ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD

Ridley Scott's new movie is a true life thriller about the kidnapping of the 16 year old oil heir John Paul Getty III (Charlie Plummer) and his billionaire grandfather's refusal to pay the ransom.  There were many sensible reasons not to do this - such as not encouraging or indeed financing further terrorist acts, but as played by Christopher Plummer, Getty I's primary motive seems to be miserliness. There's no shade, no colour. He claims to love his grandchild but we see no evidence of it. Indeed, in Plummer's hands this becomes one of the most convincing and frightening depictions of greed on screen - when Mark Wahlberg's ex CIA fixer asks Getty how much money he would need to feel secure, he roars "more", and we believe him.  I won't spoil the consequences of this miserly response, but suffice to say that it pits Getty against his ex daughter-in-law Gail (Michelle Williams). She is seen as the voice of reason, familial love, and frustration. She's also, thankfully, not without her own smarts in going up against the oil tycoon.

There's lots to like in this thriller - and I genuinely didn't know how it would turn out for poor JPGIII.   Ridley Scott avails himself of some superb location photography, from LA DOLCE VITA recreated Rome, to sunrise in Marrakesh, to the menacing, claustrophobic, winding streets of a Calabrian hilltop town.  Williams and Christopher Plummer give excellent performances, Romain Duris is also superb in a supporting role in the kidnapper with a heart, and this offsets the somewhat banal presence of both Wahlberg and Charlie Plummer.  I also liked the screenwriter's willingness to mix up the linear timeline early on, and show us a younger version of Grandpa Getty and how ruthless he was.   That said, this movie is not without its flaws. It suffers from a lack of pace in its middle section, Scott is clearly not interested in the victim's experience, Wahlberg is just miscast, and Williams, whose performance is good, chooses to adopt a Katherine Hepburn style mid-atlantic accent that kept on pulling me out of the film.  

ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD has a running time of 132 minutes and is rated R. In the UK it is rated 15 for strong violence, injury detail, threat and language.

The film was released in 2017 in the USA, Greece, Israel, Canada, Belgium. France, Malaysia and Estonia. It opened earlier this year in Australia, Italy, Bulgaria, the UK, Ireland, Lithuania and Romania.  It opens on Jan 11th in the Netherlands, on Jan 12th in Finland, Jan 18th in Hong Kong, Jan 25th in Brazil, Denmark, Hungary, Portugal, Singapore, Norway, Poland and Sweden, on Feb 1st in South Korea, on Feb 15th in Germany, on Feb 22nd in Russia, and on Feb 23rd in Spain and Turkey. 

THE GHOST WRITER - the joy of skewering Bliar

I eagerly anticipated the release of Roman Polanski's latest film, THE GHOST WRITER. Partly because I think Polanski is a fascinating director, with a technical mastery beyond many of his contemporaries and an obsession with the sinister that is as compelling as it is unwavering. Partly because I have always loved Robert Harris' intelligent, well-researched, political thrillers. And partly because his novel, "The Ghost", is a thinly veiled skewering of a particularly slippery figure - Tony Blair. I was not disappointed. THE GHOST WRITER reminded me a lot of MICHAEL CLAYTON - it's intelligent, suspenseful, provocative and beautifully made. Indeed, quite superbly photographed by DP Pawel Edelman.

The plot centres on an un-named writer (Ewan McGregor) who has been hired to ghost the memoirs of an oleaginous former Prime Minsiter, Adam Lang (a perfectly cast Pierce Brosnan). The plot is driven by his investigation of the accusation that Lang illegally handed war criminals to the CIA. The Ghost doesn't know whether to trust Lang, his wife Ruth (Olivia Williams), his mistress (Kim Cattrall) or his aides. And of course, this being Polanski, there are no idealistic pay-offs for truth-seekers.

When I left the screening I had a wistful feeling. Because as polished and convincing as THE GHOST WRITER is, somehow, because you know it was made by Polanski, and you know what he is capable of achieving, you end up feeling a little short-changed by a "mere" good thriller. I loved the Hitchcock reference, but it wasn't necessary to the plot. And that kind of slight mis-step seemed to me indicative of a true auteur turning in a "place-holder" film.....

THE GHOST WRITER played Berlin 2010 where Roman Polanski won the Silver Bear. It is on release in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Poland, the US, the Philippines, Belgium, France, Canada, Greece, Israel, Estonia and Italy. It opens this weekend in Denmark and Norway. It opens on April 8th in Portugal and on April 16th in Finland, Spain, Sweden and the UK. It opens in May in Thailand, the Netherlands and Romania. It opens in June in Hungary and the Czech Republic, and on August 19th in Argentina and Slovakia.

Overlooked DVD of the month - THE KILLING ROOM

Director Jonathan Liebesman followed up DARKNESS FALL and TCM: THE BEGINNING with a quiet psychological thriller called THE KILLING ROOM. It's an austere, tightly made, well-acted film that, while mining familiar material, still manages to hold our attention. The movie takes the same kind of approach as DAS EXPERIMENT - creating a fictional exploration of a real psychological experiment - in this case, the CIA's infamous MK Ultra programme. In the real life version, "volunteers" were subjected to mind-control experiments, often drug-induced, of the kind that led to Manchurian candidates. In this fictionalised version, four men have volunteered for a medical experiment run by the ruthless Dr Phillips (Peter Stormare) and the ambitious but morally uncertain Miss Reilly (Chloe Sevigny). They have to solve puzzles, and the man with the least correct guess is summarily executed. The prisoners try to outwit the system, and even escape, while the audience try to figure out what purpose such a sadistic experiment could serve. I liked the stark production design, gathering sense of claustrophobia, and Timothy Hutton's performance as one of the "volunteers". This movie is well worth a watch.

THE KILLING ROOM played Sundance 2009 and went straight to DVD.

THE LAST MIMZY - sci-fi thriller, ET rip-off

In a future sponsored by a certain well-known microchip maker, humans are becoming extinct. Thanks to our fondness for environmental degradation, our DNA has mutated and we need old-school unsullied DNA. So our future selves decide to send back emmissaries to the current world in the shape of........a stuffed rabbit. And they decide to send this important message not to a rocket scientist but to........a little girl whose elder brother happens to have a science teacher who knows kung-fu, I mean, meditation. Yes, yes, ladies and the gentlemen, when Whitney Houston told us that The Children Were The Future she was in earnest. So we all need to love our families, be nice to bugs and respect our holistic selves and all will be well.

Such is the message of this bloated, meandering children's film. It takes half an hour for the kids to move on from doing cool tricks with their alien toys and start doing plot-related shit like blacking out Seattle. At which point the movie morphs from a dull kids flick to a bizarre episode of 24, wherein the family are holed up by Homeland Security. And then, we have an ET-style rush to save the world.

This is all deeply odd and you get the feeling that the director, Bob Shaye, didn't really have a handle on the project. I would be interested to hear from parents as to whether their kids lasted the two hours - the ankle-biters I took were bored during the long build-up and rather adult middle section. From an adult point of view the story was just too baggy and too ludicrous to hold my attention (note, I actually like ARTHUR AND THE INVISIBLES so I am not usually averse to nonsense). Moreover, the adult actors were phoning in their performances.

Not, then, one for the DVD collection.

THE LAST MIMZY is on release in Canada, the UK and the US. It opens in Singapore, Belgium and France in April; in Iceland in May; in Finland and Argentina in June; and in Turkey and Germany in August 2007.

LAST HOLIDAY - charming weepie romance flick

LAST HOLIDAY isn't exactly a romantic comedy. At least, there aren't many laugh-out moments. But it is a feel-good romance in the best traditions of the genre. It stars Queen Latifah - an actress who has that rare quality of making you want to spend time with her when she is on screen. She projects a warm and straightforward personality. You want nice things to happen to her. That's exactly what you get in this flick. Queen Latifah plays a hard-working, sensible sales assistant in a department store. When she discovers she has only three weeks to lives, she cashes in her life savings and goes on one final hoorah at a fancy Alpine hotel. While there, she straight talks sleazy businessmen and politicians, earns the love and respect of the hotel staff (not least Gerard Depardieu) and eats some damn fine food! This being a weepy rom-com, I do not think I am spoiling any surprises to say that she gets to live happily ever after with her new boyfriend, played by LL Cool J. Overall, LAST HOLIDAY is clearly not a work of art, but it is awfully sweet and made me shed a tear or two near the end. The operation is carried off by Queen Latifah's charm, and while the opening segment could have been cut by twenty minutes, I really didn't want the movie to end. Aw, shucks!

LAST HOLIDAY is on release in the US and UK.