LOVE, SIMON

I was ready to love LOVE, SIMON, even predicting I might cry by the end. All I knew was that it was a very well received teen romance about a kid called Simon coming out - a long over-due mainstream look at a seminal moment for any gay teen. The movie starred Jennifer Garner as the mum - so was bound to be aw-shucks lovely and earnestness - and even had two of the cast of 13 REASONS WHY - Katherine Langford and Miles Heizer - for teen credibility. 

But as the movie unfolded I found myself alienated by its interior design perfection. Perfect house, perfect room, perfect parents. Simon listens to perfectly curated cool music and has perfectly curated politically correct diverse friends. I guess this is the point - when life is so perfect - why risk alienation from it by coming out? And so Simon resists coming-out, even though his parents are so huggingly-warm-hearted and liberal.  Rather, he submits to a blackmailer at school and sells his friends out.  I'm sure this is meant to come across as a genuinely tough decision but it struck me as just really shitty and selfish, for a kid who was probably going to have the easiest coming out in history. 

The rom-com grinds through its wheels. Third act alienation of all friends. Fourth act redemption. And ends with a happy politically correct resolution. But it just left me as limp and unexcited as the poorly executed mid-move college-set dance number - clearly inspired by (500) DAYS OF SUMMER.

It all got me wondering just how radical this film really was. When I grew up I was watching Ricki deal with high school bullying and sex on MY SO-CALLED LIFE with a level of authenticity way beyond anything here. Is this really the progress - or regress - we have made in thirty years? That, dear reader, is truly depressing. It also got me wondering how actors could go from a show that attempts something as raw, and truthful, and unpatronising as 13RW, into something as banal and airbrushed as this.  For shame. Still, for all that, I'm glad this movie exists insofar as it can give comfort and inspiration to any kids out there.  I just don't need to see it again.

LOVE, SIMON is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 110 minutes. 

ALEXANDER AND THE TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE, NO GOOD, VERY BAD DAY

This  movie is a workmanlike and mildly entertaining adaptation of the children's book by Judith Viorst.  It's got a high concept not unlike the Jim Carrey vehicle LIAR LIAR, in which a put upon schoolboy wishes the rest of his family would understand his pain, and so wishes them a terrible day. The next day, of course, happens to be one of a critical work task for his mother, a job interview for his father, his brother's junior prom and his sister's high school musical.  Naturally all these things go belly up, but being a heart-warming tale of family, they emerge from it more appreciative of each other than ever.  Steve Carell and Jennifer Garner play the parents and let's face it, it's hard to think of two more likeable and harmless actors in contemporary cinema. They imbue the film with good intentions and the rest of the film just trails in their wake.  I found the whole thing unutterably dull, and given how clever modern animated movies are at keeping all ranges entertained, this is a real problem. That said, I am sure the kiddies will relate, even if there is no real message to the film.

ALEXANDER AND THE TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE, NO GOOD, VERY BAD DAY has a running time of 81 minutes and is rated PG. The movie was released earlier this month in Argentina, Aruba, Azerbaijan, Colombia, Israel, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Mexico, Russia, Canada, Estonia, Romania, the USA, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Philippines and Latvia.  It is released this weekend in Trinidad and Tobago, Brazil, Chile, Hong Kong, Uruguay, the UK, Ireland and Lithuania. It will be released in Greece, Peru Paraguay, and South Africa on October 30th; in Portugal, Spain, Poland and Turkey on November 7th; in Taiwan on November 14th; in Norway on November 21st; in Australia, Denmark, Malaysia, New Zealand,  and Singapore on December 4th, and in Germany on April 9th 2015. 

MEN, WOMEN & CHILDREN - LFF14 - Day Three

Whatever happened to Jason Reitman?  He started off with these scabrous satires like THANK YOU FOR SMOKING - that were wicked and smart and hugely enjoyable.  But last year his movie LABOR DAY - a holy overdrawn melodrama starring Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin flopped onto the screen at the London Film Festival only to be trumped by this year's banal, trite and utterly superficial attempt at social comment: MEN WOMEN AND CHILDREN.

The film is meant to be an insightful and tragic depiction of the nefarious influence of IT on modern life but it has nothing new to say. Yes we know teenage girls find it easier than ever to fall into body dysmorphia in online chatrooms, and we know porn is easily and corrosively available, and we know that some people see reality TV as a means not only to be successful but as a validation of self.  This stuff was done with FAR more credibility and subtlety and artistic integrity in Sofia Coppola's BLING RING, for example. Or indeed, the second time I'm quoting this film in two days - Gus Van Sant's TO DIE FOR.  

All we have here is a very conventionally filmed portfolio movie in which a wide cast of characters struggle with their own isolation and anomie - something, by the way, that wasn't invented with Facebook or even Durkheim.  It's a waste of a stellar ensemble cast and god forgive Reitman for the pretentious Voyager satellite metaphor and the utter embarrassment of a narrative voiceover from Emma Thompson.

MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN has a running time of 116 minutes. The movie played Toronto and London 2014 and opens wide in the USA on October 17th. It opens in the UK on October 24th, in France on December 10th and in Germany on December 11th.

DALLAS BUYERS CLUB

DALLAS BUYERS CLUB is a mediocre meandering film that just happens to contain two highly committed captivating performances.

The movie is inspired by the true story of Ron Woodruff, a good ole boy from Texas with all the associated bigotries, who was diagnosed as HIV positive in the mid-80s. It was an unforgiving era of paranoia about the AIDS epidemic, when doctors approached you with masks, and your community shunned you.  Add onto this the macho culture of a Texan rodeo town, and you have a desperate man, consigned to the margins, with a deep-grained prejudice toward his fellow victims.  What follows isn't a schmaltzy emotional enlightenment, a la PHILADELPHIA.  When Ron becomes close to Rayon, a pre-op transexual, it's because he needs an in to the gay subculture where he can peddle his under-the-counter anti-HIV meds, partly to finance his own use. To be sure, there are hints and flashes of a deeper understanding, and maybe affection, blighted only by Rayon's drug use, but this isn't that kind of movie.

What kind of movie is it? I'm not sure, and I'm not sure the writers are either.  At times, it feels like an odd couple dramedy with a mean old homophobe discovering his heart.  And at other times, it feels like they're trying to make an ERIN BROCKOVICH type issues move - equally concerned with Ron's fight against Big Pharma, and its rigged clinical trials pushing AZT as a treatment.  In the final act, the movie even pushes Ron into a courtroom drama, where he is demanding the right to take other medications that have not been approved by the FDA.  And the movie kind of fizzles out, and we learn that the Big Bad AZT actually wasn't so bad at all, apparently. Which is a bit of a damp squib conclusion.

By this point I'd come to the conclusion that DALLAS BUYERS CLUB was not a film with a unique and powerful directorial vision that director Jean Marc Vallée's debut feature had.  It's best viewed as a delivery vehicle for two great performances. The first of these is the least surprising: Matthew McConaughey has reinvented himself as a boundary-pushing character actor of the highest quality in BERNIE, KILLER JOE, MUD, THE PAPERBOY and  now here.  He doesn't shy away from showing the cold selfish arrogance of Woodruff, even in his supposedly reformed state, but also never lets him become a monster or a saint. It's a nuanced and fantastic performance.  The second great performance is from Jared Leto, as the pre-op transexual Rayan - vulnerable, world-wise, loving, damaged.  Both deserve the awards-season plaudits they're getting. So, is this a genuine BEST PICTURE contender? No. Is is worth seeing? Yes.  Beyond doubt.

DALLAS BUYERS CLUB has a running time of 117 minutes and is rated R in the USA.

DALLAS BUYERS CLUB played Toronto 2013 and was released last year in the USA and Canada. It was released last month in Portugal, the Netherlands, Singapore, France, Israel, Italy and Finland.  It was released early this month in Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Estonia, the UK, Ireland and Mexico. The movie opens this weekend in Australia and Greece; on February 20th in Hong Kong, New Zealand, Slovakia, Brazil and Japan; and on February 27th in Argentina, Paraguay, Turkey and South Africa. The movie opens on March 6th in Hungary, Serbia and Sweden; on March 14th in Spain and Poland and on March 21st in Norway.

DALLAS BUYERS CLUB has been nominated for six Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Editor, Best Make-up and Best Original Screenplay.  It won the Best Actor and Supporting Actor Golden Globes for Drama. 

VALENTINE'S DAY - not entirely unwatchable

VALENTINE’S DAY is a romantic comedy along the lines of LOVE ACTUALLY – in which we follow a number of characters, all loosely connected, living in contemporary LA on Valentine’s Day. We have everything from a teenager trying to lose her virginity (Emma Roberts); to a serving officer home on leave (Julia Roberts); from a cynical “player” sports journalist (Jamie Foxx) to an old-romantic florist (Ashton Kutcher) and many many more besides.

It is easy to deride VALENTINE’S DAY. It is a movie that has been so carefully constructed in the Excel sheets of Hollywood producers that is feels about as real and alive as a frozen turkey twizzler. Every actor has been chosen for their essentially good looks and winning smile. Every character is broadly delineated as being wholesome and good and thus deserving of True Love or as being superficial and duplicitous and therefore only worthy of being Alone. It’s the sort of movie that pats itself on the back for being so liberal as to have a gay character but doesn’t have the balls to show him making out. There is no plot development that cannot be predicted well in advance and no satire that hasn’t had its rough edges smoothed down. It’s a movie so shiny and brightly coloured in makes LOVE ACTUALLY - with its depiction of at least two “good characters” who end up unloved at the end of it – seem spiky and socially aware.

Nonetheless, I can’t deny that I had a passably good time watching the film, in the same way that a can of coke is predictable, tasty at the time, but offers no nutritional value. In a rising tide of blandness, Queen Latifah delivers one truly superb line, Taylor Swift was surprisingly willing to play dumb, and Anne Hathaway is always good at pulling off vulnerability. As for the rest of the cast, there’s nothing to write home about. The only thing that really pissed me off was the gaff in the writing that had Bradley Cooper’s character flying coach on a fourteen hour flight when he’s rich enough to have a chauffeur-driven limousine. Please. That guy would’ve been safely ensconsed in his personal sleeper seat in Business rather than propping up Julia Robert’s dozing head.

VALENTINE'S DAY is on global release.

GHOSTS OF GIRLFRIENDS PAST - Automated Rom-Com

GHOSTS OF GIRLFRIENDS PAST is a high concept romantic “comedy” in which Matthew McConaughey plays, shocking I know, a scoundrelous photographer who refuses to commit to the love of his life (Jennifer Garner). He is not a complete schmuck, you see, but is acting out as a result of childhood trauma and the example of his Robert-Evans-style lothario uncle (Michael Douglas). Said Uncle sends a ghost (Emma Stone) to show McConaughey’s character scenes of his past romantic cowardice, present shallow lifestyle and future loneliness if he doesn’t mend his ways. All of this takes place the night before his kid-brother’s wedding allowing a suitably schmaltzy ending and some lovely scenery in a gorgeous country house. The only reason to watch this movie is for interior design tips cum country house fantasising and to watch Michael Douglas camp it up as Robert Evans. I’ve seen Matthew McConaughey’s sterotypical arrested adolescent character too often now to find it interesting, and he has absolutely no chemistry with Jennifer Garner. Overall, this is just another one of those clunking rom-coms, where you can see the machinery of the plot lurch into gear and predict from the start where it’s heading. Dull, dull, dull.

GHOSTS OF GIRLFRIENDS PAST is on release in the UK, USA and opens next weekend in Australia and New Zealand. It opens later in May in South Africa, Argentina, Germany, Denmark, Estonia and Lithuania. It opens in Malaysia on 4th June; in Greece, Russia, Singapore, Brazil and Romania on June 12th; in France, the Czech Republic and Finland on June 18th; in Belgium and Italy on July 3rd; in Bulgaria on July 10th; in the Netherlands and Norway in July 24th and in Portugal on August 20th.

London Film Fest Day 15 - JUNO rocks my world

JUNO is another of those films that you feel wouldn’t have happened before Wes Anderson and Sundance took off and Napoleon Dynamite became a sleeper hit. You know what I mean. The faux-naif acoustic soundtrack featuring Kinks songs and Lou Reed. The quirky characters that say ever-so-slightly unrealistic things about life and love. The over-designed sets, crammed with bad-taste props and trashy clothes. The use of carefully designed credits with a hand-made feel – this time half-animated. The insistent campy visual motifs – in this case Michael Cera’s track-suit and the joggers who run across screen every now and then. I mean, Sweet Tap-Dancing Little Miss Sunshine, it even features a beat-up camper van.

For all that, JUNO remains a very smart, very witty and thoroughly engaging film. That’s largely down to a whip-smart script by new-comer, Diablo Cody, the good comic timing of director Jason Reitman (THANK YOU FOR SMOKING) and flawless dead-pan performances from Ellen Page (HARD CANDY), J K Simmons and Allison Janney. In addition, Michael Cera gives a stealth performance that is so quiet it’s easy to overlook how good he is.

Page plays an intelligent but, yes, fundamentally dumb, 16 year old girl called Juno, who gets knocked up by her best friend Paulie Bleeker (Cera). At first, she thinks she’ll just get a quick abortion but almost on impulse decides to give the baby up for adoption. Her parents (Simmons and Janney) are flummoxed but supportive, and while Juno gets odd looks at school she has enough moxy to front it out. The putative adoptive parents are played by Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner. Bateman is suitably slippery as the cool older guy. There’s a lot of sexual tension between him and the much younger Page – and I suppose it doesn’t hurt that viewers will partially read Page’s precocious, flirtatious character from HARD CANDY onto her portrayal of Juno. Garner is also fantastic as a slightly snobbish but fundamentally decent yuppie who’s desperate for a kid. She makes what could have been a rather cliché’d annoying character sympathetic. There’s also a hysterical opening cameo from Rainn Wilson as a clerk.

Performances and big belly-laughs aside, the great thing about JUNO is that it’s a proper story with characters that develop and change and events that take us by surprise but also seem plausible and credible. Moreover, instead of letting this become some day-time TV serial cliffhanger about whether the adoption will go ahead, Reitman/Cody rejig the focus to the love story between Cera and Juno. All this adds up to a movie that’s funnier than the already decent THANK YOU FOR SMOKING but which has more narrative drive and a more satisfying emotional pay-off. Instead of drifting in the third act, JUNO actually gets better. And while JUNO doesn’t quite pip SON OF RAMBOW at the post for best comedy at London 2007, it gives it a damn good run for its money.

JUNO played Toronto and London 2007 and goes on release in the US on December 5th. It opens in Australia and Sweden in January 2008, in Finland, Italy, Spain, the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands in February and in Germany in March.

THE KINGDOM - super-slick, astoundingly subversive

THE KINGDOM is, for the most part, a super-slick CSI Riyadh police procedural. Against bureaucratic opposition, Jamie Foxx leads a team of FBI investigators into a US compound in Saudi Arabia to investigate a terrorist attack perpertrated by Abu Hamza. There is much sifting of debris and extraction of nails from corpses: Jamie Foxx looks pissed off, Jeremy Piven is oleaginous and Jason Bateman wise-cracks. The production is pure quality, as only Hollywood studios know how. It's compelling in the way that CSI used to be compelling, but also totally forgettable. And then, just when you think Jamie and his crew have gone all hearts-and-minds there is a completely subversive final scene which basically says that the American "good guys" that we have been rooting for and the nasty terrorists are just as bad as each other! That it's all about bloody, animalistic, inhumane revenge. I never thought I'd live to say anything that cynical and balls-out subversive in a studio film!

THE KINGDOM is on release in Canada, the US, the UK, Australia, Estonia, the Netherlands and Japan. It is released in the Czech Republic, Germany, Israel, Slovakia, Iceland, Norway and Sweden next week. It is released in Egypt, Bulgaria, Mexico, Belgium and France later in October. It goes on release in Greece, Russia, South Korea, Denmark, Slovenia, Turkey, Singapore, Finland, Spain and Italy in November. It is released in Argentina on December 13th.