DIE MY LOVE**** - BFI London Film Festival 2025 - Day 11

Lynne Ramsay (YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE) creates a claustrophobic, deeply unsettling, occasionally mordantly funny drama about a mentally fragile woman suffering severely from post-partum depression. It stars Jennifer Lawrence in a raw, vulnerable role as the dangerously unboundaried mother in question. She cannot write, her sex life has gone to shit, she has lost her tolerance for the banal bullshit people say to mothers. Some of her rude interjections are funny.  But as the film goes on it becomes more and more frightening. We realise that while post-partum is definitely a factor, Grace was not well from the start.  And we ratchet up to a finale that’s both poetic and devastating.  It’s a bravura performance from Lawrence, and shows us just what she is capable of when she makes the right choice of material - something that has been sadly lacking for pretty much the last decade.  Robert Pattinson is also good in the smaller role of Grace’s husband Jackson. It’s a tricky role because he could so easily be played as unfeeling or feckless but he’s just a young man out of his depth.

This is a film that is slippery and refuses easy answers.  We are never really sure if things are happening for real or in Grace’s fevered imagination.  Does she really sleep with a mysterious neighbour (LaKeith Stanfield) or is he just a man she meets in a supermarket and then projects her sexual frustration upon.  Most importantly, when Grace finally says “enough” is she leaving the baby that she clearly loves, in spite of everything, or is she going to take her own life?  Even the attitude of the people around her is tricky to parse.  How far was Grace’s mother-in-law (Sissy Spacek) aware of her mental instability from the start? Her attitude at the wedding appears to be one of suppressed shock. And at a social gathering later on in the film, one of covering up and enablement.

My only criticism of the film is that when you make something that claustrophobic and intense then the running time of probably needs to be shorter.  I think 100 minutes would have been ideal. But I loved the way Ramsay traps us in a world that threatens to suffocate us, most notably by using a 4:3 aspect ratio and essentially one location.

DIE MY LOVE has a running time of 118 minutes.  It played Cannes and London. It will be released in the USA on November 7th and in the UK on November 24th.

ROOFMAN**** - BFI London Film Festival 2025 - Day 8

Derek Cianfrance (BLUE VALENTINE) returns to our screens with ROOFMAN - a rather melancholy, occasionally funny, but ultimately rather whimsical and moving true crime story.  The weird thing is that the dayglow poster and goofy plot set-up make you think you are walking into a gonzo crime caper.  And yes, the film may have elements of that, but it has far more depth and emotional heft. 

Channing Tatum (MAGIC MIKE) stars as the titular Roofman - a demobbed soldier with a talent for observation and charm to spare.  Without the cash to spoil his wife and kids, he turns to armed robbery, knocking off 45 fast food restaurants.  His kind heart and general goofiness get him caught, but his aforementioned observational smarts also allow him to plot an audacious prison escape. And all this is in the first forty-five minutes of the two-hour-plus film!  The balance of the film sees Jeffrey in a kind of purgatory: out of prison but on the lam and unable to spend time with his actual family. So, he ends up hiding out in a Toys’R’Us for literally months, hacking the security systems. Even more audaciously, he ends up making friends at a local church, and romancing local single mother and employee Leigh (Kirsten Dunst).  Jeffrey now has a new identity where he is the good guy, John, and everybody loves him - even Leigh’s emo teenage daughter. The problem is, he makes the same mistakes again and again: trying to buy people’s affections.

This is a film that floats along with mild good humour and a lot of warmth, thanks mostly to Channing Tatum’s innate charm and the fact that while he may be feckless he at least he owns his mistakes. It makes for an interesting contrast with JB Mooney, the lead character in Kelly Reichardt’s THE MASTERMIND.  Where Jeffrey is a loveable rogue who takes accountability but just can’t help himself, Mooney is an entitled prick.  They are both simultaneously brilliant and stupid.  But the former actually cares for his kids, and indeed seems to be a rather warm-hearted individual more generally.

I thoroughly enjoyed this film, not least for its heavy 1990s nostalgia and a lovely pair of cameos from Peter Dinklage as the dickish store manager and Ben Mendelssohn as the parish priest.  Kirsten Dunst brings so much heart and warmth and intelligence to everything she does, and Tatum is so charming, that it’s just a fun two hours.  Not a rollicking comedy as the marketing campaign would have you believe, but perhaps more worth your time for all that. 

ROOFMAN has a running time of 126 minutes. It played Toronto 2025. It was released in the USA last Friday.

THE HARDER THEY FALL*** - BFI London Film Festival 2021 - Opening Night Gala

Jeymes Samuel's assured debut feature is a pastiche of Tarantino pastiching Leone, except with a largely black cast centring real black outlaws.  There's a joyous energy from seeing that kind of representation, and I respect Samuel for using his big stars - Idris Elba and Regina King - sparingly, so that we can see that next generation of talent shining through.  Special praise has to go to Danielle Deadwyler's queer outlaw Cuffee, who I would argue is the true hero of the piece, and RJ Cyler who steals every scene he's in as the arrogant, quick-draw outlaw Jim Beckworth.  Samuel also has an absolutely masterly touch when it comes to pairing action set pieces with iconic black music from around the world.  It comes as no surprise to learn that he's a multi-hyphenate talent aka The Bullits, who as well as recording under his own name, acts as a music advisor on others' films.

So what's it all about? In a prologue we see our antagonist, Idris Elba's Rufus Buck, brutally murder young Nat Love's mother and father. And so for the body of the film we are basically deep in Inigo Montoya territory ("you killed my father, prepare to die!") with Love's gang facing down Buck's gang in a series of Mexican standoffs and shootouts. There's a loosely alluded-to sub-plot whereby Buck has actually stolen all the money to finance a black-owned town called Redwood City as a safe space for black people, but he needs more money because white people are about to incorporate the state and will not honour their claims.  But this isn't really prosecuted as a plot. Rather, Samuel is more interested in cheap visual gags whereby a town full of whites is literally painted white and there's a subtitle that says "it's a really white town".

So that's the level we're on here - knowing, well-informed site gags and verbal humour.  As a result, because the film isn't trying to do something more profound, and one shoot out follows another, I did get a bit bored in between the flashes of humour. The set pieces are great - particularly one that happens on a train - but so many.  Are we gonna listen to yet another character ponderously explain their backstory before torturing another? And this brings me to a more profound question. I find it fascinating that Samuel wants to refocus our attention on real black outlaws but then doesn't really want to respect their actual stories and historical truths.  He just bunches them altogether rather arbitrarily into rival gangs and gives them a paper thin motive for their black-on-black violence. I get that it must be a liberating choice not to have to define the characters by their attitudes to mainstream white society, but it did make me uncomfortable to see a film where black people shoot other black people and leave the oppressive whites largely unmenaced.

THE HARDER THEY FALL has a running time of 130 minutes and is rated R.  The film had its world premiere at the BFI London Film Festival and will be released on Netflix on November 3rd.

JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH

JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH is a stunningly made, deeply affecting, beautifully acted, chamber drama about the events that led to the real life assassination of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton in 1969 at the age of just 21. His age is startling when we see him portrayed with such power, conviction and charisma in an award-winning performance by British actor Daniel Kaluuya. His Hampton is thickly accented, profoundly articulate and rousing in his stirring message of black activism and social aid. We are carried away by his powerful presence, just as Dominique Fishback's quiet poetry-loving student Deborah Johnson is, and her subtle but profound performance is equally award-worthy.  She is swept up in Hampton's activism, falls heavily pregnant and has to look on in admiration but also fear as he becomes increasingly convinced of his forthcoming martyrdom. So much of her performance is wordless, and she manages to convey so much conflicting emotion through her eyes. It's deeply impressive. 

The third person in this four-hand psychological drama is LaKeith Stanfield's William O'Neal. When we first meet him he's impersonating a cop and boosting cars. The Feds hold the threat of jail time over him and force him to become an informat. Pretty soon he's Hampton's trusted head of security, and we feel that he absolutely believes in Fred's mission even while snitching on him. The deep tragedy of  O'Neal's situation - conveyed in a subtle and heart-breaking performance by Stanfield - is the counterpoint to the tragedy of Deborah Johnson's situation.  We know that she will have to raise her child alone as the widow of a slain activst. And we know that O'Neal's guilt at his role in that FBI assassination will lead to his suicide, despite his on-tape assertion that he just did what he had to do.  

The final player in this four-hander is Jesse Plemons' FBI agent Roy Mitchell. He is also an equivocal character. This is best summed up in the final scene between Mitchell and O'Neal in a restaurant peopled entirely by white diners and staff.  Both characters are ostensibly setting up an assassination and doing so willingly - Mitchell to serve the Bureau's political aims; O'Neal to secure financial freedom.  But each looks utterly uncomfortable. Mitchell knows the FBI is rotten and that this is unjustifiable extra-judicial murder but he's a career man. And O'Neal is just so far stepped in blood it would be as hard to wade back as to go forward.

The resulting film is a profoundly moving and important biopic that teaches us how impressive Hampton was, and how despicable was the plot to take him down, and the toll it took on those who did it, and those who were left behind. It cleaves as closely to the historical record as a work of fiction can. It is perfect? Not quite. A cameo from Martin Sheen as J Edgar Hoover was utterly unnecessary and cartoonish. But pretty much everything else is so beautifully rendered as to make this one of the most outstanding films of the year. I cannot wait to see what director Shaka King does next.

JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH is rated R and has a running time of 126 minutes. It played Sundance 2021 and was released on the internet on February 12th.

UNCUT GEMS

UNCUT GEMS is perhaps the most unique and certainly one of the best films of 2019 - a surreal, 80s-vibe, darkly comic thriller, in which against all probability I became insanely invested in the largely self-inflicted travails of its hero Howard.  As played by Adam Sandler in a role reminiscent of his angry-loveable PUNCH DRUNK LOVE intensity, Howard has a life of unremitting stress. He's broken up from his wife (Idina Menzel) but still enmeshed in Jewish family dinners.  He's set up his mistress in a city apartment.  His diamond business is doing well thanks to the big music and sports buyers his middle-man (Lakeith Stanfield) brings in, and he's just been smuggled a super-valuable rock containing uncut gems. The problem is that Howard also has a massive gambling problem, and spends the entirety of the film's running time trying to fence the gems to pay the debt.  Oh yeah, and did I mention he finances his ever more gargantuan bets with mob loans?  

I was initially reluctant to watch this film because I'd heard such extreme reactions at the London Film Festival. People said it was nerve-wracking and intense - like having Adam Sandler just shout at you for two hours.  But I was pleasantly surprised at how funny the film was, and how the directors really did give the audience a chance to pause and recalibrate every once in a while - usually in a quieter family scene.  But the final act really is super-tense, and just phenomenally well crafted and I was literally on the edge of my seat. I was hugely invested in whether Howard would come through, despite his stupidity, because at the end of the day, the poor idiot is an addict, and actually he's not an idiot - there's something really impressive about his ability to keep spinning stories to keep his debtors at bay.  This is Sandler's best performance since PUNCH DRUNK and I was with him every step of the way. It's hard to think of anyone else carrying off this performance.

Phenomenal performance apart, everything about the production and costume design, the cinematography and the use of music is superb. Darius Khondji gives us  images that are at times gritty and urban-realist and at times claustrophobic and surreal and at times neon-lit 80s music video.  It's like being in a film that's at once recognisably the diamond district and at once something almost fairy-tale like.  Most of all, the Safdie Brothers have a confidence with tonal shifts that take us from casinos to auction houses and back again. This film is a tour de force and deserves to be seen. It also deserves far more awards love than it has been given.  

UNCUT GEMS is rated R and has a running time of 135 minutes.  The film played Telluride, Toronto and London 2019 and is now available to stream on Netflix. 

SORRY TO BOTHER YOU - BFI London Film Festival 2018 - Day Five

Cash Green (Lakeith Stanfield - GET OUT) is your typical millenial struggling to make rent in Oakland.  He gets a job as a salesman at Regalview but can't connect with customers until Danny Glover's older wiser colleague advises him to use his "white voice".  Once Cash does that, he starts making bank, and while his friends and girlfriend (Tessa Thompson - Westworld) are trying to unionise, Cash gets promoted. Problem is, what he's actually doing in his new job is selling labour - and not just any kind of labour - voluntary slave labour!  Cash does so well suppressing his conscience for money that Armie Hammer's rival megalomaniac tries to poach him to sell an even more bizarre form of labour, wherein he'll both control the labour and its malcontents.

The result of all this is a film that doesn't have the attention span to mine any of its ideas properly - but just keeps throwing more and more outlandish scenarios at the wall.  When it works it's great, but by the final half hour I had utterly lost interest in its absurdist premise.  The tragedy is that writer-director Boots Riley goes so far beyond his original concern about code-switching that we kind of forget what point he was making. (As a side note, I thought it would have been FAR more effective to show actual code switching rather than the allegedly funny ruse of dubbing the black actors with actual white voices). I feel that Boots Riley has a lot that is vital and urgent to say, but that he needs a strong producer to really edit down his thoughts so that each film is powerful and memorable for a single strong idea. There's just waaaay to much happening here for it to be coherent. 

SORRY TO BOTHER YOU has a running time of 111 minutes and is rated R. The movie played Sundance and SXSW 2018 and opened this summer in the USA. It is currently playing the BFI London Film Festival and will open in the UK on December 7th.

CROWN HEIGHTS

CROWN HEIGHTS is an earnest, plodding and ultimately redundant film adaptation of the true story of a miscarriage of justice.  In 1980, West Indian American immigrant  called Colin Warner was wrongfully arrested and convicted for murdering a man in Brooklyn, New York.   The evidence was scant, and his conviction apparently rested on the testimony of a young teenager who contradicted himself on the stand.  Although sentenced to 15 years to life, Colin served over 20 years because every time he went up for parole, he refused to admit that he'd committed a crime.  He showed no remorse, and was therefore refused parole. Luckily for him, his friend Carl King campaigned for his release, raising money for lawyers and gathering much of the testimony himself, at the expense of his marriage and job.  This resulted in Colin finally being released and receiving a justifiably handsome payout.  This story was the focus of a WBEZ podcast as part of the This American Life series (you can listen here) and benefits from the voices of the protagonists - their personalities, and the tension of how the story unfolds.   Within its hour running time we can a real sense of their character, relationship and the sheer effort it took to get Colin released.  It was listening to this podcast that inspired writer director Mark Ruskin (BOOSTER) to create this fictional treatment of the same story.

THE INCREDIBLE JESSICA JAMES

THE INCREDIBLE JESSICA JAMES is a wonderfully funny, socially aware comedy starring The Daily Show's Jessica Williams as a smart, funny playwright struggling to find professional success and love in contemporary New York. Written and directed by Jim Strouse (GRACE IS GONE), the movie has wit, courage and infectious optimism.  

Williams plays Jones as a confident, opinionated but never obnoxious young woman of talent and flair.  As the movie opens she's teaching kids theatre and helping them work out the issues in their lives while papering her wall with rejection letters for a play that she's writing.  She's also trying to get over her ex boyfriend (LaKeith Stanfield) while starting to date Chris O'Dowd's loveable but slightly banal app developer.  By the end of the film she's found fulfilment on both fronts, even though the ending places female friendship ahead of relationship success.

The bare bones of the plot sound quite simplistic - and indeed the stuff of many romantic comedies. And poor Chris Dowd effectively plays the loveable schlub that he always plays. But as with LANDLINE, the focus here is on the female friendships and in exploring familiar movie plotlines with greater authenticity, audacity and sexual honesty.  In all that, it's Jessica Williams who carries the day.  The result is a film that is hugely funny and heart-warming but that isn't a memorable classic. 

THE INCREDIBLE JESSICA JAMES has a running time of 85 minutes and is not yet rated.  It played Sundance and the San Francisco film festivals and does not yet have a release date. 

GET OUT

GET OUT is a confident, subversive and visually assured horror movie from debut feature director (and longtime stand-up comedian) Jordan Peele.  It tells the story of a young African American man called Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) whose girlfriend (Allison Williams - GIRLS) takes him home to meet her parents (Catherine Keener and Bradley Whitford) for the first time.  As with all the best horror, there's a deep and subversive commentary on social conditions here.  And in the case of GET OUT, Jordan Peele is trying to tell us that the most insidious form of racism is that is secretly practiced by liberal educated rich white people - the people who vote for Obama and donate to the ACLU but don't actually want their daughters to date black men.  The director also seems to be sending a message to his fellow African Americans - a message warning against complacency about race relations. And this message is embodied in Chris' hilarious best friend Rod, who warns him against going to his girlfriend's parents house in the woods early on, and is instrumental in helping Chris as her parents turn out to be quite literally using the silver spoon of privilege to subjugate him.

This tale of modern day racial slavery is, then, deeply profound and provocative, but this film is also hilarious and frightening by turns.  It's quite astounding to see a debut director handle the tonal shifts with such aplomb, not to mention the impressive production design of the oppressive house and his eye for framing a visually iconic shot. The cast all deserve praise, although it was particularly interesting to see Allison Williams subvert her GIRLS character's preppy self-absorption in this film. But the subversive nature of this film is many faceted. I particularly enjoyed the fact that the most hated of bureaucrats and petty power brokers - the TSA - turn out to be good guys here. 

Ultimately, GET OUT feels like exactly the right movie for our times - in which the happy surprise of Obama's election is over-turned by the surprise victory of Trump - and in the wake of the #blacklivesmatter movement.  It entertains us but also reflects the deep fractures in American society.  And this may well be why the film continues to do so well at the box office.  

GET OUT has a running time of 104 minutes and is rated R.  The movie played Sundance 2017 and opened earlier this year in the USA, Canada, Philippines, Greece, Singapore, Estonia, UK, Ireland, Denmark, Kuwait and France. It opens on April 7th in Indonesia, Lithuania and Norway; on April 20th in Sweden, Hungary, Malaysia and Turkey; on April 28th in Poland; on May 4th in France, Australia, Switzerland, Chile, Germany, Portugal and Finland; on May 11th in Russia; on May 18th in Hong Kong, Italy and Spain; and on June 15th in Brazil.