BOB MARLEY: ONE LOVE**

Director Reinaldo Marcus Green (KING RICHARD) returns to our screens with a biopic that is limp and uninspired. I am not sure how you make a film such a boring film about a musician as talented as Bob Marley, let alone a musician as mired in the violence of his native Jamaica. It is even more disappointing when you realise that the film was written by iconic show runner Terence Winter (The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire, THE WOLF OF WALL STREET). The result is a Tab A into Slot B film that portrays Bob as a naive hapless fool and martyr who pumped out a classic album before succumbing to cancer. To be honest, I was relieved when he died. I came out none the wiser as to the political violence that forced Bob to flee Jamaica for England. And I was certainly not allowed to see the darker side of Bob's personality. This film is weak sauce hagiography. And while Kingsley Ben-Adir (Malcolm X in ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI) does a decent enough physical and verbal impression of Bob it just all feels very superficial and performative. 

BOB MARLEY: ONE LOVE has a running time of 117 minutes and is rated PG-13. It went on global release last month.

THE WOMAN KING****

THE WOMAN KING is a curiously old-fashioned and satisfying action epic that brings to an untold (at least in the west) story of the Dahomey empire the same kind of sword and sandal grand sweep of films like GLADIATOR.  Director Gina

Prince Bythewood (THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES) proves to be an impressive helmer of large-scale battle sequences. Cinematographer Polly Morgan conjures up majestic landscapes and the visceral heat of the red-earthed soil.  And Terrence Blanchard gives us a score that both has orchestral majesty and the bone-stirring war-cries of native songs.  This is a film to stir us and impress us.  Just look at Viola Davis' newly jacked physique. She and her female warriors look every inch the part.  But this film also gives us real emotion and doesn't shy away from the terror of war, far beyond the typical machismo of male-led films.  When Davis' General Nansica relates how she was the victim of rape, we are with her in her trauma.  When her deputy Izogie (Lashana Lynch) and her newly trained warrior Nawe (Thuso Mbedu) are captured, we feel their peril.  Maybe this isn't such old-fashioned film-making after all.

The only thing that lets this film down is its rather wooden dialogue from screenwriters Dana Stevens and Maria Bello, and a rather thinly drawn set of antagonists in John Boyega's King and his wife. What the film posits is a callow king who is torn between taking the riches of slavery (his wife's advice) and standing up to the neighbouring Oyo tribe and diverting his own economy toward palm oil production (Nansica's advice).  Sadly the King does little but look aggrieved and his wife is a caricature rich spoiled woman.  The film could've done more to show her motivations, given that her position is actually the one that the Dahomey empire took.

THE WOMAN KING is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 135 minutes.

MATILDA - BFI London FIlm Festival 2022 - Opening Night

Tim Minchin's musical adaptation of Roald Dahl's beloved MATILDA is a phenomenal musical with a big heart and an incredibly talented cast, but this new film version would've benefited from a proper film director and about 20 minutes taking out of its middle section. The result is a film that is deeply affecting, and contains some stunning set pieces, but that seriously lags in the middle, and feels a bit too garish and visually disjointed to really work for an adult audience.

The story is likely familiar to you.  Matilda (Alisha Weir) is an unwanted little girl, whose prodigious talent is unappreciated by her neglectful, criminal parents (Stephen Graham and Andrea Riseborough). When the school inspectors compel him, Matilda's father sends her to an horrific school called Crunch 'Em Hall run by the tyrannical Mrs Trunchbull.  Matilda may be little but she's courageous and has a strong moral compass. At first Matilda channels her anger and frustration into a tragic love story that she recites to the travelling librarian Miss Phelps (Sindhu Vee).  But finally, Matilda leads the children and oppressed teacher Miss Honey (Lashana Lynch) in a revolution, helped by her long experience of practical jokes against her dad. 

As I said before, the musical numbers crafted by Tim Minchin are just fantastic and the choreography is kinetic. All of the kids in this massive ensemble cast do a wonderful job. The adults are great - I could see Emma Thompson being nominated for supporting actress gongs if only award shows valued comedy as much as they do dramatic roles. But the real surprise in the cast was Lashana Lynch as Miss Honey in a role that shows her range beyond the athletic action  of a James Bond film.

The problem is just how BIG this film is visually.  I remember reading an interview with Sam Mendes when he moved from theatre to film with AMERICAN BEAUTY and described having to reshoot the opening scenes because he hadn't realised he needed to modulate for the screen. I feel theatre director Matthew Warchus needed that same lesson. The opening number in a hospital was dayglo bright and so big and loud and cartoonish I was seriously worried. The movie did settle down a bit, but I couldn't help but wonder what would've happened if this was directed by someone who had the confidence to come up with a palette that leaned more into Dahl's gothic side, and also the confidence to cut some of the more repetitive numbers. 

There's also a flaw in the book/musical/movie that there isn't actually any character development until the final 30 minutes. Matilda comes to us fully formed as bright and brave; Miss Honey is passive pretty much throughout; Miss Trunchbull and the parents are mean. No-one grows, no-one learns.  We just move in circles.

MATILDA opened the BFI London Film Festival 2022 and opens in UK cinemas on November 25th before being streamed on Netflix on December 9th.

CAPTAIN MARVEL

CAPTAIN MARVEL is a game of two halves. I found the first half of the film utterly tedious, failing to fire with its buddy comedy and alien politics, but the second half to be really moving and powerful and wonderful.

The film starts with Brie Larson (ROOM) playing a human with superpowers and amnesia, being trained by a beefed-up Jude Law to fight as part of a Kree special forces unit against their hated Skrull enemy.  She crashes to earth sometime in the mid 1990s - well before the events of the current Marvel series - and tries to uncover the mystery of how she got her powers with the help of a friendly government agent called Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson) and her old best friend Marie Rambeau (Lashana Lynch).  Turns out she was a kick-ass fighter pilot called Carol Danvers working for an inspirational woman called Mar-Vell (Annette Bening) who - turns out - was an alien who invented the original tesseract - a kind of super-energy source McGuffin that has wound its way through these films. And so Danvers and her sidekicks have to protect the tesseract from - they think  - the evil terrorist Skrull - especially their leader Talos played by Ben Mendelsohn in full evil villain guise.

Like I said - the first hour of this film seemed pretty tedious to me. I don't really engage with CGI filled alien planet fight scenes, especially when I don't care about either side. I also didn't really care about the early scenes on 1990s Earth other than some pop tune nostalgia.  I could see that the directors wanted to create a kind of buddy movie road-trip odd-couple comedy between Carol and Fury but I just didn't respond to it. I could see Samuel L Jackson trying to be funny but didn't laugh - and it didn't feel like anyone else in the cinema was laughing either. 

Where the film began to ignite for me was in its second half, broadly where we get a major plot twist regarding one of the characters. This allows that character to actually become the one driving the witty deadpan humour and the heart of the second half of the film.  I also really loved the relationship between Carol and Marie - which also takes place in the second half of the film. In fact, you could easily have played it as a gay relationship co-parenting a child, and I wonder if this film will achieve cult status on that level.  

Finally, its in the second half of the film that a lot of the feminist groundwork done in the first half pays off - it's where we see Captain Marvel as a hero who's main skill is obstinacy in the face of bigotry. She doesn't need a wise male mentor to give her advice or permission. She doesn't have a crisis of confidence. And she doesn't have a love interest (male or female apparently).  She just gets the job done, no mess, no fuss. This is refreshing in its straightforward empowerment but does make Captain Marvel a fairly unengaging superhero. She's the strong smart ethically grounded woman who basically never does anything wrong, never has any doubts, and doesn't really need her friends. Accordingly, it's no surprise that the MVP of this film is a cat. 

CAPTAIN MARVEL has a running time of 124 minutes and is rated PG-13. It is on global release.