FAYE: THE MANY LIVES OF FAYE DUNAWAY*****

Documentarian Laurent Bouzereau has made a name for himself as the chronicler of Steven Spielberg's oeuvre. He shifts focus here with an impeccably produced and revelatory full-length documentary slash interview with cinema icon Faye Dunaway.  The resulting film is sympathetic but unsparing, matching the raw honesty of Faye herself, but echoing the evident love and admiration of her son.

We begin with all the disparaging cliches. Faye is difficult, volatile, and the woman Betty Davis said she couldn't be paid enough to work with again. Bouzereau shows Faye's self-acknowledged perfection early on in how she holds up filming to adjust every aspect of her posture, make-up and hair.  Faye says she got her perfectionism from her mother who was trapped in a marriage with an alcoholic serviceman, and disciplined her daughter into academic success. Dunaway does not regret this and credits her mother for her work ethic and perfectionism. 

We see Faye in her pomp - equally beautiful and talented - searing our collective imaginations in BONNIE & CLYDE, CHINATOWN and NETWORK. We then see Faye's sudden reversal of fortune with her portrayal of Joan Crawford in MOMMIE DEAREST. The film is now seen as a camp classic but its initial failure still clearly stings. Dunaway blames the director for not telling her to modulate her performance. We then enter the 1980s - roles in minor films - and a reinvention as a Broadway actress. But the great era is over.

As the interview unfurls we realise that Faye may have been difficult in the same way that Streisand was difficult - because she was smart and had opinions - but there was something deeper and darker going on too.  Dunaway was/ is actually bipolar and those hair-trigger (literally) mood swings can be attributed to undiagnosed mental illness. And then, in the 1980s, to alcoholism that was partly hereditary and partly self-medication before her son got her properly treated for both.

All this leaves us with a nuanced and profoundly compassionate picture of a woman who was strong, smart, talented but also vulnerable and struggling to survive. There is so much to Faye's story beyond the damning headlines - and so much to consider about how people who do not conform to Hollywood's pressures and expectations are depicted in the media.  

FAYE has a running time of 91 minutes and is available to stream.

FLY ME TO THE MOON**

Director Greg Berlanti (LOVE SIMON) returns to our screen with half of a good film. The good part is Scarlett Johansson playing a smart, slick, wisecracking ad-executive in the misogynistic 1960s of Mad Men fame. She is hired by Woody Harrelson's shady Fed to run PR for the Apollo space programme, beset by costs Congress is loathe to fund. NASA desperately needs someone to make ordinary Americans fall in love with the romance of the space programme again, and in doing so, pressure their Congressmen into turning the funding back on.  

All of this crass commercialism comes up against an all-American square-jawed earnest Flight Director played by Channing Tatum.  I think this is the bit where sparks are meant to fly, and the screwball comedy really takes off. Except that debut feature screenwriter Rose Gilroy chooses to go sentimental and syrupy and to effectively numb ScarJo's spark. She inevitably discovers that earnestness has its charms and a third act falling-out is so swiftly resolved as to barely register as a relationship hiccup. What a waste!

I also note that this film has come under criticism for positing that NASA really did stage a fake moon landing under political pressure because the Cold War stakes were too high to risk a live stream of the real moon landing.  Apparently this plot point risks fuelling conspiracy rumours. To which I respond, that ship has sailed, and any any plot point is fair game The only sadness is that its deployed to so little effect.

FLY ME TO THE MOON is rated PG-13, has a running time of 113 minutes, and is available to rent and own.

HORIZON: AN AMERICAN SAGA - CHAPTER 1***

I was surprised to find myself rather enjoying the first instalment of Kevin Costner's Horizon saga.  It came to our screens freighted with controversy.  Costner had apparently bilked out of the wildly popular Yellowstone TV show to make his passion project, enduring a messy divorce in the process.  Much like Frances Ford Coppola's MEGALOPOLIS, early feedback was that HORIZON was a bloated, boring, self-indulgent, intentionally regressive film.

To speak to the latter accusation, this film is indeed wilfully old-fashioned but in a way that I appreciate. It's a good old-fashioned Western where men are men (good or evil) and women are either loving home-makers or hookers with a heart of gold. This film is not interested in character nuance.  But it's not entirely without modern concerns: note that whether men are good or evil comes down to whether they have an accommodative or antagonistic attitude toward Native Americans.  And while there's probably a PHD to be written on how these issues are dealt with in Yellowstone and Horizon, I think Costner has probably benefited from exposure to the former. 

The problem with the film isn't so much its political attitude as its format. This isn't a film with a beginning middle and end so much as a three hour prequel that establishes character. Heck, the real baddie doesn't even show up except in a final montage sequence setting up the second instalment. All of which makes me believe that this multi-film cinema project would have played far better as a TV miniseries where a patient three-episode build-up would have been better tolerated. Instead, what Costner got was a box office failure that has condemned the second film to a streaming roll-out anyway.

And what of this instalment?  I very much liked Sienna Miller as the earnest widowed housewife who begins a romance with Sam Worthington's equally earnest military man.  That's strand one of the film, and the closest set of characters to the newly established town of Horizon. In the film's second strand Kevin Costner is in Montana, hooking up with Abbey Miller implausibly bleach blonde sex worker.  It was nice to see Jena Malone back on screen in this strand. In the final strand, it was also lovely to see Luke Wilson back on screen as the leader of a wagon train, also making its way to Horizon. In all three segments, the cinematography was lovely. I will indeed watch the sequel.There is an honest joy in seeing the landscapes of the Wild West so lovingly portrayed on screen.

HORIZON: AN AMERICAN SAGA - CHAPTER 1 is rated R, has a running time of 181 minutes, and is available to rent and own.