THE LAST SHOWGIRL***

THE LAST SHOWGIRL is a slight film at just shy of 90 minutes and slighter still in plot and characterisation.  The pull is that Pamela Anderson gives a lovely performance as an ageing Vegas showgirl called Shelly whose long-running and old-fashioned Revue is being shut down.  This prompts her to attempt to connect with her estranged daughter Hannah (Billie Lourd).  Hannah is resentful that Shelly put her "nudie show" ahead of being a good mother, but Shelly rightly points out that she was doing the best with what she had. It's an exchange that drips with sincerity from Anderson's Shelly but Lourd is just not giving anything as her scene partner.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, in a script that never surprises, Shelly is more of a mother to her "found family" - two younger dancers played beautifully by Kiernan Shipka and Brenda Song. All three have to some extent bought into Shelly's myth of following one's passion and being a dancer, but in a brief and heartbreaking scene, Shipka's character hints at what happens when you take on an unconventional job to your family's disapproval. We feel that the younger girls may have a future, but what of Shelly? She shouts to an uncaring but honest producer (Jason Schwartzman) that she's 57 and beautiful but we know her career is basically done.  Is her delusion dancing on stage any better or worse than that of her best friend who waitresses and gambles and is now homeless? Jamie Lee Curtis was nominated for a Bafta for her role, and it's vulnerable and bold, but as with so much of this film never really moved beyond the obvious.  I just wanted more depth from Kate Gersten's script and more from the lo-fi direction from Gia Coppola.

THE LAST SHOWGIRL is rated R and has a running time of 88 minutes. It played Toronto 2024 and was released in the USA in December 24.  It will be released in the UK on February 28th 2025.

EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE*

I first tried to watch this film last year and gave up after 20 minutes. When it won a bunch of Golden Globes I tried again and it made it through an hour twenty.  I wasn't going to go back but a friend said there was this amazing speech by Ke Huy Quan that was SO moving so I watched again to the end. Alls I can say is that I'm really happy Ke Huy Quan is finally getting work again and that Michelle Yeoh is finally getting recognition as a serious actress. And I'm super glad the "two Dans" - who directed and wrote this movie really love sci-fi and meta verse films and Kubrick. But this film is a mess. A really boring, bullshit mess and I do NOT get the hype.  

Somewhere in it's bloated running time there is  touching story about a middle-aged woman who runs a laundrette and is trying to file her taxes. She is trying to reconcile herself to her life choices, and trying to rescue her daughter from depression, and trying to rediscover her love for her husband, and indeed herself.  THAT would be a worthwhile film. We rarely see such stories of middle-aged women, let alone Asian women.  But this film is so crowded with juvenile humour and what-if scenarios in alternative universes that the actual deep emotion is undercut.  I can't FEEL if I'm being distracted by Michelle Yeoh and Jamie Lee Curtis with hot dog fingers. Maybe that's on me. 

EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE has a running time of 139 minutes and is rated R. It played SXSW 2022 and is on release globally.

KNIVES OUT - BFI London Film Festival 2019 - Day Eight

KNIVES OUT isn't a bad movie. The luscious production design, the all-star cast, the three, count 'em, three laugh-out-loud moments are truly funny.  But I had expected so much more from writer-director Rian Johnson than just a straightforward old-fashioned slow-paced closed-house murder-mystery. I had expected some of the subversion of his debut modern high-school noir BRICK. I had expected at least some of the piquancy of a Wes Anderson movie, whose production design (THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS anyone?!) he so clearly apes.  But no. Oh no. What I got was a murder mystery along the lines of Agatha Christie but less well penned.  I guessed the first hour twist in the first five minutes, and the second hour twist in the first ten minutes of that hour. At least the second hour was more pacy. The first hour was so slow and dull that if I hadn't been trapped in the middle of the row I might've left.  I didn't understand the resounding laughter of the audience who were clearly having a good time. Maybe they just read less murder mysteries than I do and so were genuinely surprised at the ending?  I also really didn't like the heavy-handed political point that the film was trying to make. Ooooh look at all those exploitative rich white dick-heads bested by a warm-hearted immigrant.   What a waste of Christopher Plummer, of Michael Shannon, of so many others.  What a pain to sit through Daniel Craig's piss-poor Poirot pastiche and his Southern drawl.  The only real interest was seeing relative newcomer Ana de Armas do a great job as the "help" and protagonist of the film.  As a closing comment, it's interesting that I love detective fiction and thought Rian Johnson did a mediocre job with this. And I really liked LOOPER, but my husband who actually does life sci-fi, thought THAT was mediocre.  Maybe Rian Johnson just makes mediocre sci-fi movies that anyone who really loves the genre sees right through?

KNIVES OUT has a running time of 130 minutes. It played Toronto and London 2019. It is released in the USA on November 27th and in the UK on November 29th.

78/52 - Crimbo Binge-watch #6

78 setups - 52 cuts - 2 minutes - those are the metrics behind the infamous shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock's brutal masterpiece - PSYCHO.  In this meticulous and beautifully curated documentary we get an in-depth look at how that scene was storyboarded, edited and scored - why it works so well - and what meanings Hitchcock was trying to convey.   Director Alexandre O Philippe - of the superb THE PEOPLE VS GEORGE LUCAS - does an amazing job in assembling a wonderful cast of commentators and letting them speak.  He gets everyone from Janet Leigh's original body double, to her daughter Jamie Lee Curtis, to horror directors Eli Roth and Guillermo del Toro, to author Brett Easton Ellis.  He gets Danny Elfman who scored the remake, and countless expert cinematographers and editors who takes unto the technical detail of how PSYCHO's impact was achieved. The result is a doc that isn't for dilettantes but a film that will reward the Hitchcock fans looking for further insight. It was an absolute delight to watch.

78/52 has a running time of 91 minutes and is rated 15 for images of sexual violence. It was released in 2017.

VERONICA MARS

So I'm a massive fan of the Veronica Mars TV show, even though, like most people, I came to it too late to contribute to the actual ratings, and watched it on Netflix after it got cancelled.  It was this amazing high school detective noir, similar in tone to Rian Johnson's insanely good debut feature BRICK.  I loved the cynical vibe - the fact that high school was all about date rape, infidelity, class warfare and injustice.  And I loved that the heroine was genuinely smart, tough and witty, like Buffy but without all the fluffiness. Finally, just to make me extra-happy, as the show as set in a fictional town near La-La-Land, there was also a healthy dollop of satire at the expense of Hollywood, as well as a really ahead-of-its-time understanding about the impact of social media on teenage lives.

Of course, a TV show this smart was going to get canned, and arguably should've finished after series 1 anyways.  Like the similarly dark (although far crazier) TWIN PEAKS it never really survived the big reveal of who killed Lily Kane/Laura Palmer.  So I was a little worried about what this new kick-starter funded ten years on movie would look like? Was it going to be like friending those high school kids on Facebook years later just to see what they looked like now? Or was it actually going to have merit as a movie on its own terms?

I can't really judge the latter - what the movie feels like to someone who didn't watch the TV show. And to be sure there was a lot of fun to be had seeing how people looked and where writer/director Rob Thomas had them ten years on.  Some of the problems persisted from the original. I always felt that Veronica's high school friend Wallace Fennel (Percy Daggs III) got a bad rap from the writers who didn't know what to do with him once Veronica started dating/using Logan (Jason Dohring) as a sidekick. And even in this movie, poor Wallace seems to have grown up to be a high school coach just so Veronica can get some info on current students. It was far more satisfying to see geeky IT hacker Mack (Tina Majorino) grow up to become a spiky babe, or the humour with which they still had Veronica hitting up cop Leo (Max Greenfield) for info.  I also liked that they gave former biker-with-a-heart-of-gold a really politically provocative and all too believable sub-plot, which will hopefully also be the hub of a sequel.  

Does the movie stand up on its own, though? The murder mystery at the heart of the film is fairly mechanical and as we don't really care about the victim in the way we came to care about Lily Kane, I guess it's not that involving. I also saw who did it as soon as we realised where their career aspirations were.  Moreover, the whole Ross-Rachel aspect to the Veronica-Logan relationship felt weird and weak and a sad call for Piz (Chris Lowell) but I guess that Rob Thomas was more constrained by fan-service than most writers given the nature of his movie's funding. Still there was enough in the plot to keep me interested and provide a vessel for Veronica's and particularly Keith Mars' wit. And I would definitely watch another film? At the theatre? No.  But a a kind of extended TV movie, yes.  And it's too bad Netflix doesn't just fund another series. 

VERONICA MARS is available to watch on demand. It has a running time of 107 minutes and is rated PG-13 in the USA and 12A in the UK for strong language, moderate violence, sex, and sex references.

London Film Festival Day 11 - NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD

NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD is a brilliant doc about Aussie exploitation flicks from the 70s and 80s. It's a great flick for three reasons. First off, the subject matter is just balls out funny - slasher pics, crazy stunts, kung-fu fighting and copious quantities of tits'n'ass. Second, because even if exploitation films aren't your thing (and they're not my thing at all) you can't fail to be swept up by the enthusiasm, good humour and audacity of the guys and girls who made and starred in these movies and their chief cheerleader - Quentin Tarantino. This is all down to director, Mark Hartley, who has managed to get all the major players on tape, talking candidly. Third, Hartley does a great job in editing his material together. He manages to impose order on this chaotic film movement, making a clear case for Ozploitation as being culturally significant and the foundation of the Aussie film industry. After all, people like Barry Humphries, Susannah York and DP John Seale went on to mainstream success, and directors like Brian Trenchard Smith have a major influence on films from KILL BILL to the SAW series. So whether or not you're a fan of B-movies - indeed whether or not you're a cineaste - I can highly recommend NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD. It's that rare thing - intelligently made AND raucous fun!

NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD: THE WILD, UNTOLD STORY OF OZPLOITATION! played Toronto and London 2008. It was released earlier this year in Australia.