THE LIBRARIANS*****

I was a nerdy, poor immigrant kid insatiable for books and my local public library and my school library were like treasure caves. I will forever be grateful to the librarians who guided me to books I might like based on my reading and provided a wonderful childhood of expanding horizons. The idea that anyone could villify and dox and physically threaten this wonderful profession of largely mild-mannered nerdy women is shocking to me.  And yet that's what's happening in Trump's America, where bigoted, illiterate, judgmental politicians and their activist lackeys are banning books and attempting to prosecute those that defend free speech and children's access to what are actually harmless titles.  Because this is never about child protection, and always about censorship and coercion. You may NOT learn about being gay or queer or feminism or racial or social injustice. I grew up with this bollocks too, in the shape of Section 28 of the Local Government Act, that banned teachers from being openly gay or "promoting a gay lifestyle".  

Kim A. Snyder's documentary is urgent, angry-making, and beautifully constructed. It foregrounds the real heroes - ordinary teachers and librarians and community activists who are showing up, week-in week-out, to school board meetings and local government meetings, often at extreme personal risk. They are people who are being coerced out of their jobs, forced into hiding, to arm themselves. It's beyond absurd. A lot of the footage is taken from meetings where we, in turn, see activists on either side of this issue taking iphone footage of each other, to be used later on social media and to whip up a storm.  And as Snyder points out, this so-called grassroots movement of conservative moms is in fact funded by major oligarchs.  

This is a fantastic must-see documentary.  I know that when people are literally being shot down by ICE the ability to read books might seem trivial. But this is where fascism starts. Almost a year ago we were in Berlin for the Film Festival and our hotel room overlooked the public square where the Nazis burned books.  Tourists were taking selfies at the commemorative spot. Let's not sit still on history when it's repeating itself before our eyes. Watch. This. Now.

THE LIBRARIANS has a running time of 92 minutes and is rated 15. It played Sundance and SXSW 2025. It was released in the USA last September and is available to stream in the UK on BBC IPlayer.

EAST OF WALL****

Writer-director Kate Beecroft's debut EAST OF WALL is a really fascinating and affecting drama set in a horse ranch in the Dakotas. Much like Chloe Zhao's NOMADLAND, the film mixes actors and a fictionalised story with real people and a real place. The result is a film that gives the audience a glimpse into a world they might not otherwise see.  

The real life, ludicrously charismatic horse trainer Tabatha Zimiga stars as a lightly fictionalised version of herself.  In life as in this film, she runs a ranch that takes in troubled teenagers and gives them purpose, all the while raising her own kids as a widowed mother. Her real life daughter Porshia also stars as an incredibly talented horse-rider who shows off the ponies that they try to sell for a profit.

Beecroft places two real actors into this real situation. The first is Jennifer Ehle (SHE SAID) as Tabatha's straight-talking mother.  It's a character that could be a bit of a cliche - feckless, not exactly top-draw parenting, but a heart underneath it all. Ehle makes her credible in comparatively short screen time.

The second fictional character is the rich rancher Roy Waters, played by Scoot McNairy (A COMPLETE UNKNOWN). He offers the financially struggling Tabatha the chance for financial security but it's no free lunch: he has emotional needs that he has to fulfil. 

This is a film that takes us deep into a slice of life we might not otherwise see. The cinematography is stunning - both of the landscape and in capturing the incredibly skilled riding. The characters are credible and charismatic.  It adds up to something unique and memorable.

EAST OF WALL is rated R and has a running time of 97 minutes. It played Sundance 2025 and was released in the USA last summer. It is available to rent and own in the USA and UK.

REBUILDING***

Writer-director Max Walker-Silverman's REBUILDING is set in the American West, amidst a community whose houses and land have been destroyed by wildfire.  They now find themselves living in FEMA trailers, attempting to rebuild their lives. There's a well-meaning but ultimately useless bureaucrat who needs them to fill out the right paperwork and submit it online - absurd when they don't have computers or wifi.  And a loan officer who delicately informs our protagonist that it will be years before his farm will be productive again.

The film is centred around Dusty - a farmer who has inherited a farm that has been worked by generations of his family. It feels as though Dusty has a romantic sentimental approach to making a living, something his ex-wife calls him out for.  As the film opens, he has to take care of his daughter Callie Rose after a long hiatus, and a lot of the gentle joy of the film is seeing them try to re-establish a relationship, and for both to come to appreciate the ramshackle group of people they are living with.  It's a film about refound actual family, and newly adopted found family.  

The film is not without its longeuers in its central chapters, but I found myself really rooting for the characters and moved by the film's resolution.  I appreciated Josh O'Connor's central performance, eschewing the theatrics of an exxagerated accent, and allowing his subtle facial reactions to do the talking.  I also liked Meghann Fahy as his ex-wife. It was also to a pleasure to see True Detective's Kali Reiss back on screen.

REBUILDING is rated PG and has a running time of 96 minutes. It played Sundance 2025 and opened in t the USA in November.  It will open in the UK in April 2026.

TWINLESS****

TWINLESS is a slippery, dark, brilliantly constructed dramedy about co-dependence and the lies we choose to believe. It stars Dylan O'Brien (MAZE RUNNER) in a superb performance as a twin grieving the death of his brother in a car accident.  He finds comfort in the friendship of Dennis (writer-director-actor James Sweeney) who he meets at a support group for newly winless grieving siblings.  Dennis also sets Roman up with his co-worker Marcia (Aisling Franciosi).  The problem is that Dennis is a deeply lonely, sad, and unstable young man, who becomes unnaturally obsessed with Roman, and is seeking far more than mere friendship.

The resulting film is genuinely funny but also really dark, and its construction really keeps you guessing as to where Sweeney is going to take us.  It would pair well with Alex Russell's LURKER as it covers some of the same subject matter. I won't say more for fear of spoiling it. Suffice to say that this is a film of astonishing assuredness and dexterity for a new director. I also feel that the central double-performance of O'Brien deserves a lot of praise.

TWINLESS is rated R and has a running time of 100 minutes. It played Sundance 2025 where TWINLESS won the Audience Award - Dramatic. It  also played London 2025.  It was released in the USA last September. It will be released in the UK on February 6th.

LOVE, BROOKLYN** - BFI London Film Festival 2025 - Preview

LOVE, BROOKLYN is a gentle earnest romantic dramedy with a side order of social commentary about gentrification. The positives: the film contains three great central performances, and some lovely lensing of a pandemic-emptied Brooklyn from DP Martim Vian. The negatives: the film moves way too slowly, and its insights are way too trite, for it to be either memorable or engaging.  

LOVE, BROOKLYN is the debut feature from director Rachael Holder and screenwriter Paul Zimmerman, and maybe that shows in its pacing. Or maybe it was a choice. But my word, for a 97 minute film I really was looking at my watch and wondering why we had not progressed. 

The film stars Andre Holland (MOONLIGHT) as Roger - a likeable thirtysomethibng journo who spends his time cycling around his beloved Brooklyn lamenting its evolution and wrestling with whether he is still in love with his ex- or ready to take on a deeper commitment with the single mum he had a one night stand with.  The ex is played by Nicole Beharie, currently on screen in Apple TV's The Morning Show.  She is fantastic as art gallerist Casey - all wit and vitality and zip.  Holland and Beharie have such on-screen chemistry we wonder why they broke up in the first place. And then we have DeWanda Wise as the more mature, centred and calm single mother Nicole, and I loved the scenes with her precocious young daughter Ally.  Nicole gently coaxes Roger into having more interaction with Ally and gives him the confidence to see a future together.  All three are good earnest people trying to live a good life. There's no actual dramatic tension.  There is, however,  some lovely gentle comedy provided by The Daily Show's Roy Wood Jr., as Alan, Roger's best friend.

There's some trite stuff at the end tying in the need to move forward, both in relationships to people and our urban homes.  The film washed over me like a warm breeze. Inconsequential and forgettable but not entirely unpleasant. 

LOVE, BROOKLYN has a running time of 97 minutes. It was released in the USA in September.

MY OLD ASS***

Writer-direct Megan Park returns with he R-rated dramedy MY OLD ASS in which 18-year old Elliott (Maisy Stella - Nashville) takes some shrooms with her friends and suddenly finds herself talking to her 39-year old self (Aubrey Plaza - White Lotus). The films starts off being utterly hilarious with lots of shocked teenage horror that a 39 year old isn't married and is still in school. And why Stella may not look much like a young Plaza, she gets her give no fucks wry humour and confidence. 

At first, older Elliott's advice seems really good and helpful but there's one glitch.  Old Elliott tells Young Elliott to avoid a guy called Chad, even though they seem to have an instant connection that belies E's assumption that she is gay. The movie then takes a somewhat jarring tonal turn into a far more serious and affecting drama. Which is all good. I just didn't see it coming. And it felt a bit rushed and underdeveloped - and well - trite - by the end.  That said, Maisy Stella has a real talent for comedy and I hope this film leads to her getting more parts.

MY OLD ASS is rated R, has a running time of 89 minutes, and was released in September.

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF SHERE HITE****

Nicole Newnham's new documentary is an urgent, well-constructed and desperately relevant film about a feminist sociologist and publishing sensation cut down by the patriarchy. 

Shere Hite was a beautiful, intelligent, curious and sex-positive woman. She supported herself through college at Columbia and then in her sociological research by modelling, some of which was nude.  She saw nothing wrong with this. She became famous for publishing The Hite Report in 1976 - summarising the results of a survey of 3000 American women. The most shocking of its revelations was that the best way to satisfy a woman sexually was through clitoral stimulation, and that conventional vaginal intercourse was a poor way to achieve this.  As a result, most women's best sexual experiences were through masturbation.

The severity and savagery of the masculine backlash was comprehensive.  The publishers tried to sabotage the book by restricting sales and the first print run.  They refused to run any publicity. But they couldn't stop the juggernaut of interest. Apparently it's the thirtieth best selling book of all time, even though few today have heard of it.  But the accompanying PR interviews, many of which are excerpted here, show the toll it took on Hite. She was pilloried on TV shows and accused of making men irrelevant. Men tried to discredit her based on her nude modelling and the sample biases in her research (you try getting a representative sample of women to answer a sex survey!).  Publishers would not give her a contract for her ongoing research and she ended up giving up her US citizenship and forging a new life in Europe.

Perhaps this cancellation and suppression is ongoing. People today all know about the Kinsey report on men, but how many now about the Hite report on women? Why - after immense critical acclaim at the Sundance film festival, did this film not get wider distribution, despite a star as big as Dakota Johnson voicing the words of Shere Hite? Why does the world not care when Shere Hite was speaking to exactly the repression of female sexuality that we now see rearing its head in the United States?  All of these factors speak to the continuing importance of Hite's work. This film is a worthy argument along those lines.

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF SHERE HITE is rated R and has a running time of 118 minutes. It played Sundance 2023 and was released in the USA last November. It was released in the UK this week.

STRANDED (2007) *****

In 1972 a charter plane carrying a Chilean college rugby team crashed into the Andes when the pilot made a navigational error amidst a heavy snowstorm. These were rich medical students who lived by the sea and had, many of them, never seen snow before. The atmosphere on board before the crash was one of high jinks and festive jubilation. This ended abruptly with the crash. The pilots soon died, the back of the plane had been sheered off, there was very little food, and the radio told them the rescue had been called off. Faced with certain death, this group of Catholic college boys were rallied by two things - the leadership of their team captain who rationed their food with discipline and fairness. And then the profound decision to cross the taboo of cannibalism in order to survive. For some, this was a challenging but rational decision - these were men of medical science after all. But for others, with a deep Catholic faith, it was a sin that could damn them, and it needed to be justified in terms of an act of consuming the Eucharist. 

Gonzalo Arijon's documentary, made 35 years after the accident, is a triumph of film-making. He has access to many of the survivors and their family members and reconstructs the events through their testimony and some recreations. They are candid about their emotions at the time and in retrospect. We hear grown men describe almost dying - slowly through starvation - and suddenly when an avalanche buries them alive. We see the pain on their faces and in their voices when they discuss the need to eat their friends.  We see the deep care taken to respect the dead, and to be honest with the rescuers for the sake of the families.

The result is a film that is by turns moving and dramatic.  Despite knowing the outline of the story I was again and again taken aback by the men's candid insights and resilience. Truly this is a story of the importance of friendship, camaraderie and the willingness to survive.  I was left with nothing but admiration for the men.

STRANDED has a running time of 130 minutes. It played Sundance 2008 and can be viewed in full on YouTube.

DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST (1991) *****

In preparation for the release of the new adaptation of THE COLOR PURPLE I decided to finally watch the critically acclaimed DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST by writer-director Julie Dash. This is a film that debuted at Sundance in 1991, but where other indie debutants like Richard Linklater went on to get many feature films financed Julie Dash disappeared from view.  If one laments the fact that the original THE COLOR PURPLE didn't win an Oscar, despite its eleven nominations, consider the further and ongoing racism of Hollywood that Julie Dash could create a film of such unique and beautiful vision as DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST and never make a feature again.  Which is not to say that her presence has not been felt. Beyonce's Lemonade is just one of the examples of films that reference Dash's visual style and social concerns. And the new COLOR PURPLE apparently also references her now iconic visual style.

The movie takes place in the saltwater Gullah community off the coast of South Carolina in the early years of the twentieth century.  Their story is told by the wise old grandmother of the family, Nana Peazant, and by an as yet unborn daughter.  We learn that their isolation was a blessing, freeing them from large-scale plantation slavery and preserving their specific language, religion and customs.  Much of the film takes place in conversation amidst the beautiful sun-drenched sands of the island, with strong women shaping their history and future.

The story is not told in a straightforward linear fashion but we soon discover that this community is in its dying days, and the younger members of the family feel the draw of greater opportunity on the mainland.  That brings with it cultural contamination - from Christianity and Islam - but also the actuality of white violence.

Where THE COLOR PURPLE has a surfeit of plot, and is structured in a conventional manner, DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST is poetic and loose and enchanting. The former is anchored on Celie's house, to where characters return and retreat, and the ownership of which is a key plot point.  By contrast, the Gullah woman seem to be eternally outdoors and connected to the water and sand and trees.  This maybe speaks to the fact that the seawater Gullah have managed to retain their African heritage in a way that the mainland post-slavery society that Celie lives in has been thoroughly alienated from its proud heritage. In THE COLOR PURPLE, Nettie has to return to Africa to discover her culture, but even then arrives as an outsider, a missionary, with a patronising civilising influence. In the Gullah community, Africa survives and is proximate.

The glory of DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST is the time spent with these fascinating women, contrasting their differing attitudes toward spirituality and the choice of where to live.  Cinematographer Arthur Jafa creates stunningly beautiful beachscapes populated by people in gorgeous white dresses against trailing moss. It's no wonder these images have been so influential. The only thing that felt anachronistic and dissonant watching it now was composer John Barnes' synth heavy score.

DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 113 minutes.

KOKOMO CITY*****

KOKOMO CITY is a beautifully photographed, deeply moving documentary about the brutal reality of being a trans sex worker in contemporary America. It is directed by trans woman D Smith who empathetically frames the real experiences of these women in all their humour, community, sorrow and violence. The trans women interviewed - Daniella Carter, Koko Da Doll, Liyah Mitchell and Dominique Silver - are open about what the enjoy about their work, how different cis men use them and approach them, and the risks inherent in the work. So much so that poor Koko Da Doll was murdered shortly after this film debuted at Sundance earlier this year.  

Documentarian D Smith also interviews some of the johns who are open about why they go for trans women. In one particular case, it feels like a badge of honour that he is "man enough" to take them on. As a result we get a really nuanced picture of contemporary gender norms and prejudices in the black community. There's also something profoundly sad about black men so trapped in expectations of being hyper-masculine that they are closeted and ashamed about their true sexual desires.

The resulting film is a really smart, insightful and eye- and heart-opening discourse on what it is to be trans, and what it means to a black men, a black woman, and successful.  There is so much to mull over here. Like all the best documentaries, it gave me a new perspective and more empathy for some of the most marginalised and most at risk members of our society. 

KOKOMO CITY has a running time of 73 minutes and is rated R. It played Berlin, SXSW, BFI Flare and Sundance 2023. It was released in the USA last month and in the UK this weekend.

THE PAINTER AND THE THIEF - BFI London Film Festival 2020 - Day 2

Benjamin Ree's documentary about the unlikely and dangerously unboundaried relationship between a painter and an art thief is fascinating if overlong.  I felt it might've worked best as a one hour Louis Theroux TV show. It features Czech realist oil painter Barbora Kysilkova, who left an abusive ex-boyfriend for Oslo where she married an apparently endlessly supportive and level-headed husband. While there, two of her most  famous paintings were stolen with apparent care in broad daylight, so that apprehending the thief is pretty easy.  He turns out to be a deeply sad, disturbed junkie called Karl-Bertil Nordland. He has a sincere and profound appreciation for art and stole the paintings because they moved him so deeply. She befriends him at the trial and offers to paint him, and one of the saddest and most moving parts of the doc is seeing his genuine emotion at being elevated to a work of art. And yet he remains a slippery character, conveniently blacking out about where her paintings are.  And it's only toward the end of the film that she finds them and seemingly steals them back.  There's also something really unboundaried about how far she becomes enmeshed in his life, even providing car after a bad injury, and one can't help but side with her husband who sees her saviour complex and wants her to pull back.  Still, at a time of extreme disunity and strife, there's something touching about a film about deep humanity and compassion, and the ability of art to cut through pain and communicate. 

THE PAINTER AND THE THIEF has a running time of 102 minutes. The film played Sundance and London 2020. It was released earlier this year in the USA and will be released on October 30th.

AMERICAN FACTORY

AMERICAN FACTORY is a chilling and provocative documentary, perfectly timed for our times.  It comes against a backdrop of a US-China trade war; suspicion of anyone who looks remotely Asian sneezing in earshot; and Andrew Yang running for President solely on the issue of the coming replacement of blue-collar workers with Advanced Robotics and white collar workers with AI and machine learning. More generally, we are living in a time where blue collar workers around the world are expressing their anger that they gained nothing from decades of globalisation other than lost jobs, stagnant real wages, and the contempt of the political parties that were supposed to be representing them. All of these issues and more are explored in this fascinating documentary - brought to us by husband and wife directors Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, and the Obama's production company. The ironies abound in that. After all, Obama was a so-to-say left-wing president but he took globalisation for granted and did nothing to reverse the damage it inflicted on blue-collar workers.  And it becomes rapidly clear that this "American" factory is nothing of the sort - it's Chinese through and through.

As the movie opens, a Chinese global glass company called Fuyao re-opens a former General Motors assembly plant in Ohio.  The workers are happy. When GM closed during the Global Financial Crisis they lost their jobs, homes and dignity.  But the venture is a disappointment all around.  The Chinese are frustrated with the US workers apparent lack of work ethic and their constant need for praise. They seem to either be ignorant of, or have contempt for, local health and safety regulations.  And they take every action necessary to prevent the workers from unionising - from sacking the agitators, to hiring a lobbying company to persuade them to vote against unionising. Indeed the workers are dispensable: the most chilling final scene is one of advanced robotics replacing actual people. 

On the other side of the coin, the American workers are similarly disappointed.  They refuse to work the long hours and compromise their safety, or indeed environmental standards.  They want to understand the reasons for being asked to do something, rather than just following an order blindly. And they want to be in a culture where good work is rewarded - not just with a living wage, but also with simple thanks. 

This culture clash speaks to a deeper colonial racism, and the fact is that this is the first time in a long time when white people are being dominated by non-whites*.  All the racism that the European and North Americans expressed toward other races - all the economic exploitation - is now working in reverse.  So we are shocked to hear a Chinese manager say that American workers are like donkeys, and need to be placated to avoid them kicking - or that the Chinese managers have to benevolently steer the American workers because the Chinese are clearly wiser.  But this is no different to how American or European managers would've viewed Mexican or Indian workers in colonial times (and maybe not that different to how they view them today.)

I guess the real shock of this film for many viewers is that it's a really tangible example of how America is no longer the world's foremost economic power. And adjusting to being condescended to is a rather painful process for all involved.  But frankly, I found our new robot overlords far more chilling than the Chinese.

AMERICAN FACTORY has a running time of 110 minutes. The movie played Sundance where it won the Documentary Director award, Tribeca and Sheffield DocFest 2019. It is available to watch on Netflix.  *I'm thinking the Muslim conquest of Spain was the last time?

PUZZLE

PUZZLE is worse than banal, it teeters on the offensive.  The banality begins with the slow-moving uninteresting tale of a middle-age housewife who lives as a martyr tending to her family.  In her spare time she does jigsaw puzzles and soon teams up with a glamorous exotic Indian millionaire to train for a competition.  Naturally - predictably - they end up falling for each other, and the affair gives her the confidence to demand a more equitable share of labour around the house and for her sons to take control of their lives. But in the end she drops out of the competition and her affair and returns to her now reformed family. And what of the Indian puzzler who enables this renaissance? He's cast off casually having done his part. The whole thing struck me as very dodgy and unconvincing. I get why she would be fascinated by him but not what he would see in her. Every now and then the script those in a line where he says she's beautiful, but they never have a conversation that shows a spark, and the two actors - Kelly Macdonald and Irrfhan Khan - have no chemistry. The resulting film is just too dull, and then dodgy, for words. It's the racial equivalent of films that creative manic pixie dream girls whose only purpose is to prompt a character reversal in a man, or that create wise old black women whose only purpose is to enlighten the young white protagonist. Enough already.

PUZZLE is rated R and has a 103 minute run time. It played Sundance 2018 and is now available to rent and own.  

EXTREMELY WICKED, SHOCKINGLY EVIL AND VILE

Zac Efron is absolutely perfect as US serial killer Ted Bundy - a man who appeared kinda ordinary looking on photos but whom so many women described as charismatic and handsome. That charisma and handsomeness lured them into a false sense of comfort, and at least 30, to death and dismemberment.  Not that we see much of that in a film that is superb in its period detail and at showing the charming side of Bundy, but shies away from showing what the judge in this case calls his utter lack of humanity. The result is a lopsided film that does a disservice to his victims and (of course, this matters far far far less) to the audience.  Yes, we DO need to see his charm, but we also need to see the horror. Perhaps the problem is that the film is based on the memoirs of his fiancée, so she wouldn't have known that stuff, but my goodness, the director Joe Berlinger sure does having directed the multi-part Netflix doc on Bundy. So why not work with Michael Werwie, the adaptor of those memoirs, to show the parallel story of Bundy's interiority.  Otherwise, the movie as it stands, feels odd, and the final scene confrontation between Bundy and his long-time fiancee feels unearned and fake. Similarly, director Berlinger could easily have contrasted the sunny, warm-toned courtroom scenes, presided over by an avuncular and wry John Malkovich with a more gritty, nasty reality - a reality that contrasts with and interrogates Bundy's psychopathic charm.  Sadly, all we're left with are some good performances in a misguided film.

EXTREMELY WICKED, SHOCKINGLY EVIL AND VILE has a running time of 110 minutes and is rated R in the USA and 15 in the UK. It is on release in Netflix worldwide except the UK where it is available on Sky Cinema On Demand and in cinemas.  It played Sundance and Tribeca 2019. 

SOUVENIR

THE SOUVENIR is writer-director Joanna Hogg's personal memoir of her time as film student in London in the early 80s and a love affair she had with a charming but dangerous older man.  Set largely in a meticulous recreation of Hogg's Knightsbridge flat, we are introduced to the fictionalised Julie (Honor Swinton Burne) as a naive, privileged, earnest and desperately vulnerable young woman.  At first, her relationship with Anthony (Tom Burke - finally finding a role to flex his muscles in) seems innocent enough, although the age gap is troubling, as is his domineering personality. But we, as Julie, as her parents, are lulled into a sense of complacency by his posh accent and apparent Foreign Office job. Soon we discover that all is not as it seems - earlier in fact than the alarmingly innocent Julie. It starts with him cadging a tenner, and ends with a kind of emotional domination and abuse, centred around a character twist that I won't reveal.  The tension of the film lies first in knowing whether Julie will gather the strength to leave Anthony, and second in whether her mother (played by Honor's real-life mother Tilda Swinton) will intervene.  

As in her previous, outstanding, films  - UNRELATED and ARCHIPELAGO - Joanna Hogg creates these wonderfully tense, nuanced, naturalistic chamber pieces where characters are trapped in seemingly ordinary conversations but so much is going on in their interior lives - so much is unsaid - and the stakes seem so high. Tom Burke is absolutely superb as Anthony, in the most difficult role of creating a character at once despicable, but also pitiable, who we have to believe is charming enough to be loved. Honor Swinton Burne is not called upon to show such range, but is convincing in playing a shy young woman. If THE CROWN needs to cast a shy young Diana they need look no further. And stealing the show, we have a deliciously funny cameo from Richard Ayoade with one of the most quotable lines in film. I'd repeat it here but it gives away too much plot!

Kudos to Joanna Hogg, whose idiosyncratic scripting and shooting style got the best out of a new actress and creates a slow-build tension and genuine emotional involvement in the lives of these characters.  One must also comment on how she captures particular visuals - a shot of the Grand Canal (perhaps one of the most hackneyed scenes and yet so beautiful and apparently fresh here) - or a disagreement in a hotel room that's so emotionally difficult to behold that we see it reflected in a mirror.  This film really is unique, disturbing, beautiful and melancholy.  I cannot wait to see the second part. 

THE SOUVENIR has a running time of 119 minutes and is not yet rated.  The film played Sundance 2019 where Joanna Hogg won Grand Jury Prize - World Cinema - Dramatic.  It will also play Berlin 2019. It does not yet have a US or UK release date. 

MONSTERS AND MEN

New York.  A black kid is shot dead by a trigger happy racist cop.  The murder is captured by another young man on a cellphone.  MONSTERS AND MEN examines the consequences of events that have become sadly all too familiar, by focusing on three characters - a black cop who witnessed the murder and is himself subject to police harassment (John David Washington - BLACKKKLANSMAN) - the young father who captured the murder, has the courage to post his video online, and is then harassed by the police (Anthony Ramos - A STAR IS BORN) - and a teenage boy who can potentially have a very lucrative career with a sports scholarship unless he "causes trouble" by joining a protest (Kelvin Harrison Jr.)

For all three men, the murders causes a crisis of conscience and the drama lies in seeing whether they will have the courage to be "woke" and the provocation of the same question in ourselves.  Maybe I would join a protest.  I know I couldn't post a video, knowing the police have already been stalking my house, with my sleeping child next to me.  

For me, the most fascinating character is the cop, and it's interesting to contrast this character with Washington's role in BLACKKKLANSMAN.  In that movie, the most brutal racism is depicted on screen but Spike Lee also had the wit to give us moments of hilarity - walking a very fine tonal line. This movie - from talented first time writer-director Reinaldo Marcus Green - is far quieter and more interior, and so calls for a more nuanced, in some ways more powerful performance. The opening scene of this film is thus its best. We see a character we know is a cop, but off duty, pulled over and ID checked by a white cop. The camera focusses on Washington's reaction - quiet anger - knowing if he acts out he will be subject to brutality.  The same brutality his colleagues mete out onto other black men in the neighbourhood. 

The resulting film is beautifully acted and deeply powerful and doesn't shy away from tough questions and debates. It's sadly too relevant. It also paints an authentic picture of a community on the edge.

MONSTERS AND MEN has a running time of 96 minutes and is rated R. It played Sundance 2018 where Reinaldo Marcus Green won a Special Jury Prize for Outstanding First Feature - Dramatic. It also played Toronto. It was released in the USA last September and is currently on release in the UK in cinemas and on demand.

THE KINDERGARTEN TEACHER - BFI London Film Festival 2018 - Preview

Sara Colangelo's faithful remake of the Israeli drama THE KINDERGARTEN TEACHER is a beautifully acted, tense, slippery little film that has the confidence to leave some of its motivations mysterious. It stars an ever-superb, ever-brave Maggie Gyllenhaal as a teacher in Staten Island called Lisa Spinelli.  She lives a life where she has failed to inspire her own teenage kids to do anything meaningful. And while she attends a poetry class in Manhattan, taught by Gael Garcia Bernal's Simon, it's clear that while she may be artistically sensitive, she has no talent of her own.  One day, a little kid in her class called Jimmy (Parker Sevak) starts reciting poetry that is so precocious, and perfect, that Miss Spinelli is taken aback.  All of a sudden she has a mission in her life that makes HER unique and special by proxy - to be the guardian and nurterer of this little boy's talent.  

What I love about this film is that it continually throws us off balance. At first, when we see Lisa recite Jimmy's poetry in her Manhattan class, we wonder if this is going to be a film about plagiarism and theft. But no, her motives appear pure - at least in her own mind, everything she does is in the service of Jimmy's talent. She keeps telling herself this as her actions become more and more extreme, and the question Colangelo poses to us as the audience is how far we are willing to go along with her, and at what point we start questioning what is really going on here. How far is Lisa just trying to relive her own lost opportunity to shape her kids lives - how far has she become unmoored?

What I admire about Maggie Gyllenhaal is her willingness to play slippery ambiguous characters and take us into sympathising with her even as she does morally questionable things. Without spoiling anything, there's something so heartbreaking about Lisa's conversation with Jimmy through a door at the end of this film - at once the capable caring teacher, at once the emotionally trampled upon woman - that catapults this film to another level. I also love that this film simply allows the child to be a prodigy - and in its appallingly sad final lines, for Lisa to be right...

THE KINDERGARTEN TEACHER has a running time of 96 minutes. It played Sundance 2018 where Sara Colangelo won the directing prize. It also played Toronto and London. It opened in the USA last weekend and will open in the UK on February 8th 2019. 

COLETTE - BFI London Film Festival 2018 - Day Two

Wash Westmoreland switches gears from his wonderful STILL ALICE to a period drama about the French Belle Epoque novelist Colette, and her marriage to the literary impresario "Willy".  As the movie opens we see the charming, avuncular Willy come to rural Burgundy to woo the girl over a decade younger than him, but our expectations over-turned as this apparent innocent meets him later in a hay barn for a quickie.  They then move to Paris and begin their married life. She is frustrated by his affairs and flirtations - he says it's just what men do.  But the real conflict will come when Willy enlists Colette to be on his "factory" of writers. They provide the words - he the brand name and marketing.  Colette pours her childhood memories into books that effectively create a new genre - coming of age stories with a hint of subversive sexuality for young women.  Combined with Willy's carefully orchestrated PR machine, the books are a success. But all under Willy's name....

What's wonderful about this film is its recreation of a fascinating period of history - one of bold ideas, beautiful art, freedom and flirtation.  The costumes and sets are beautifully done, and even Thomas Ades' score introduces what would then have been cutting edge compositions. After all, it's this artsy salon crowd that would first have embraced Satie's Gymonpedes. I also love the completely unflamboyant way in which the film embraces colour-blind casting, and its straightforward depiction of gay relationships and gender fluid living.

As for the main strokes of the story, the script (Wash Westmoreland, the late Richard Glatzer, Rebecca Lenkiewicz) commits sins of omission rather than commission.  It is very true to the life of Colette and Willy, and especially to their facility with words. What might have been quite a dirge-like film about a woman exploited by a man is thus transformed into something very smart and witty, and often laugh out loud funny. To that end, Dominic West - who has been getting away with rogueish behaviour since THE WIRE - is perfectly cast as the "fat arsehole".  Indeed, after a rather triumphant speech by a career-best Keira Knightley, one feels rather uplifted and hopeful at the end of the film - something confirmed by end title cards that tell us how happy and successful Colette was, and of her position as the premiere women of French letters.  

My only slight complaint is that the film wants to subtly shoe-horn the Colette story into having an ending that's more streamlined and progressive than the reality would prove.  If you knew nothing else about her than what you saw in the film, you might suppose that she fought for and won all the rights to be seen as the sole author of her work and that she had a long and happy relationship with Missy.  By contrast, the relationship with Missy ended (Missy ended up committing suicide after the war) and Colette married a man and had a child.  And while she did win the rights to be sole author after Willy's death, after HER death, Willy's son contested the authorship again. 

COLETTE has a running time of 110 minutes and is rated R.  The film played Sundance, Toronto and London 2018. It went on limited release in the USA on September 21st and will be released in the UK on January 25th 2019.

BISBEE '17 - BFI London Film Festival 2018 - Preview

Documentarian Robert Greene (KATE PLAYS CHRISTINE) returns to the BFI London Film Festival with BISBEE '17 - an examination of a traumatic event that took place in a small town in Arkansas a hundred years ago.  Back then, Bisbee was a small mining town, effectively owned by three corporations. Labour conditions for the workers - many of them Mexican immigrants - were horrific.  The IWW union came to town and started distributing leaflets and recruiting members.  Finally, they staged a strike.  The largest corporation then colluded with the sheriff to create a posse of 2000 men; to round up the striking workers; to march them out of town and onto a train; and to dump them in New Mexico.  Needless to say, this action was illegal, but no-one was ever prosecuted for carrying it out. 

What's fascinating is seeing how this event still reverberates through the now diminished town of just 5,000 people. Descendants of the posse argue that their forefathers did what they had to, to maintain mining production during a period of war, and to prevent America being corrupted by socialism and communism, as Russia had been.  Those who identify with the workers (new immigrants, as let's face it how many of the original workers came back?) argue that this was just basic protection of a corporation, using the war as an excuse for harsh and illegal tactics. They speak to how even today, labelling someone as Other, and thus not American, makes it easy to deny them their rights. 

And so the documentary proceeds by showing us a town recreating events that are still controversial, and personal, with moving echoes of political feeling a century later. In the America of Trump and Sanders, the divisions are still very real. I was particularly moved by the experiences of a young hispanic man who seems deeply sensitive and nuanced in his thinking, re-enacting the plight of his ancestors. I was also moved by one of the re-enactors singing old protest songs as she sewed her costume. But where we really see the benefit of this is how viscerally it effects us to see men rounded up and walked out of town like cattle or convicts. And the man doing the rounding up admitting that as much as he sympathises with the original sheriff who has since been painted a villain, once you see these men being marched out, and you drive passed them, it just feels wrong. 

Many contemporary documentaries use the tactic of re-enactment to get to the emotional heart of a situation and allow us to reflect on how the topic might play today.  But this is one of the most successful examples I have seen of that. And it's really testament to the power of this exercise that an event I'd never heard of had such resonance and urgency.  

BISBEE '17 has a running time of 112 minutes and is rated PG.  The film played Sundance and London 2018. It was released in the USA in September but does not yet have a commercial release date for the UK. There are still tickets available for one of the two screenings at this year's BFI London Film Festival. 

AMERICAN ANIMALS

AMERICAN ANIMALS is a beautifully crafted docu-drama about four feckless college students who decided to try to steal some valuable books - including Audobon's Birds of America - from their college library. They don't need the money. One of them even aspires to join the FBI when asked to join the heist.  They seem to do it just because... maybe boredom, or the need to feel special in some way?  It's all so moronic it hurts my brain. Nonetheless, it makes for a fascinating story because documentary director Bart Layton (THE IMPOSTER) does a fantastic job of contrasting the slippery memories and justifications of the real life protagonists -interviewed on screen - with his docudrama recreation (starring Barry Keoghan - THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER).  For those of you who loved the conflicting memories and elisions of I, TONYA, then this is the film for you. In brilliantly edited and framed scenes Layton takes us from his fictional characters reminiscences of events to the real people, deftly altering the "record" and showing how untrustworthy it actually is. There's also a superb attempt to take us inside the mind of its protagonists, showing us the heist as they imagined it might go, in an Ocean's Eleven style, Dave Grusin scored tour-de-force. And the end of what do we get? Genuine remorse - yes. But also a faintly disturbing feeling that is what kids being raised on a diet of instant gratification will aspire to - life experience and defining moments that are unearned.  Frightening, indeed. 

AMERICAN ANIMALS has a running time of 116 minutes and is rated R. It was released in the USA this summer and is currently on release in the UK.