JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH****

It is with no small irony that the new Jurassic Park film asks us to imagine a world in which consumers are bored with dinosaurs, given that this franchise has offered diminishing returns to the viewer since its inception thirty years ago.   In this new film, boredom, climate change, and disease have combined to make dinosaurs irrelevant to anyone living beyond a narrow band around the equator where they still flourish, and humans are strictly forbidden. Of course, that won't stop unscrupulous capitalists trying to exploit them for cash. Cue a trip to the Caribbean for Rupert Friend's evil pharma exec,  Scarlett Johansson's special ops team leader and Mahershala Ali's ship's captain. And, because Jurassic Park, they will pick up some capsized cute kids en route.  

Set up complete. What about the execution?  Gareth Edwards (ROGUE ONE) has made THE BEST Jurassic Park film since the original and, whisper it quietly, perhaps even surpassed the iconic Spielberg original. A tight script from the original screenwriter, David Koepp combine with superb performances from a heavyweight cast to create character depth and backstory quickly and convincingly. I actually cared about these characters' moral choices and evolving emotional relationships.  

And what of the thrills and spills? It should comes as no surprise that the director who made MONSTERS knows what he's doing with simultaneously frightening and awe-inspiring beasties. We see them move through the water like Jaws, or nuzzle up to each other in fond embrace. It's all spectacular. I particularly liked a scene shot behind a character where a beastie we know well from the original is taken out by its predator. But the tour de force set piece is in the film's final act, where chiaroscuro lighting, tension-inducing editing, superb scoring from Alexandre Desplat and a truly mesmerising performance from Mahershala Ali combine to captivate us. And because of David Koepp's script we know enough about his character to truly understand and respect his motivations. The only bum note in the film is when Edwards chickens out with a bit of improbable schmaltz, more befitting a Spielberg film than one of this own. But we can't have everything I guess.

It also surprises me that social media trolls haven't labelled this film woke, and have instead directed their ire at SUPERMAN and SNOW WHITE.  After all, the message of this film (which I heartily endorse) is that "science is for everyone" not corporations with patents.  And in a lightly-done but profound scene, we hear a hispanic dad (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) tell his daughter's apparently feckless but actually rather lovely boyfriend (David Iacono) not to think the worst of himself - others do that already. This is what a David Koepp script gives you.  Subtle moments rather than heavy-handed exposition.  

JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH has a running time of 133 minutes, is rated PG-13 and is global release.

LEE**

Lee Miller was a supermodel and a surrealist muse before becoming a photographer in her own right.  When World War Two broke out began by photographing the home front for Vogue before lobbying to be sent to the front line. She captured images of the Allies using napalm in France, and then of the liberation of Buchenwald and Dachau. Famously, she photographed herself in Hitler's bathtub, her muddied boots defiant in front of the tub.  She was tough, self-medicated with alcohol, "sex positive", and by all accounts a rather distant mother.  Her life is big enough for several films, or a miniseries. Sadly this film, produced by and starring Kate Winslet, can't seem to wrap its arms around its subject and wrestle it to the ground.

The first problem with LEE the film is its framing device. Winslet is aged up to be the seventy-year old Lee going through her old photos with a young interviewer (CHALLENGERS' Josh O'Connor).  The problem is that every time we get to a moment of dramatic tension and need to stay emotionally engaged we are ripped out into a different era.  The worst example of this is when we go from Dachau to Hitler's villa, now being used as a convivial officers' mess.  The contrast is sinister and surreal and Alexandre Desplat's score captures the weirdness of it. The problem is, the contrast is split by an interlude in the 1970s. I understand why Winslet the producer thought she had a duty to include this framing device - more of which in the spoiler section after the release info - but I think it was a distraction ad a mis-step.

The second problem with LEE is that the first act in St Malo is marred by the casting choice of Alexander Skarsgard as her lover Roger Penrose. Skarsgard simply can't do a convincing English accent and it's hugely distracting.  

The film is on firmer footing with the third and most impactful relationship that Miller had - her collaboration with the Life magazine photographer David Scherman. Andy Samberg is good in this role as far as it goes but the film isn't interested in exploring why this relationship worked when so many others didn't. And it criminally under explores his reaction to the camps. 

We are on firmer footing with Lee's female friendships.  Winslet is at her finest in scenes of tender intimacy, first with Noemie Merlant's surrealist artist Nusch - and most heartbreakingly with Marion Cotillard's Solange d'Ayen. This is not a convincing film but Cotillard's cameo is pure authentic tragic pain and deserves awards season recognition.  I also loved Andrea Riseborough (BRIGHTON ROCK) as the thoroughly decent and thoroughly straight-laced Vogue editor Audrey Withers.

The problem is that these moments of genuine heartbreak are scattered in a film that can't quite convince as a whole. I blame this mostly on the screenplay by Liz Hannah (THE POST), Marion Hume and John Collee (MASTER & COMMANDER).  I think the time spent in St Malo is good as a contrast to the wartime suffering, but I felt every moment spent with Roger or the interviewer was wasted. Most of all I just didn't feel that I ended the film understanding Lee more than at the start. The script felt reductive. Its Lee is a victim of abuse who protects the abused but cannot protect herself or her family from her alcoholism.  But is that the only explanation I am to have of why this beautiful privileged woman decided to go to Dachau? And was she an alcoholic before the war? Or just after Dachau?  And why don't we ever really see her suffer for that?  She is the most high-functioning alcoholic I have seen.

I also feel that the film is both dumbed down with exposition AND weirdly does not explain stuff I needed to know! There's lots of exposition - especially early on - but then no signposting that we are at Dachau, or really that we are in Hitler's actual house, or that the little girl in the camp was in a brothel. I only knew that because Kate Winslet referred to that scene in a Q&A. 

Is the film worth watching? Yes for the scenes with Riseborough and Cotillard and for Winslet's performance. But it remains a frustrating viewing experience.

LEE is rated R and has a running time of 116 minutes.  It played Toronto 2023. It opens in the UK on September 16th and in the USA on September 27th.

Spoilers follow:  Kate Winslet said in her Q&A that she felt a duty toward Lee's son to give him the conversation with his mother about her life that he never had in real life. This film was made in collaboration with the son and the Lee Miller estate. I feel that that sense of obligation was a burden for this film.  The lack of relationship between mother and son is only interesting if we really explore her post-war PTSD and as a reflection on what she saw. By wrapping the film up in it, and making it have a conversation with Lee's wartime experiences, it diminishes the power of the Holocaust scenes and adds little depth to our understanding of Lee.

THE BOYS IN THE BOAT**

THE BOYS IN THE BOAT is a deeply dull, paint-by-numbers underdog sports biopic about a working class American rowing eight than won Gold at the 1936 Olympics. We don't learn much about them, other than that they are poor and motivated. We know they are poor because is an opening scene the hero (Callum Turner with an absurd and distracting blonde dye job) is putting cardboard inside his shoe. We don't learn much about their coach (Joel Edgerton) who just looks taciturn and unknowable for the entire film. We certainly don't understand why they are so good and what he did to make them that way. And we don't really understand the stakes.   

This was the Hitler/Berlin Olympics but director George Clooney has no interest in showing the real peril of fascist Germany, just as he isn't interested in showing the real tragedy of Depression-era America. Instead, he puts a few Nazi flags up, has a few brownshirts cheer for Germany, and some guy play dress up as the Fuhrer. It's actually so trivialising it's insulting - particularly to Jesse Owens. What we learn from all this is that Clooney doesn't want to get his hands dirty in the period.  

Instead he creates a film that is book-ended by a sappy grandpa-grandson bit of nostalgia; that is forever bathed in twinkling sunlight; and where the hero's girlfriend forever has perfectly styled hair and no character or lines to speak of.  This is dull retrograde film-making of the worst kind, and all the more embarrassing because CHARIOTS OF FIRE figured out how to inject emotion, stakes and modernity forty years ago.

THE BOYS IN THE BOAT is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 123 minutes. It was released in the USA on Christmas Day 2023, and in the UK on January 12th.

NYAD***** - BFI London Film Festival 2023 - Day 8

NYAD destroyed me in the best possible way. It made me laugh, it made me crush on Jodie Foster, it made me sit on the edge of my seat and my heart-beat race, it made me cry ugly happy tears. This is a movie that is just to well put together, so compelling, so engaging, full of such wonderful characters, that I did not want it to end. I am Team Nyad. The only slightly sad thing is that as much as I suspect Annette Bening is using this as her shot at an Oscar, the actor who steals every scene is Jodie Foster.

Bening stars as Diana Nyad, a real life champion swimmer whose dream was to swim a hundred miles non-stop from Cuba to Florida through shark-infested water. That dream eluded her in her thirties, but pissed off at turning sixty and being written off, she decides to make another attempt. The film makes it clear that Nyad is not short of ego and that kind of ruthless selfishness that makes winners win, but it also makes it clear that marathon open-water swimming is a team-sport.  Nyad, for all her stubborn egomania, is beloved. Most of all, by her multi-decade best friend and partner in crime Bonnie, played with swagger, charisma and great fun by Jodie Foster.  

As we follow Diana in her quest, we are always aware of the dangers and the stakes thanks to clear and crisp direction from Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin.  They beautifully weave in flashbacks and audio from the real, younger Nyad, explaining the physical and mental challenge of ocean swimming, and make us feel part of her ramshackle team of navigator, captain, shark and jellyfish experts.  The result is a film no less compelling than the directors' previous Oscar winning documentary film FREE SOLO. The idea of having documentarians fictionalise this story is inspired because it so beautifully takes the best of the both formats. I cannot recommend the resulting film highly enough, if for no other reason that to see Jodie Foster have more fun on screen than I have ever seen her have.  And just to see older women succeed, and female friendship and excellence celebrated. 

NYAD is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 121 minutes. It played Telluride, Toronto and London 2023.  It opens in the USA on October 20th in cinemas and on November 3rd on Netflix.

ASTEROID CITY**

Sigh.  

It feels as though Wes Anderson peaked somewhere around GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL and has been offering diminishing returns ever since. To be sure, ASTEROID CITY isn't quite as pointless as THE FRENCH DISPATCH but it isn't far off.  The film looks beautiful. It is as full of Wes Anderson being Wes Anderson as ever. But at what point do we just say, "Halt! Enough!" Because of all this useless beauty becomes merely self-parody if it doesn't also make us feel.

Maybe the problem is that the stuff that is meant to make us feel has been done before, many times, by Wes Anderson.  The self-cannibalisation just feels lazy.  How often can we watch a film about the awkwardness and sweetness of first love?  We've already seen it done better in MOONRISE KINGDOM and indeed in GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL, but with way more consequence in the latter.  The story of a widower struggling to tell his kids about their mother's death and calling in his father to help is also ripped straight out of THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS.  Ask yourself if Jason Schwartzman's emotional crisis, which barely registers on screen, moves you as much as Ben Stiller's manic energy in TENENBAUMS? Everywhere I looked at this film I saw pale dilutions of ideas already worked and reworked. And nothing approaching the mournful or comedic heights of the best of Anderson's oeuvre. It's like watching the last two decades of Woody Allen knowing that MANHATTAN was once possible.

ASTEROID CITY is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 105 minutes. It played Cannes 2023 and opened last month.

GIULLERMO DEL TORO'S PINOCCHIO - BFI London Film Festival 2022 - Day 11

It feels as though the theme of this year’s  BFI London Film Festival is coming to terms with the death of a loved one. Maybe with a side order of humanity versus religio-fascism. If you don’t believe me, remember this is the second film I’ve watched in the last twenty- four hours that takes a children’s story and recasts it with added violence in the midst of early twentieth century European fascism. The result is a film that is strangely full of childish enthusiasm and hope but that does not shy away from the reality of mortality, death and war. Del Toro was straightforward about its agenda when he introduced the film at today’s world premiere: it’s a film about disobedience as a virtue. And as Christoph Waltz said, there’s something worthwhile in a film about a wooden puppet who wants to be a boy, at a time when humans are being made into puppets. 

The film is depicted with the most beautifully rendered stop-motion animation that has texture and vivid colours and the most wondrous attention to detail. Our narrator is Sebastian J Cricket - never referred to with his pejorative nickname. He’s voiced by Ewan MacGregor as a rather vain but ultimately lovely little insect, and he provides much of the comedy of the film. 

We are treated to a prolonged prologue that tells us about the beloved son that Gepetto (David Bradley) lost, and after whom he fashions Pinocchio. One of the themes of the film is that one should never have to change to be loved. The narrative journey of Gepetto is that he has to learn Pinocchio for himself rather than trying to make him a good little Carlo. 

The world around our trio is one of Italy falling into fascism under Mussolini. And we have a lot of fun with innocent Pinocchio mocking "Il Dolce" and inspiring others to disobey laws that are unjust. Gregory Mann gives a sensational voice performance as the puppet - full of energy and fun and heart.  In one of the most moving scenes of the film, Pinocchio passes on the advice given to him by Sebastian - that fathers may say mean things when they fall into despair, but they don’t mean it. As in all totalitarian societies, there is no room for the personal in this Italy and poor little Candlewick (Finn Wolfhard) struggles to be the son his Fascist father wants him to be. 

As with Pixar’s SOUL there’s a fair amount of time spent in the afterlife, or underworld or whatever you’d like to call it. And this is a subtly radical world insofar as it shows that the Catholic Church is quiescent to fascism. The imperative to obey moves easily from Church to State in this film as in UNICORN WARS - also playing in this year's festival. But in Del Toro’s universe it’s the spirits of nature that have real power, and it’s a pagan elemental world that we’re living in. This is depicted in the guise of two feminine powers, both voiced by Tilda Swinto..

So the subject matter is grown-up but as with all the best childrens' films it will appeal to the adults and to the children, who have always been aware of the horrors of this world. As Del Toro said in his introduction, this is fine for children to watch, so long as their parents talk to them about it afterwards.

GIULLERMO DEL TORO'S PINOCCHIO has a running time of 113 minutes. The world premiere is at the BFI London Film Festival 2022. It will be released on December 9th.

THE FRENCH DISPATCH** - BFI London Film Festival 2021 - Day 5

 

Wes Anderson's THE FRENCH DISPATCH is all whimsy and stunning design but completely lacking in meaning or profundity for all bar about 3 minutes of its running time. This gives me no pleasure to say as a great fan of his work. But the genius of GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL was marrying his unique eye with a story that both made us life but also made us cry, and tackled the most profound and moving of subjects.  By contrast, Anderson's homage to literary magazines seems deeply unambitious and frivolous and thus uninvolving and dull. This is no doubt exacerbated by a portmanteau structure that prevents or plot character development. Indeed, this may be his worst film since THE DARJEELING LIMITED.  I wonder if he is too spoiled by being able to get every actor he wants for cameos that pile up into shagpile carpet of zanily dressed but pointless characters. He badly needs an editor and some focus.

So, the film is about a literary review editor played by Bill Murray and the magazine he created as demonstrated by three stories from the magazine brought to life. The first is a prison love story about an homicidal maniac artist (Benicio del Toro), his muse / guard (Lea Seydoux), his agent (Adrien Brody) and an art critic (Tilda Swinton).   The second is about a 1968 student demo led by Timothee Chalamet and reported on by Frances McDormand.  The third has a food critic (Jeffrey Wright) recall the kidnapping of the son of a police chief.  

There are some, but not enough, laughs in the film.  Anderson flicks from colour to black and white for no real reason.  The only scene of any power is where Jeffrey Wright's critic, clearly influenced by James Baldwin, recalls how he was once arrested for being gay and the editor saved him.  

Every mirror needs a dark backing so that we can see our reflection in it.  Anderson needs to bear that in mind.

THE FRENCH DISPATCH is rated R and has a running time of 108 minutes. It played Cannes, San Sebastian and the BFI London Film Festival 2021. It opens in the USA and UK on October 22nd.

THE MIDNIGHT SKY

THE MIDNIGHT SKY is a deeply derivative, mediocre sci-fi movie that will be utterly predictable and unsatisfying to anyone even half decent with the canon. It stars and is directed by George Clooney. He plays a scientist on a future earth ravished by some kind of non-specific disaster. Naturally he's also dying because Pathos. As is the way with these sorts of film, scientific geniuses are self-involved dicks, so earlier in his life he has turned his back on the love of his life and his daughter. So when in old age this dying scientist starts seeing a young girl called Iris in his arctic base, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that he's hallucinating his little abandoned girl. Together they travel to a different arctic base to send a signal to some astronauts not to come home, but to go back to a moon that is capable of sustaining life. Why does George need to travel to another base? So that he can turn in one of those Man vs Nature performances (think Leonardo di Caprio in THE REVENANT or Tom Hanks in CAST AWAY) that Oscar voters love. Except Clooney's performance is mediocre at best and the stakes really don't seem as grave as in THE REVENANT. There is no doubt he'll survive if only to connect with the astronauts. Also it really pissed me off that Clooney as director doesn't obey the rules of hallucinated little girls. If Clooney's character can't see her, we shouldn't be able to see her. Come on Clooney you should know this - you did star in that piss awful remake of SOLARIS!

By far the more interesting part of the film takes place on the spaceship that has discovered the new life-sustaining moon, per Clooney's predictions. It's staffed by David Oyelowo and Felicity Jones as a pregnant husband and wife research team as well as sidekicks like Kyle Chandler. His character exists to show the dilemma the scientists face upon hearing Clooney's news. Do you return home to try and find and admittedly die with your family? Or do you go to the new moon and try to "do better this time"? But even in this strand it all feels like stuff we've seen before, and the way in which space and moonwalks are photographed just cannot compete with superior films like GRAVITY and FIRST MAN.

The bottom line is that you would be better off watching any of the other movies that I have referenced in this review. 

THE MIDNIGHT SKY is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 118 minutes.

LITTLE WOMEN (2019)

Greta Gerwig has created perhaps the most beautiful, vital and affecting version of LITTLE WOMEN yet seen on screen. Even better, she has opened improved upon the original novel and more slavish adaptations by making Amy March a character of some wisdom and agency by the end, and by making Laurie's choices more credible. There is nothing I would fault in this film - nothing I would add or subtract. I was low-level crying for much of the final hour, and not just at *that* plot point.  I felt I had been through the wringer and really loved the March women and respected and understood their choices.

For those unfamiliar with Louisa May Alcott's classic novel - revered in the US but far less well known in Europe, the book is set during the American Civil War. An earnest Christian father is away at the front, leaving his wife Marmie to raise their four daughters - the little women of the title.  The eldest - Meg - is sweet and kind and aspires to be a homemaker like her mother.  The second eldest - Jo - is an aspiring writer, tomboy, and to many the true protagonist of the novel.  The next is Amy - beautiful and superficial in the novel, and given a revelatory expansion of feeling and story in this version.  And the youngest is piano-playing sweet Beth.  

Eliza Scanlan (SHARP OBJECTS), Emma Watson (BEAUTY AND THE BEAST) and Laura Dern (MARRIAGE STORY) are all just right as Beth, Meg and Marmie respectively.  But they aren't the focus of the novel or this film. Jo is played with characteristic energy and earnestness by Saiorse Ronan, but I actually preferred Maya Hawke in the recent TV miniseries.  The real star of the show is Florence Pugh (MIDSOMMAR) as Amy, brilliantly playing both a petulant silly child and the more cynical, weary but fundamentally good older woman.  And a lot of the credit for this has to go to writer-director Greta Gerwig (LADY BIRD) - who has given the women a more pragmatic take on the economic position of women in the late nineteenth century without making their feelings seem anachronistic or overly "woke".  I also absolutely love the way Gerwig splits the story in two and has the adult Jo remember scenes of childhood in a way that enhances the emotional punch of the final choices of the girls. 

In the other roles, I particularly liked Tracy Letts (LADY BIRD) in a cameo as Jo's publisher Mr Dashwood and Louis Garrel as the blunt, honest Frederick.  I thought James Norton's dull Mr Brook was a bit forgettable. Finally, I really loved Timothee Chalamet (CALL ME BY YOUR NAME) as Laurie. His love declaration to Jo is utterly heartbreaking and their entire relationship fizzes with authentic sibling physical intimacy.  But it's his final realisation of love that's truly touching. It was also rather good to see him play a final meeting with a rival for laughs - a side of this rather intense young actor that we rarely see.

LITTLE WOMEN is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 134 minutes. It is out in the USA on Christmas Day and in the UK on Boxing Day.

KURSK: THE LAST MISSION aka THE COMMAND

In the wake of watching and obsessing over HBO's superb CHERNOBYL I thought I'd check out thew new film by Thomas Vinterberg - KURSK: THE LAST MISSION aka THE COMMAND.  As with Chernobyl, it's a tale of tragic loss of life in a Soviet/post Soviet system that is riddled with poor quality equipment, poor maintenance, bad decision making, cover ups, and honest working class men betrayed by their superiors.  In this case, the men are submariners running a test exercise in the Barents Sea. This may be 2000, over a decade after Chernobyl, but it's a similar story - an initial accident confounded by an unwillingness to do the right thing immediately. The Russians don't have rescue vessels of their own, having sold them for hard cash (they were taking rich tourists down to see the wreck of the Titanic.)  And when the British and the Norwegians offer help, the Russians refused at first - an unforgivable delay.

Vinterberg's film is a straightforward and earnest affair.  He does well at capturing the claustrophobia and camaraderie of the submarine and Matthias Schoenaerts (Vinterberg's FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD) is really superb as the charismatic protagonist. The film feels less authentic and more broad-stroke heroes and villains when it gets out of the submarine.  Max von Sydow is straightforwardly the bad guy as the Russian admiral who refuses help.  Colin Firth is straightforwardly decent and square-jawed as the British naval officer trying to help. It's a shame that the script doesn't quite allow for any convincing character building.

KURSK: THE LAST MISSION is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 117 minutes. It played Toronto 2018 and was released in the USA last month and in the UK this week.

OPERATION FINALE

Chris Weitz - director of THE GOLDEN COMPASS and scriptwriter on ROGUE ONE - returns to our screens with this retelling of how a small team of Israeli secret agents abducted top ranking Nazi Adolf Eichmann from Argentina and smuggled him out on an El Al flight to stand trial for his crimes in Israel.  As Israel Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion (a cameo from Simon Russell Beale) explains to his agents, and so to the less historically literate audience - getting Eichmann to Israel is they key because it would be the the first time a Nazi would be put on trial by his victims, rather than by World War Two's victors. But should the mission fail, it would have been humiliating for the nascent state of Israel, and open it to justified accusations of having disrespected the sovereignty of Argentina.

And so we get a movie that is book-ended by a true-life thriller that is superbly executed.  Oscar Isaac plays the lead Mossad agent Peter Malkin and the only significant change to historical make-up of the team is including a female agent and love interest for Peter in Melanie Laurent's doctor - crucial in keeping the captor sedated.  We see the team take the intell from a Jew living in Argentina - his daughter is dating Adolf's son - and travel there to try and get a photo and a positive ID. These scenes are both the most tense and the most chilling - showing an active underground of Nazis in hiding and the rabid ideology of the next generation.  We then move to the abduction and Adolf's apparently rather quick admission of his real identity. 

SUBURBICON

SUBURBICON is a much-maligned film - so much so that I put off watching it for quite some time. I see the issue with it. Despite his earnest liberal pose, George Clooney has created a film in which the story of a black family victimised by racists in 1950s America is treated as a counter-point to the main story of a white family torn apart by lust and murder. He doesn't condescend to give his black characters names, personalities, an inner life, agency.  They are cookie-cutter martyrs.  In fact, Clooney doesn't even look that interested in what they're going through, other than that a climactic race riot can provide an opportunity for his actual protagonist to mask a murder.  One has to ask oneself how a director who is also an activist could be so tone deaf to his own implicit racism.  Maybe it's just another example of the inability of rich white old men to "get it".  

The problem is that if we write off all of SUBURBICON because of Clooney's racist mis-step, we ignore the evident artistry of its main  plot. In fact, one could imagine someone putting the film through FinalCutPro, taking out the black neighbour side-plot, and coming up with a very finely produced, nasty, subversive, little suburban thriller.  The tragedy of SUBURBICON is, then, not that it's a bad film, but that it's a good film with a side-order of tone-deaf sub-plot. 

So let's get to the main film. It's a Clooney directorial effort based on a 1980s script by the Coen Brothers, whose sensibilities he has absorbed over many years of working for them as an actor. He has reworked the script with producing partner Grant Heslov to create a dark tale of lust and greed. As the film opens, its protagonist Gardner (Matt Damon) is living with his wife and son Nicky as well as his sister-in-law (both sisters played by Julianne Moore).  In an early and tense scene of home invasion, the wife is killed, after which Gardner takes up with the sister, who creepily dies her hair to look like the dead sibling.  This - and other "red flags" raise the suspicions of an oppressively charming insurance fraud investigator played by Oscar Isaac, and we realise that Gardner is in cahoots with two mobsters.

This kind of complex caper, with crosses and double-crosses, small-time crooks and venal men, are common in Coen Brothers movies. But this is not one of their dark comedies. Rather, it's a relentlessly vicious film, centring as it does on a small kid who sees and is victimised by violence and coercion. To that end, I thought Clooney handled the tension and the violence very well - walking just the right balance of holding our gaze vs exploitation.

I also loved Clooney's visual style in this film, his scrupulous use of vintage design - not just clothes and the way the houses are dressed - but the logos on the beauty parlour window and the brochure for a military school - the deep dark oppressive browns of Gardner's office. Everything is just right.  He also knows how to frame a shot.  Matt Damon, broken nose and glasses, trying to intimidate his son, with an absurdly lit fish-tank behind him. In many ways, I think this is Clooney at his most deliberate and controlled and I loved it. And of course Julianne Moore is superb. In other words, there's a lot that's really superb in this film if - and it's a big if - you can overlook the serious political mis-step. 

SUBURBICON has a running time of 105 minutes and is rated R. It is available to rent and own.

THE SHAPE OF WATER - Day 8 - BFI London Film Festival 2017

It's always scary walking into a film by one of your favourite directors, with a great cast and an intriguing premise - your most anticipated film of the Festival in fact! - scared that your high expectations will be disappointed. And this in particular in a year of mediocre films - few duds, few highs, just a lot of ok films.  Well, I am pleased to report that Giullermo Del Toro's THE SHAPE OF WATER is an absolute delight - an adult fairy tale that doesn't gloss over the darkness in life, but reinterprets it as a magical fable of love conquering loneliness and prejudice.

Sally Hawkins (FUNNY HA HA) stars as Elisa, a mute cleaner who works at a mysterious government facility in 1960s Baltimore.  She has two good friends  - the first is her neighbour - a washed-up advertising draughtsman (Richard Jenkins) - and the second is her fellow cleaner (Octavia Spencer - THE HELP). Elisa's life changes when she meets a merman (Doug Jones), who is being held captive at the government facility.  His fate is in the hands of a racist, sexually harassing torturer (Michael Shannon) who wants the merman dissected.  But this offends the scientific mind of Michael Stuhlbarg's researcher. He teams up with Elisa to attempt to liberate the merman from the small-minded nasties cornering him. 

There's so much to love about this film it's hard to know where to begin. First and foremost we have the stunning visual imagination of GDT - creating a kind of hyper 1960s America with a deep green visual palette, a delight in vintage cinemas and interiors as well as the oppressive bourgeois perfection of 1960s American suburban life, as well as steampunky mechanical widgets filling the laboratory. The use of colour is just perfection.  And then I love how GDT mixes a kind of romantic sensuous love affair with explicit scenes showing Elisa masturbating or a pet coming to a bad end.  This is truly adult fantasy.  And of course, we have the beautiful allegory of the prejudice the merman faces with the civil rights unrest we see on TV and the harassment Elisa faces in the workplace.  Complementing all of GDT's unique vision and execution, we have a wonderfully romantic from Alexandre Desplat, and a movie whose love of movies influences everything from plot points to scene settings to the way in which the main character views herself.

Of course, few movies are perfect and there are a couple of things that I would have altered in THE SHAPE OF WATER. I would have changed the one dream-like reverie - the movie felt fantastic enough as it was without this jarring shift in tone.  And secondly, I'm starting to get a bit frustrated by the typecasting of Michael Shannon as sexually messed up government man (viz BOARDWALK EMPIRE) and Octavia Spencer as sassy black woman who gets to smack her lips and offer folksy wisdom to the lead white actress. It's getting really old and lazy. She needs to be offered and to accept better more varied parts or she risks being written off as a modern day Hattie McDaniel.

THE SHAPE OF WATER has a running time of 119 minutes and is rated R in the USA and 15 in the UK for strong language, violence, sex and nudity. The film played Venice, Telluride, Toronto, Sitges and London. It opens in the UK on Dec 4th, in the USA, Canada and Mexico on Dec 8th, in Brazil on Jan 11th, in France on Jan 17th, in Australia on Jan 25th, in Spain on Jan 26th, in New Zealand and Portugal on Feb 1st, in Switzerland and Netherlands on Feb 15th, in Ireland on Feb 15th and in Argentina and Denmark on Feb 22nd. 

THE ODYSSEY

THE ODYSSEY is a beautifully constructed melancholy tale about a man who sacrifices his family for fame, and then tries to redeem himself late in life. That man is the French naval officer turned submariner and film-maker Jacques Cousteau - a figure handed down to us almost as parody as STEVE ZISSOU. One forgets - and it's delicious to be reminded - that he was once a truly respected and international star. That his oceanographic films earned the Palme D'or and huge global TV audiences.  That he was something of a rock star. And yet for all this fame, he was never financially secure.  His wife sold her jewels and fur to finance the refurbishment of his first ship and was steadfast on board despite his philandering.  His banks could barely keep up with the ever more outlandish plans for films.  And he would foolishly mis-sell movies to TV studios at a fraction of their cost. And yet, somehow he prevailed, bringing images of exotic animals and Antartica to his fans. 

The emotional arc of this film creates a two act drama. In the first act we have the relentlessly driven Cousteau neglecting one of his sons in favour of the one who is also a diver. And you have Cousteau having affairs and abandoning his wife.  In a more subversive narrative, we also have Cousteau financing his film with petrodollars, effectively researching the best place to dig for oil in the Arabian Sea. In the second act of the film, inspired by his beloved ecologist son, Cousteau becomes an evangelist for the environmental cause and founds the Cousteau Society. It brings precious little reconciliation with the neglected son and wife, and he becomes even more famous, even though that fame is now tinged with deep personal loss. 

Jerome Salle's film is not afraid to show both sides of Cousteau - his charisma and energy as well as his callous disregard for people and financial facts. He manages to capture the wonder of underwater ocean-cinematography and the majesty of Antartica in a way that - as Cousteau did - inspires us with the romance of ocean exploration.  But he always manages to undercut this with the darkness of family life chez Cousteau.  In particular, I liked the lead performance from Lambert Wilson - capturing all of Cousteau's ambiguity - and some of the touching set pieces - particularly that between Vincent Heneine's Bebert and Audrey Tautou's Simone. 

THE ODYSSEY has a running time of 122 minutes. It opened last year in France, Belgium, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Russia and Switzerland. It opened earlier this year in Netherlands, Romania, Canada, Bulgaria, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Portugal and Norway. It opens today in the UK.

TALE OF TALES

Matteo Garrone hangs a sharp right from quasi-docu-realist Mafia dramas into seventeenth century Italian fantasy horror with his new portmanteau film TALE OF TALES.  The movie is based on three tales collected by Giambattista Basile - tales that went on to inspire the Grimms and Hans Christian Anderson two centuries later.  But rather than give us the familiar precursors to Cinderella or Puss In Boots we get three tales of weird unfamiliarity and satisfyingly gruesome meaning.

In the first, Salma Hayek plays a queen desperate to bear a child no matter what the cost of trusting a malevolent wizard.  The poster art of this film shows one of its most memorable visuals - Hayek eating a giant bloody sea-monster's heart in a stunningly ornate white room.  But this story is full of arresting visuals - from John C Reilly's king in a diving suit battling the monster, to two albino twins escaping under that same sea.  For the Queen never truly realises what the wizard tells her - that every life and every action is bought at a price, and that the closer one tries to force love, the further it slips away.

FLORENCE FOSTER JENKINS

Florence Foster Jenkins was an American heiress whose prodigious career as a concert pianist was cut off cruelly short when she contracted syphilis from her husband and it affected her nervous system. She became a generous patron to the arts, taking starring acting roles in tableaux vivant she had paid to stage for private societies.  Events took a turn, however, when she aspired to become an opera singer, hiring pianist Cosme McMoon as her accompanist.  This dream was abetted by her common-law husband St. Clair Bayfield, who loved her, knew she couldn't sing, and kept the audience limited to friends or critics he could pay off.  Nonetheless, when Jenkins aspired to play Carnegie Hill, even Bayfield couldn't prevent the uninstructed audience booing her off-pitch singing, or particularly snide reviews in the press.

This latest retelling of the story is handsomely directed and acted and provides two hours of great fun, stunning costumes but also, unexpectedly, real pathos.  Hugh Grant excels as the charismatic, fun-filled husband: we understand that he truly loves this eccentric woman even while being in a long-term relationship with another woman.  Meryl Streep is similarly charismatic as Jenkins, and it's quite a feat that two characters who might have been off-putting - the enabling scrounger and the narcissistic wannabe singer - are actually desperately likeable.  Moreover, the skill involved in singing badly is quite astounding and the facial expressions she gives to every phrase are masterclass in comic acting and a  delight to watch.  Rounding out the principle trio, we have THE BIG BANG THEORY's Simon Helberg, who plays pianist Cosme McMoon, the audience surrogate who expresses our surprise that no-one has thought to tell Jenkins that her singing sucks.

Nicholas Martin's script takes the view that Jenkins didn't know how bad her singing was: that when she sang she heard a tuneful voice, and that perhaps the syphilis had affected her hearing.  This is a not uncontroversial view.  But then this film is in the business of giving us a tragic love story which hues broadly to the truth but omits some key facts to burnish the reputations of its lead characters, most obviously that Bayfield married his lover once Jenkins died.  Ultimately, this airbrushing of history is irrelevant. We get to the poignant truth of Jenkins and Bayfield's love - her generous patronage of the arts - and the hilarity and exuberance of their life together.  This could we be one of the finest of director Stephen Frears' (THE PROGRAM) recent films.

FLORENCE FOSTER JENKINS has a running time of 111 minutes and is rated PG-13.  The movie is on release in the UK, Ireland and Australia. It opens later in May in Israel and Taiwan; in June in Croatia, Bulgaria, Cyprus and Greece; in July in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and France; in August in Canada, Lithuania, the USA, Poland, Philippines, Denmark and Sweden; in September in Portugal, Estonia, Finland, Hong Kong, Hungary, Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, Croatia and Macedonia; in November in Norway, Germany and Austria and in December in Japan.

SUFFRAGETTE - BFI London Film Festival 2015 - Opening Night Gala

You can listen to a podcast review of this film here or subscribe to Bina007 Movie Reviews on iTunes.

SUFFRAGETTE is a handsomely made film about the ordinary women who campaigned for their right to vote in early twentieth century England. It features a great ensemble cast and is well-written by Abi Morgan (THE IRON LADY).

Carey Mulligan stars as Maud Watts, a young washerwoman who gets drawn into the suffragette movement at just the point where it morphs from lawful protest into militant civil disobedience - throwing rocks through windows, blowing up post boxes and cutting telephone wires. It’s also the moment where police surveillance becomes more concerted, with the use of new tech - more mobile cameras - and infiltrators.  We follow Maud as she meets women from all walks of society - from the abused housewife and factory worker played by Anne Marie Duff to the middle class pharmacist played by Helena Bonham Carter to Romola Garai’s politician’s wife. We even get a cameo from Meryl Streep at the very centre of the film, playing Emmeline Pankhurst, exhorting her foot soldiers to militant action.

UNBROKEN

You can listen to a podcast review of this movie below, or subscribe to Bina007 in iTunes.

One of the less edifying revelations of the Sony hack was producer Scott Rudin's contempt for Angelina Jolie's talent as a film-maker and his bile at her leave of absence from his CLEOPATRA project to make UNBROKEN. So I approached this World War Two biopic with some interest and maybe some scepticism. What I am happy to say is that UNBROKEN is a handsomely made film about a true wartime hero, that while conventional in its approach, has so much authentic concern with the human condition that it left me with real tears, as opposed to some of those more mawkish and manipulative films that want to make you cry but don't. (THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING, I'm looking at you here.)

THE IMITATION GAME - LFF14 - Day One

THE IMITATION GAME  is a compelling and important film - superbly acted - and no doubt championed by Harvey Weinstein for major awards.  It tells the story of the English mathematician Alan Turing  - a prodigious talent who was instrumental in cracking the German cryptography machine, Enigma, thus shortening World War Two and saving millions of lives. The tragedy of his story is that this socially awkward man lived a life of isolation and worse still secrecy: he was a homosexual at a time when to admit such a thing meant prison and ostracisation.  Turing could either work or be honest: an horrific and impossible choice. In the end, when an ungrateful country condemned him for indecency - condemned him to chemical castration, Turing committed suicide. He was only 41. And it was only last year that the government finally apologised. 

GODZILLA - 3D IMAX

An excruciating confession for a cinephile: I've never seen the iconic original Godzilla movie nor any of its sequels. I may have watched Roland Emmerich's Matthew Broderick-starring remake but I've blanked it out of my memory. So I come to this new GODZILLA with few expectations and little knowledge.  What did I get? A movie that impressed me with its moody visuals and overwhelming soundtrack & sound design - a movie dripping with first-rate character actors and earnest good intentions.  But, sad to report, it's also a movie that just left me cold  - that landed like the proverbial dead fish on the screen.  And when you start to really pick it apart, you realise that underneath all that gorgeous production design what you have is a pretty hackneyed and muddled script with cardboard cut-out characters and less courage than it might have done.

So here's the story.  An earthquake hits a Japanese nuclear plant (too soon?) and a young kid loses his scientist mother (Juliette Binoche - earnest cameo).  Fast forward twenty odd years and that kid's now an army bomb disposal expert (Aaron Johnson) sceptical of his father's belief that it wasn't an earthquake at all.  He follows his dad (Bryan Cranston with hair!) to the original site, witnesses the monster first hand, and returns to the USA via Hawaii in the wake of its attacks. Caught up in the military response he colludes in a plan to lure the monster with a nuke, off which it apparently feeds. But of course, it's not so simple. Because that monster is itself being hunted by another larger foe- Godzilla himself. 

I love the idea that Godzilla is not the key threat and the twist in the tail that only the Japanese scientist (Ken Watanabe) at first perceives.  I also like the way in which the screenwriters, Max Borenstein and David Callaham (THE EXPENDABLES) try to respect the original timeline of the Godzilla movies and create a kind of continuity.  But I hate pretty much everything else that has to do with story.  The way that each generation of men has to have a picture perfect family with a cute kid. How we know the good guys are good guys because they are good fathers. How the hero's wife (Elizabeth Olsen) has nothing to do but look concerned and cry.  How actors as good as Sally Hawkins get lost in the chaos.  If the movie had had any balls whatsoever, someone in that family nut wouldn't have made it.  There's just a complete lack of relief from good people looking earnest and trying their damnedest to help out. Even the bloody monster isn't exempt.

All of which is a crying shame because the young British director Gareth Edwards (MONSTERS)  has made a quite stunning leap from micro-budget creature-features into the big time with a confident and visually wondrous palette in GODZILLA. I guess it's just a shame that his movie didn't have some of the wit of PACIFIC RIM because it sure as hell has the 2-D characters.

GODZILLA has a running time of 124 minutes and is rated PG-13 in the USA and 12A in the UK.

GODZILLA is on release in the USA, Belgium, Switzerland, Egypt, Finland, France, Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden,  the UAE, Albania, Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, the Czech Republic, Germany, Denmark, the UK, Georgia, Greece, Hong Kong, Croatia, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, South Korea, Kuwait, Lebanon, Montenegro, Macedonia, Mexico, Malaysia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Peru, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Portugal, Serbia, Russia, Singapore, Slovenia, Slovakia, Thailand, Ukraine, Austria, Bulgaria, Canada, Colombia, Cyprus, Estonia, Spain, India, Indonesia, Iceland, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Latvia, Panama, Poland, Romania, Turkey, Taiwan, Uruguay, Venezuela, Vietnam, South Africa, Afghanistan, Fiji, Liechtenstein, Bangladesh, Iran and Trinidad and Tobago. It opens on May 22nd in Cambodia and Pakistan;  and on June 13th in China and on July 25th in Japan.