that she is too old to play the part. Alls I know is that I cannot imagine anyone else acting this outrageously and looking completely authentic while they are doing it. I am less sure of David Thewlis as the dirty cop and David Townsend as Dr Glass. Thewlis goes for over-the-top hammy - presumably on the say-so of the director - and Townsend is little better than a foil. It would have been infinitely more satisfying had they cast a heavyweight actor - whether Yank or Brit. Someone like Clive Owen, I suspect, would have done better.

But finally, I think the film works on a basic level as a whodunnit. The two hours flew by as the bodies mounted up (hehehe) and the plot became more complex. Yes I know some of it is a bit silly, not least the Stan Collymore episode, but you have to admire any film-makers that understand that genre and revel in its possibilities. And I defy any audience not to enjoy the scene where Catherine immitates Christine Keeler, gets Dr Glass hot, and then announces, "I think our time is up, Doctor!" That was one of the many INTENDED laughs that this film got.

So there we are. I really liked this film. What's next? I develop a taste for Jennifer Aniston rom-coms?

BASIC INSTINCT 2: RISK ADDICTION is on global release.