VICTORIA & ABDUL

Lavish costumes and location photography cannot help this thinly plotted, dull film with its anachronistic politics.  It takes what is a genuinely fascinating late life obsession of Queen Victoria with a handsome young Indian clerk and drains it of its spikiness and shoe-horns it into politically correct nonsense.  While still apparently in mourning for her long-dead husband Albert, Victoria had already conducted a scandalous romance with her Scottish servant Mr Brown (also depicted on film with Judi Dench as the Queen.) In her final decade, she took fancy (literally, creepily) to a young muslim Urdu-speaking Indian.  The spikiness of the relationship comes from its objectification of the young male, but also the fact that she used him to learn about the culture of her dominion which she had never visited. In reality, he was the fawning man we see on screen, but also potentially a chancer (as are all courtiers more or less). His brother in law was selling Victoria's jewels in London and he was using her to advance the cause of his father's pension.  Did Abdul really believe in deference and service or was he on the make?   Stephen Frears banal film never bothers asking the tough questions - about Victoria's frustrated sexuality and exploitation of Abdul - about Abdul's motivations - about the dangerous situation in India with the rise of the independence movement, and Abdul's potential role in gaining favour for the Muslim League.  It's only interested in an anachronistic tale of love across the class, race and religious divide.   Judi Dench's Victoria is thus a radically anti-racist Queen with an enquiring mind, embattled by her small-minded Royal Household, as embodied in her pantomime-villain son, Bertie (Eddie Izzard).  The whole thing is slow-moving, and so uncurious about motives as to be a profoundly boring watch.

VICTORIA & ABDUL has a running time of 111 minutes and is rated PG-13. The film played Venice and Toronto and opened in September 2017. 

STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI (Spoilers)

STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI is the second instalment in the new trilogy of films, that sees the aftermath of the Rebellion's defeat of The Empire in the original trilogy.  In THE FORCE AWAKENS we saw a weakened Republic under attack by the newly resurgent remains of the old Empire, named The First Order.   The Emperor was replaced by Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis), with General Hux (Domnhall Gleeson) as his military leader, Starkiller Base as his Death Star, Coruscant as its target, and Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) aka Ben Solo as his Vader.  

In response, Republican Senator Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) was running a covert militarised Resistance starring a dashing pilot called Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) and his droid BB8.  The droid happened upon a young girl called Rey (Daisy Ridley), abandoned on the desert planet Jakku, waiting for her parents, and an instinctive force user. They in turn happened upon a stormtrooper defector called Finn (John Boyega) who seemed to exist mostly for comic effect, but also to have an antagonistic relationship with his former boss Captain Phasma (Gwendoline Christie). A largely redundant but popular side character was cantina owner Maz Kanata (Lupita Nyongo) who served to give Rey Luke Skywalker's old lightsaber.

The main questions set up by the film were whether Ben Solo would or could be turned by Rey to the Light Side of the Force having killed his father Han (Harrison Ford) in a test of loyalty to Snoke; who Rey's parents were, thus explaining her exceptional Force strength; and whether Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), living as a hermit, would be willing to train Rey to that task having failed in training Ben. Ancillary questions were how the First Order has amassed such tech and power so quickly (largely answered in the EU); and who Snoke was (which wasn't.)

And so we get to The Last Jedi, familiar with the grammar of Star Wars movies and the role of the middle chapter in a trilogy as a bridge of sorts, and eager to see if director Rian Johnson (BRICK, LOOPER) could move beyond the excessive fan service that was the only serious flaw that JJ Abrams (STAR TREK) made in his otherwise flawless and joyous The Force Awakens. Additionally, if we read the EU, we might have thought we would see some serious character development for Phasma (given the standalone book).

BRIGSBY BEAR

BRIGSBY BEAR is a heartwarming dark comedy that melds NAPOLEON DYNAMITE with ROOM and BE KIND REWIND!  It's  about a young man called James (Saturday Night Live's Kyle Mooney) who is returned to his family after being abducted as a child and raised by a couple of kranks. He struggles to adjust to reality and misses the cocooned world he lived in, most specifically the fake TV show his fake dad (brilliantly/manically played by Mark Hamill) created called Brigbsy Bear.  James is shocked that no-one else is ingrained in the TV shows mythos but with the help of a friendly cop (Greg Kinnear) and his newfound high school friends, he manages both to recreate the show and come to a kind of emotional acceptance of his past. 

The film is laugh out loud funny and goofy and features a truly brilliant cameo from Hamill. But beyond that I found it to be a particularly insightful and wry take on modern internet fuelled fandom, and the kind of "fake nostalgia for an unremembered 80s" that South Park so brilliant satirised with its "memaberries" plot line. James watches old shows on meticulously labelled VHS tapes and discusses them in online forums with fake friends his fake parents made up. He even has fake faded fan T-shirts. The way in which the school kids who didn't grow up with Brigbsy take to him also speaks to the current way in which new generations get immersed in a self-consciously old-school lo-fi pop cultural past. 

BRIGSBY BEAR has a running time of 97 minutes and is rated PG-13. The film played Sundance, Cannes and London 2017. It opened earlier this year in the USA, Canada, Australia and the Netherlands, and earlier this month in the UK and Ireland.

MANIFESTO

MANIFESTO started off as an art installation of simultaneously broadcast short films that have now been turned into a feature by director Julian Rosefeldt.  They all star Cate Blanchett as different philosophers, articulating their key beliefs in a variety of costumes and guises.  The film starts with her as a tramp rambling through a rotten concrete landscape before transitioning to Cate as an equities trader with a thick Long Island accent. But what we realise is that each segment isn't quoting a particular philosopher but  a miso-mash - apparently all pulling together to make a certain point. So in the homeless scene, we're meant to be talking about Situationism and it quotes Fontana, John Reed, Nieuwenhuys, Rodchenko and Debord. In the trader scene, which is meant to refer to Futurism, we get a mash up of Marinetti, Severine, Appollinaire and Vertov. 

As we move from Cate as Punk (Creationism) to Cate as puppeteer (Surrealism) to Cate as Newsreader (Minimalism) I was struggling to understand what I was meant to get out of this film other than a deep respect for her talents at turning accents. The excerpts are sometimes iconic, sometimes resonate with contemporary politics, but a lot of the time are just superficial and abstract. This just isn't a film that coalesced to me, in any meaningful way, and I wonder if it had better have been experienced as art installation. 

MANIFESTO has a running time of 95 minutes. The film has played as art gallery installations and in many festivals. It was released in UK cinemas last week and is rated 15 for strong language. 

LOST IN PARIS

The writing/directing partners Dominique Abel and Fiona Gordon (THE FAIRY) return to our screens with another zany comedy with a social conscience - LOST IN PARIS. It stars Fiona as a Canadian librarian of geeky appearance and MR BEAN-like hapless physicality who goes to Paris to rescue her aunt, the majestic Emmanuelle Riva (AMOUR) who is being forced into an old-age home. The problem is that when she gets there, her aunt has gone missing.  At this point the fictional Fiona meets the equally nerdy, quirky Dom, a homeless Parisian who somehow finds enough money to dance the tango with her in an expensive riverboat restaurent and falls in love - only to find that he has a rival for Fiona's affections - a Canadian mountie!  

What I love about this film is that is does something relatively unique in modern cinema, but arguably the oldest of the cinematic arts - proper technically brilliant slapstick comedy in the best tradition of Keaton, Chaplin and Tati.  And just like those great films, it makes us laugh out loud at its silliness while also pulling at our emotions and genuinely moving us. Gordon and Abel are truly talented, and make movies of such unabashed joy they deserve to be better known. And if you thought that hackneyed park bench foot tapping dance scene in LA LA LAND was cute, check out Emmanuelle Riva and her fellow nursing home paramour in the most adorable dance scene I've scene in a long time. And that speaks to this film's social conscience - asking us about how we consign old people to a parking lot waiting for death, rather than acknowledge their same yearning for love, dance, magic!  This is a film not to be missed.

LOST IN PARIS has a running time of 83 minutes and is rated 12A for infrequent strong language and moderate sex references.  The film played Telluride and the BFI London Film Festival 2016. It was released earlier this year in France, Estonia, Belgium, Lithuania, Switzerland, Hungary, Argentina, South Korea, Sweden, the USA, Brazil, Japan, Poland, Germany, Bulgaria, Uruguay and Mexico. It's currently on release in the UK and Ireland in cinemas and on streaming services. 

TROPHY

TROPHY is a meticulously edited, beautifully shot, and most of all provocative documentary about the ethics of big game hunting and its interaction with rare species conservation.  Its directors - Christina Clusiau and Shaul Shwarz (AIDA'S SECRETS) - are on the record as saying that they began making the doc to pretty much indict the commercial hunting industry, and there's certainly plenty of explicit, unpalatable and indeed disgusting footage of rich white men paying large sums of money to shoot (NOT track and hunt) game at point blank range and then take crass selfies.  One of them even cites the Bible as sanctioning such savage activity, which will be like a red rag to a bull to any liberals watching.  But the film is careful to balance this with the equally dogmatic and arguably naive opposing views of anti-hunting activists who quite earnestly and rightly want to save lions like Cecil, but have no concept of the complexity of policy making and unintended consequences in Africa.  There is no possibility of a utopian solution - compromises and second best options are the only viable way forward.  

This film poses just such a compromise, which is to allow limited commercial hunting as well as the sale of rhino horns, and to use those funds to subsidise anti-poaching and breeding measures. The people used to defend such a policy are of varying credibility. The most prominent in the film is a commercial rhino breeder who does seem to care about saving them from extinction and his sunk his personal wealth into doing so but stands to make a fortune from trading in their horns.  But the one who really impressed me was an anti-poaching activist who also leads commercial hunts.  He seemed to be the most articulate about the irony of killing some animals to save others - the most aware of the complexity of the situation - and the most deeply committed to their long-term survival.  His views really impressed me, and made me deeply reconsider my views on this issue, which is the most one could ask of any documentary.  In addition, I delighted in the beautiful cinematography of South Africa and Zimbabwe, while simultaneously being horrified by, and rightly not being allowed to avoid, the sight of animals being killed for sport.

TROPHY has a running time of 105 minutes and is rated 15 for strong language. The film played Sundance and SXSW 2017.  It opened earlier this year in the USA and Canada. It opened in the UK and Ireland a week ago and is still showing in cinemas and on demand.