BABYGIRL**

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BLITZ** - BFI London Film Festival 2024 - Opening Night Gala

Steve McQueen made a series of powerful TV specials under the banner of Small Axe, showing the experience of black people living in London in the 1960s.   In doing so, he was showing stories that had been under- or mis-represented.  The mission of his new feature film, BLITZ, is exactly the same. He wants to show the viewer just how multicultural London already was two decades before Windrush, and how the same prejudice blighted the lives of its black residents.  

As with Small Axe, some of the best scenes in BLITZ are those centred around music.  There's a tremendous flashback scene set in a dance hall where you feel the music pulse. There's an even better scene set in a luxurious Cafe de Paris style nightclub with a Cab Calloway style performer and the real-life pop star Celeste. And music is woven into other scenes - whether cockneys playing a washboard or gathered around a piano in the pub.  

It's hard to fault the way the film is put together. The recreation of bombed out East End streets - the peril and terror of houses on fire - the smouldering vistas the next morning. It's all immaculately recreated.  And it's hard to fault McQueen's earnest message of brotherly love. The problem is that this isn't a series of music -centred short films (as it probably should've been) but a feature film - and a feature film needs narrative propulsion and characters we care about.

We don't care about these characters because they are thinly drawn avatars.  Good guys vs racists. Saoirse Ronan's single mum Rita is good. The Fagin-style thieves played by Kathy Burke, Stephen Graham and Roddy from Slow Horses are bad. The almost angelic air raid warden Ife is good. And really good because he let's Rita's mixed-race son George feel proud of his blackness.  The nasty racist cockneys who want to put a sheet up to isolate the Sikhs are bad.  It goes on and on.

To make it worse, thin characterisation is met with thin dialogue.  And the poor kid - Elliott Heffernan - is given very little to do as George. He only exists to allow McQueen to follow his steps through the various vignettes that McQueen is actually interested in showing us.  

I also feel that - fatally - this film is miscast in its lead role. Ronan cannot do a convincing East End accent and she also cannot sing.  Having her lip sync to someone else's voice brings us out of the film.  For a character whose life is expressed in music - whose love for her son and father is shown through music - this is a real problem.

BLITZ is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 113 minutes.  BLITZ will be released in cinemas on November 1st and on Netflix on November 22nd.

THE IRON CLAW*****

Sean Durkin's THE IRON CLAW is an absolutely mesmerising and deeply moving drama that tells the story of the real life Von Erich family. I had no knowledge of them before this film but apparently they are wrestling royalty, infamous for a much-mythologised series of tragedies. 

As the film opens, we are treated to a black-and-white flashback where the paterfamilias, Fritz Von Erich, is apparently denied his chance to win a title. His revenge is to seemingly raise a large family of boys who are pressured and groomed to win his approval and also win wrestling titles.  The Iron Claw is thus not just his trademark wrestling move, but also the way in which he exerts toxic control over his family, the wages of which we will see play out over the running time.

Zac Efron stars as Kevin von Erich.  It's a performance of great vulnerability and physical prowess that reminded me - inevitably - of Mickey Rourke in THE WRESTLER. Efron bulked up for the role and in the opening shot of him the camera interrogates every vein and muscle on his body. He is a machine created by his father for vengeance. Efron's mournful performance is a career-best and no doubt benefits from what we bring to seeing him on screen. His real-life arc from teen idol to indie darling by way of addiction and body dysmorphia adds a layer of pathos to this role. The parallels between Hollywood and wrestling are painful to contemplate - the extreme body mutilation and pressure to perform - the substance abuse and toxic svenaglis - it's all here.

Next comes Kevin's brother David, played by THE TRIANGLE OF SADNESS' Harris Dickinson. David is the natural showman, more articulate than Kevin, and so finds himself top of his father's preference ranking of his sons - a game that both Kevin and David seem willing to play.

We are in trickier water with the two youngest sons.  Kerry (The Bear's Jeremy Allen White) wants to compete in the Olympics, but his dreams are dashed by the 1980 boycott. He is pulled into wrestling, is good at it, but resents it. White's performance is one of such searing sadness that he barely needs to speak to convey the tragedy of his situation. Finally we have young Mike (Stanley Simons). He's just a kid who wants to make music with his literal garage band. He has no place in the ring, but what father wants, father gets.

All of this feels fairly hopeless and as a study of male toxicity it is. Maura Tierney gets a great scene as the religious oppressed mother who lets all of this happen. And Lily James is impressive in a small role as Kevin's wife. And really it's through her that the film avoids being unilaterally miserable. Because by anchoring in Kevin in marriage, the joy of fatherhood, and the opportunity to be a different kind of man, she gives us a path out of the Iron Claw. There's a scene near the end of this film between Kevin and his sons that made me cry. I don't want to spoil it - but it's one of the most well-earned moments of hope in recent cinema.

Kudos to Sean Durkin for writing and directing such a pellucid, affecting film. I absolutely loved his recreation of late 70s and early 80s small-town America - the music, the clothes, the cars, the garage bands. I loved the cinematography - the apparently meticulous recreation of the fight scenes - and the astonishing performances Durkin pulls from his cast. I do not understand why this film wasn't as big a deal on the awards circuit as THE WRESTLER was all those years ago. It deserves all the plaudits and all the success. And Efron deserves his own version of a McConaugheyssance. 

THE IRON CLAW is rated R and has a running time of 132 minutes. It is on global release.

WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING**

Director Olivia Newman has turned Delia Owens best-selling southern gothic thriller into a frustratingly dull, bloodless that fails to truly interrogate southern poverty, prejudice or sexual tension. 

The heroine, Kya (Daisy Edgar-Jones) is abandoned by her mother and siblings and left with her abusive father living in rural poverty in the North Carolina marshes. The book makes us feel the indignity of her poverty and the cruelty of the townsfolk that forces Kya to live as a hermit. But in this film the rough edges are smoothed over and her shack is expansive, sun-dappled and picturesque even before the make-over she can afford when her nature book is finally published. We never feel her hunger or otherness. 

The same goes for her interactions with the two men in her life.  Tate (Taylor John Smith) is the kind-hearted kid who teaches her to read and develop her interest in wildlife before leaving her for university - yet another betrayal in a life where everyone leaves her. Chase (TRIANGLE OF SADNESS' Harris Dickinson) is the local jock who uses Kya for sex and ends up dead with Kya defending herself in the courtroom drama framing device. In neither relationship is there any hint of sexual chemistry or emotional depth. It's all so.... plastic. 

As for the rest of the film it's so cliched it borders on offensive. We have David Strathairn phoning it in, in a pastiche of the earnest southern lawyer made iconic in To Kill A Mockingbird. And a lot has already been written about Delia Owens' treatment of the two thinly-written and earnest black shopkeepers who take Kya under their wing. It's a shame that screenwriter Lucy Alibar didn't give Michael Hyatt and Sterling Macer Jr more to do in these paper-thin roles.

WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING has a rating of PG-13 and a running time of 125 minutes. It is now available to rent and own.

TRIANGLE OF SADNESS - BFI London Film Festival 2022 - Day 7

TRIANGLE OF SADNESS is an hilarious dark political satire directed by Ruben Ostlund of FORCE MAJEURE and THE SQUARE fame. You know its going to be good not because it won the Palme D'Or at Cannes this year, but because it's so rare for comedies to get any awards that they have to punch so far above their weight to get recognition.

The film falls into the category of post Global Financial Crisis films where - I guess the normal people? - mock the super-rich for being greedy, selfish arseholes.  It's a category that includes the phenomenally successful White Lotus and this year's surprise film THE MEAL. As a reviewer for the blog formerly known as Movie Reviews for Greedy Capitalist Bastards, I am of course one of the super-rich and thus the target of this humour. As such the film resonates differently but just as powerfully!

As the film opens we meet male model Karl at a casting, being assessed like stock at a cattle fair. There's a laugh-out-loud hilarious moment when we are told that the more expensive the clothes, the more miserable the models look. It's so clever, and true, and funnily portrayed you know you're in good hands in this film.  We then move to meeting Karl's model girlfriend Yaya, over a rather difficult meal where he comes to the realisation that she's in a relationship of convenience. They're both beautiful and it's great for instagram followers. Hey, it scores them a free holiday on a luxury yacht.

This is the meat of the film - the cast of rich rogues being ministered to by a vast staff of pretty white servers and brown people behind the scenes. There's so much truth to that, and to the entitled behaviour - for sure exaggerated here for comic effect, but not by much, in my experience.  The pivotal event occurs about two thirds of the way through when have the chance to see society upended in a Lord of the Flies type social experiment that ends in a fairly predictable but still darkly hilarious finale. 

Kudos to everyone in this ensemble cast for creating such a brilliantly macabre film. But most of all to Ruben Ostlund for his script and direction. The message is depressing and cynical but resonates: that all relationships trade sex for money; that equality is a childish fiction; and that anyone would oppress the weak if they had the chance of power. 

TRIANGLE OF SADNESS is rated R and has a running time of 150 minutes. It played Cannes where Ruben Ostlund won the Palme D'Or. It is currently playing the BFI London Film Festival and will be released in the UK on October 28th. It was released in North America last week.

THE SOUVENIR II***** - BFI London Film Festival Day 3

Julie is grieving the death of her charismatic, controlling, deceitful boyfriend Anthony. She doesn't know if she misses who he was or just the companionship and intimacy of love. She expresses her grief in her student film, a memorial, or Souvenir, if you will.  And in making the film, she rediscovers her sense of fun and takes joy in her friendships. We leave her still aware that she is inchoate and waiting to find her voice, but optimistic. And we leave the film, conscious that writer-director Joanna Hogg, who has created this fictionalised version of her life in this film, has indeed voice her voice with this deeply felt, technically audacious, often hilarious, film.

Viewers who have not seen Hogg's previous film, THE SOUVENIR, may struggle to understand why Julie is so driven to capture her relationship with Anthony. Without Tom Burke's dominant presence, I feared that this sequel might lose its purpose, much as Julie feels unmoored at the start of the sequel. But as the film progresses we see Julie find her way, thanks partly to her unstintingly supportive if somewhat anachronistic parents (Tilda Swinton and a drily hilarious James Spencer Ashworth). She also progresses with her student film despite her supercilious film professors, but with the support of her best friend Marland (Jaygann Ayeh). Along the way there are moments of desperation - and searching for connection - and the lightest of touches with the tragedies of the 1980s when a gay editor reveals his boyfriend has been sick for a while.  Richard Ayoade also returns with a scene-stealing turn as an arrogant film student with dip-dyed hair. The problem is that he's not wrong in what he says! Julie should move on.

But what raises this film to a level beyond that achieved in the first part of THE SOUVENIR is Joanna Hogg's greater confidence in exploring the meta-textual nature of making a film about her own student film-making. I LOVE that the student film we finally see bears no resemblance to the verite-footage we have seen so far, but leaps into Fellini or Red Shoes ballet -esque surrealism. Bravo!

I also hope that Honor Swinton Byrne continues to act. She has a natural charisma and empathy that shines through the screen. I'd love to see what kind of range she has.

THE SOUVENIR II has a running time of 106 minutes and is rated R. The film played Cannes and the BFI London Film Festival 2021. It will be released in the USA on October 29th 2021 and in the UK on January 21st 2022.

MATTHIAS & MAXIME - BFI London Film Festival 2019 - Day Two

MATTHIAS ET MAXIME starts of with such joyous energy that one feels the immediate intimacy and zaniness of an old bunch of schoolfriends. The banter, the in jokes, the casual intimacy is all there.  And despite the almost constant gaggle of overlapping conversation, one soon gets a real feeling for the characters, each friend essayed so superbly and concisely. From Frank's easy FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH baked confidence - to Rivette taking on the MC role, directing all activities as well as playing chorus.  There's Matthias (Gabriel D’Almeida Freitas), who seems to have shit together more than the others.  He's on the fast track at his law firm and he's the only one who apparently has a serious girlfriend.   And finally, there's Maxime, played by the writer-director-editor-costumier Xavier Dolan. Babyfaced, quieter, browbeaten by his abusive, addict mother (MOMMY's Anne Dorval), desperate to escape to a gap year in Australia. 

The events of the film are set in motion by Rivette's hilariously annoying wannabe Valley Girl sister Erika, who's making a parlous student film and ropes in Matthias and Maxime.  Sharing a kiss on screen prompts an identity crisis in Matthias, who turns cruel in his denial, devastating poor Maxime.  The emotional consequences of this unravel over the next ninety minutes.

MATTHIAS ET MAXIME shares the best and worst characteristics of all Dolan's films. At their best, they give us insight into the LGBTQ experience in a way that feels authentic and raw and moves us deeply.  They give us precise visual coding, and an obsession with dated, faded suburban interiors. They give us gloriously choreographed set-pieces and 80s synth-pop.  They feel like Sirkian melodramas made contemporary and thrilling.  But they also tend to the indulgent, with sagging overlong third acts, and plots that are rather predictable. On the whole, I can overlook the faults, because Dolan does something so particular and unique, and simply never fails to move me. The picture he paints of a loving, self-sacrificing son is just heart-breaking.  And I love the ambiguity of the ending. Moreover, this is one of the most joyous and laugh out loud funny of Dolan's film, especially in the breathtakingly good opening thirty minutes, with Erika stealing the show!

MATTHIAS & MAXIME has a running time of 119 minutes. The film played Cannes and London 2019 and does not yet have a commercial release date.