BLINDED BY THE LIGHT

Gurinder Chadha (BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM) returns to our screens with what is being marketed as a feel-good movie - BLINDED BY THE LIGHT. It's based on the memoirs of Sarfraz Mahmood, a second gen British-Pakistani growing up in the racially violent and economically distressed Luton of the 1980s.  If there's not enough to deal with outside the safety of his home, inside he has to deal with issues many second gen immigrants face - how to live an assimilated life, fulfilling one's own dreams, while still honouring the values and dreams of the first gen who sacrificed so much for our success. I say "our" because this is a milieu - and indeed a specific time and place - that I know very well. And I can say that the authenticity that Chadha and Mansoor capture in how our families spoke to each other and hoped and dreamed and were thwarted is spot on - and so close to the bone it provoked a really violent reaction in me.  I think that's because it's so rare to see any kind of explicit racial violence on screen that so clearly depicts the British history that we lived through that the film drove a moment of raw catharsis. So it wasn't feel good for me, but that's okay, because it's deep political conscience is really admirable and much needed.

That said, before the raw emotion overcame me, I have to say this really was and is a lovely and feel good film.  Firstly because Chadha and her production designers so beautifully capture small-town English towns of the 80s - including long-gone but much-lived shops like Athena and Our Price - all those fantastic clothes and songs - the ever-present Walkman headphones - and that specific joy of handing over your favourite cassette or VHS tape to a friend.  Because that's what happens in this film. Our protagonist Javed (Viveik Khalra - sympathetic and charismatic) is feeling miserable under the pressures at home and outside until his new friend Roops gives him a tape of the then unfashionable Bruce Springsteen. He wonders what an American rocker can say that's relevant to him until he listens to the lyrics and realises that working class angst is global, and that seeing your father's dreams crushed by economic reality is deeply relatable.  So the music in this film is superb and energetic before Springsteen makes an entrance but reaches another level when he does. The way in which Chadha uses CGI to superimpose the lyrics on scenes, or pivots action around an inspiring lyric is just superb. There's a lot of love and respect and understanding of Springsteen's work in there.

The film is also just straightforwardly funny - helped by some lovely cameos from comedians such as Rob Brydon, Sally Phillips (Char-DON-nay), Marcus Brigstock and Olivia Poulet.  My only criticism is that it could've more fully embraced its genre - at least for a central music scene that's full of joy and energy but could've been truly superb with a little more careful choreography.  But these are all small concerns. Because BLINDED BY THE LIGHT is a truly lovely joyous film that masks a provocative and brutally honest heart about the immigrant experience.  It deserves to be seen as widely as possible. 

BLINDED BY THE LIGHT has a running time of 117 minutes and is rated PG-13. It played Sundance 2019 and will be released in the UK on August 9th and in the USA on August 14th. 

MILLION DOLLAR ARM

MILLION DOLLAR ARM is a straight forward no-nonsense sports under-dog story imbued with all the earnest good intentions and feel-good loveliness that a Disney movie entails. It's based on the true story of baseball pitchers Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel who were discovered by sports agent J.B. Bernstein after winning a reality show competition and went on to become the first Indians to play major-league baseball.

The conventional character development arc lands on Jon Hamm as the sleazy hard-up lothario and agent JB.  He initiates the completion as a means to revive his career and has no interest in his putative stars other than the commissions and new clients they can win him.  Naturally, India is a transformative experience - particularly a visit to the boys rural village.  It's a cliche that I find as insulting now as I did when I watched THE DARJEELING LIMITED.  But not content with one movie cliche, the film introduces another, when JB falls for his kind-hearted no-nonsense tenant - a doctor played by the ever-authentic Lake Bell.  She brings the most out of a two-dimensional character and softens both JB's heart and ours.

The obvious things happen. There are high pressure try-outs that are fumbled and second chances at redemption.  The mean nasty businessman has a heart of gold and all things can be cured by the love of a good woman and a visit to a third world country. 

All of which is highly disappointing given the quality of the cast - not least  the Indian actor Pitobash - and the director Craig Gillespie (LARS AND THE REAL GIRL) and writer Tom McCarthy (UP). If Disney had been willing to make the film a little grittier, and JB a little less likeable, they could have done something really memorable. 

MILLION DOLLAR ARM has a running time of 124 minutes and is rated PG.  The movie was released earlier this year in India, Canada, the USA, Cambodia, Pakistan, Argentina, Greece, Chile, Turkey, Mexico and Peru.  It opens this weekend in the UK and Ireland.  It opens in September in Italy, Panama, Colombia, Germany, Denmark, South Africa and Brazil. It opens in October in Japan, Spain and Norway, in Hungary on December 1st and in Sweden on March 11th 2015. 

PEOPLE LIKE US

Screenwriter Alex Kurtzman (STAR TREK) makes his directorial debut with the occasionally hilarious, but tonally uneven and overlong dramedy, PEOPLE LIKE US.  The person I watched the movie with judged it "the worst movie I've seen in some time".  I agree that it was a wearying watch, and had more endings that LORD OF THE RINGS. But every time I gave up on this over-wrought drama, a scene would take place that once again got me into it.  This flick isn't a failure - it just drowned any spark of life in melodrama.

Perhaps the movie's real problem is its central conceit - damaged brother discovers he has a half-sister and a nephew after his father's death. But instead of coming clean about their family ties, he insinuates himself into their lives until the sister is in danger of falling for him.  This is the classic plot contrivance that only ever happens in cheap films, and prevents the movie doing what it really wants to do - which is to portray real , authentic damaged people struggling to come to terms with an emotional crisis.

The movie stars Chris Pine as Sam, a resentful son commissioned by his recently deceased father to give $150,000 to the sister he never knew he had. That sister, Frankie (Elizabeth Banks) is a recovering alcoholic with a whip-smart son called Josh (Michael Hall D'Addario). Chris Pine is the weak link in the set-up with his limited emotional range, and while Banks is the better actress, she's far too glossy to convince as a struggling single mum.  In every case, they are both upstaged for comedy by Michael Hall D'Addario (the coolest screenkid ever, with the best screen entrance for a schoolboy since Malcolm McDowell in IF...), and for drama by a dishevelled and conflicted Michelle Pfeiffer (Sam's mum).  Her role in the estrangement of her husband from his illegitimate daughter is beautifully written and played, and it's sad that it is resolved in such a hammy way.

PEOPLE LIKE US opened earlier this year in the USA, Italy, the Philippines, Chile, Norway, Germany  Denmark, the UK and Ireland. It opens this weekend in Turkey.

London Film Fest 2010 - Day 16 - Closing Night Gala - 127 HOURS

I don't do extreme sport. I don't really do common or garden sport. In the words of George Burns, 'I never go jogging: it makes me spill my martini.' If some fuckwit decides to go up a mountain or into a canyon on his own, without telling anyone about it, and then gets his arm trapped under a boulder, I basically have no sympathy. I mean, I'm glad said fuckwit survived, but do I really want to watch a dreary, dismal, against-all-odds movie where we basically spend 90 minutes watching a bloke drinking his own urine and then hacking off his arm with a blunt knife? No.

The triumph of writer-director Danny Boyle is that 127 HOURS is NOT that movie. He brings all the energy, visual style and bravura editing of SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE and TRAINSPOTTING to a story that could've been claustrophobic and grim. Better still, he had the faith to cast James Franco in the central role of real-life canyoneer Aron Ralston - an actor who is pretty, no doubt, but also very gifted and only now starting to get roles that show his potential.

The movie begins with a hi-energy, thumping sound-track from A.R.Rahman, and split screen footage of urban life - crowds of people and noise - trading floors and sports stadia. We see Franco's Ralston grab a map, some supplies, his cam-corder, jump in a car, music blaring, and head for the Canyon. This is clearly a guy full of energy, personable, but basically too busy to bother checking in. He's on the move - looking for that perfect outdoor sports high. And Boyle tells us all this without any dialogue - just some bravura editing and a really original approach to the material.

When we get to the Blue John Canyon, we see Aron charm the pants off two lost hikers, showing them the joy of dropping into an underground pool. Again, it's a brief episode but sketches in his character - good fun, witty, and a dare-devil. Tellingly, just as Aron ran out of the store not even turning to wave goodbye but impatient to move on to the next thing, he runs off from the girls, waving without turning. It's all about the next adventure.

Before we've even paused for breathe, Aron's dropped into a canyon, the boulder has crushed his arm, and he's realised, mid-swigging from his water-bottle, that he's "in deep doo-doo." And for the first time, the camera pans out from the ravine, out of the canyon, and there isn't any rock music on the sound-track. It's a great contrast to the first half hour of the flick.

What then follows is some superb acting from James Franco, as he portrays a man who veers from pragmatic, ingenious engineer to delusional, dehydrated hysteria. And Franco is matched point for point by Boyle's inventive use of the camera. From inside-the-water-bottle POV shots, to quick edits of Aron's delusional visions - the movie never loses pace or interest despite the constraints of basically shooting a guy in a ravine. (Admittedly, Boyle is helped by the fact that the real-life Ralston really did cam-cord himself, giving the screenwriters a neat device to break the silence and alter the POV.) In fact, far from being grim, 127 HOURS is often very funny indeed. And, most importantly, by making us enjoy Aron's company, and by making us see what he has to go home to, the movie makes us completely invest in his survival. As a result, when Aron finally has to break his arm and then cut through it to free himself, the audience gasped in horror at his pain, and cheered with joy when he finally escaped the trap. And when he finally saw a family in the distance, and the helicopter came for him, the feeling of relief and catharsis was palpable. I practically bounced out of the cinema on a natural high.

So, whether or not you typically like extreme-sport-survivor movies, you should definitely check out 127 HOURS. To use that most hackneyed of phrases, it really is a feel-good film of the best kind - a movie that earns its warm fuzzy glow by making you identify with its protagonist and taking you through what feels like authentic pain. The resulting film is full of energy, emotionally engaging, brilliantly acted, and technically imaginative. I think it's Danny Boyle's finest film to date, and certainly James Franco's best performance - combining the talent for comedy shown in PINEAPPLE EXPRESS with the ability to show real emotion seen in HOWL and MILK.

127 HOURS played Telluride and Toronto 2010. It opens in the US on November 5th 2010 and in the UK on January 7th 2011.

YUVRAAJ - piss-poor Bollywood melodrama slash RAINMAN rip-off

YUVRAAJ is an unwatchable movie from Subash Ghai - one of Hindi cinema's most unreliable directors. He's made iconic movies like TAAL and even the recent, earnest political drama BLACK AND WHITE but he's also made some complete stinkers.

YUVRAAJ (Hindi: "prince") is about a cock-sure arsehole (Salman Khan) who wants to marry a rich cellist (Katrina Kaif). Her father forbids the match until this waste of space makes some money. So our "hero" decides to team up with his playboy younger brother (Zayed Khan) and exploit their third brother (Anil Kapoor) - an autistic, musical genius who just happens to have inherited their father's fortune.

The movie is superficial and glitzy and at times seems like little more than an advert for Austrian tourism. Katrina Kaif, Salman Khan and Zayed Khan are poor actors, the script is cumbersome and ridiculous, and poor Anil Kapoor is stuck in a role that is absurd. He's the only reason to see the movie, and believe me he's not reason enough. As for A.R.Rahman's score - it's a real embarassment. Apart from the songs "Tu meri dost hain" and "Mastam mastam", the numbers are over-worked, bombastic and truly poor quality.

Movies like DOSTANA - for all their compromises - are moving Bollywood forward. Movies like YUVRAAJ set it back by around a decade. Avoid at all costs or waste two and half hours pondering the strange life of Salman Khan's hair-line and Anil Kapoor's collection of haute couture lapel pins.

YUVRAAJ went on global release on November 21st.

London Film Fest Day 16 - SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE is a bizarre hybrid movie from the incredibly versatile British director Danny Boyle. He's done urban grime (TRAINSPOTTING), quasi-zombie movies (28 DAYS LATER), sci-fi (SUNSHINE) and now a sort of English-language Bollywood movie. SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE has the art-house director's eye and a willingness to depict the horrific truth of life in the Mumbai slums. But it splices this with the schmaltzy romantic ending of your typical Bollywood movie. It's a tricky balance to pull off. Moreover, the film carefully and elegantly weaves together scenes showing its protagonists at age 7, 12 and 18. Danny Boyle shows his quality because he manages to control the conflicting styles and inter-weaving script.

The movie is about a boy called Jamal who grows up in the Mumbai slums with his older brother Salim. At age seven, anti-Muslim riots make the boys homeless orphans. They are lured into becoming beggars for an organised gang and only escape when it becomes clear that the gang-leader will blind Jamal because blind singers earn double. It's that brutal. In escaping, the boys leave behind their friend Latika. At age 18 the boys return to Mumbai and search out Latika, who is being trained to be a whore. They rescue her, only for Salim and Latika to fall back into the clutches of a gang boss - now transformed into a property developer in the Maximum City Mumbai of 2008. Jamal is reduced to working as the teaboy in Mumbai call centres.

So far, the movie plays like a British independent movie dissecting the social truth of life in Mumbai in 2008 - the call centres, rising middle-class wealth, gated luxury apartments alongside the old slums, the corruption, the hazard.....It's all brilliantly well done - well acted and beautifully shot on handheld DV by Anthony Dod Mantle.

Where the movie ultimately lost me (and our Gmunden correspondent) was in its high concept framing device. 18 year old Jamal (Dev Patel of SKINS fame) has decided that the only way he can contact childhood sweetheart Latika is to appear of the Indian version of WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE? - a TV show she watches. Through sheer luck, he knows all the answers to the questions and as taping ends on the first day he is on the verge of being a millionaire. The show's oleaginous host (Anil Kapoor doing a brilliant impression of Amitabh Bachchan) suspects him of cheating. How can an uneducated slumdog know all the answers? So over-night, Jamal is interrogated by the police (Irrfhan Khan). In explaining his answers to the policeman, Jamal gives us the flashbacks of his life and the story to date. The copper believes him and lets him go so he can finish taping the show and hopefully find his girl. Jamal may be a slumdog but he's actually not in it for the money.

The high concept allows Danny Boyle to give the movie a melodramatic, schmaltzy Bollywood ending. I can see why this would be the popular choice, but it tipped the movie over the edge. I like my social commentary undiluted. Still, while SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE isn't quite my thing, you can't deny that it's a well-made, audacious, truly original hybrid film - and manages both to provoke and to entertain!

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE played Toronto (where it won the People's Choice Award) and London 2008. It opens in France on January 7th 2009; in the UK on January 9th; in Belgium on January 14th and in the Netherlands on April 2nd.

GURU - handsomely produced but cumbersome

GURU is a handsomely produced but cumbersome film based on the life of Indian rags-to-riches businessman Dhirubhai Ambani.

Co-written and directed by Mani Ratnam (director of the infinitely better YUVA), GURU is unambitious in its narrative structure and thematic material. It follows a young man as he leaves his small Indian village and learns his trade in the markets of Istanbul. Cue a credibility-busting "item number" involving excruciating belly-dancing from Mallika Sherawat. Composer A.R.Rahman should know better too. Guru returns to India and marries a disabled girl, ostensibly in order to get the money to stake his business. He starts a cloth trading company, successfully breaking up the corrupt local bosses with the help of a local crusading journalist. Before long he is running one of the biggest companies in India, if not the world. Naturally, there is some bribery, some corruption, some adversity, some triumph over adversity. And then it's over. But nowhere do we have the kind of emotional exploration that we see in a film like GODFATHER II - another film about a powerful but corrupt man.

With the nicely drawn visuals offset by the weak narrative in the second half of the film, do the performances tip this into a must-see movie? Basically, no. The movie stars Bollywood's Brangelina, Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai as the businessman and his wife respectively. Bachchan has done better work, not least in YUVA. Rai returns to her plastic big-Bollywood persona - a million miles away from her early performances in art-house movies CHOKHER BALI and RAINCOAT. The talented Madhavan, Mithun Chakraborty and Vidya Balan are good in the supporting cast, but this is small recompense in a near-three-hour slog.

GURU was released in Canada, India, Malaysia, the Netherlands, the UK and the USA on January 12th 2007. It is now available on DVD.

PROVOKED - sub-daytime TV drama

PROVOKED is a straightforward re-telling of the Kiranjit Ahluwalia case. Kiranjit was an Indian woman who was brought to England for an arranged marriage. She was convicted of murdering her abusive husband in the late 1980s. Because she had killed him two hours after he the latest occasion of domestic abuse, her lawyers could not argue that it was a matter of self-defence. At this point, the Southall Black Sisters - a non-profit support group for abused women - took up Kiranjit's case. They helped launch the appeal that established the British legal precedent of using "battered women's sydrome" as a defence.

The worthiness of the subject matter should not however detract from the fact that this is a poor-quality production. The abrupt cutting between scenes, the hackneyed dialogue, A R Rahman's melodramatic score and the pantomime characterisation and acting do not serve this important story well.

In the world of this film, people are either put-upon victims or evil villains. Kiranjit's husband is particularly one-dimensional, but the prison guards and rozzers are also thinly drawn. The acting is similarly unconvincing. A host of British day-time TV "stars" play versions of their TV characters. So "Phil" from Eastenders is back as a Nasty cop, and "Ash Ferreira" is back as a nice but rather anonymous lawyer. Rebecca Pidgeon, Robbie Coltrane and Miranda Richardson are all decent actors, of course, but the first two have little more than cameos and the the third inhabits a character so unlikely in a story-line so schmaltzy as to be literally incredible. And what of Aishwarya Rai in the starring role? She simpers. And simpers some more. The audience has no glimpse of the emotional life a woman who was driven to brutally kill her husband.

PROVOKED is on release in the UK.