BLUE MOON***** - Berlin Film Festival 2025

Ethan Hawke (TRAINING DAY) gives his career-best performance as the charismatic but despairing lyricist Lorenz Hart in Richard Linklater's latest film, BLUE MOON.  

The entirety of the film takes place in the iconic Broadway restaurant Sardi's lending the film the air of a filmed play, but no worse for that.  This is because Hart's kinetic wit and a clever use of different sections of the restaurant keep us enlivened and riveted.

The entire movie also takes place on a single evening in the early 1940s.  Hart's old composing partner Richard Rodgers is debuting his latest musical with his new lyricist, Oscar Hammerstein II. Just this little thing you may have heard of called Oklahoma!  Hart is in despair because he recognises that the musical will be a smash hit - bigger than anything that he wrote with Rodgers - and also that it's not very good.  He is also in despair because both of his loves are unattainable.  

The first of these loves is the beautiful 20-year old college girl Elizabeth Weiland (Margot Qualley - THE SUBSTANCE).  Elizabeth uses Hart for his connections and basks in his flattery but has no real interest in him.  The idea that they could ever be a real couple is a delusion that Hart knows is a delusion but indulges all the same.  Their scenes snap and fizzle in the same way that gossip between young female best friends snaps and fizzles.  Hart feels more like a gay best friend than a putative lover. The inevitable blow is well telegraphed and (literally) pathetic.

The second, and more significant unattainable love is that of Hart's friend and long-time collaborator Richard Rodgers. Their scenes are far more delicate and heart-breaking  than those between Hart and Elizabeth because the love has lasted longer and the break-up was more devastating.  Andrew Scott's Rodgers is a man with incredible respect for Hart as a lyricist, and his evident love for the man is signalled in every look and line. But Rodgers is also a man who has lived with the pain of being let down and let down again by an alcoholic and who cannot bear to see Hart himself more.  It's a performance of rare subtlety. In the wrong hands their scenes could have been soapy and melodramatic.  But the genuine love and hurt and need for self-protection are telegraphed with a delicacy and tenderness that moved me greatly.

I cannot speak highly enough of a film that will has the confidence to sit comfortably within its single location, that allows Rodgers to be the quiet straight man to Hart's brilliant and performative showboat, and that trusts its audience with its Easter Eggs - the inspiration for E.B. White's Stuart Little, or a cameo from Little Stevie (Sondheim).

Kudos to all in front of the camera but most of all to Robert Kaplow (ME & ORSON WELLES) for a script of rare insight and humanity.

BLUE MOON has a running time of 100 minutes and is rated R. It had its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival.

RIPLEY (TV)**

 

I absolutely adore Patricia Highsmith's Ripley novels. They are slippery and subversive and dark and dangerous and about the best crime procedurals you can read. I have also loved many of the iterations by which Ripley has found himself on the big screen, from PLEIN SOLEIL to RIPLEY'S GAME and Anthony Minghella's superlative TALENTED MR RIPLEY.

When I first heard that Andrew Scott (ALL OF US STRANGERS) was cast as Ripley I was excited but I assumed that this would be an adaptation of one of the later books when Ripley was older. I was shocked to discover that this was actually an adaptation of the source novel where the characters are meant to be in their twenties. Johnny Flynn's Dickie is also in his forties.  The problem is that this makes the concept of the book seem ... well ... odd. Dickie Greenleaf dodging his responsibilities on a kind of extended gap year in Italy feels right for pretty young things but doesn't quite work for middle-aged men.  And thanks to Zaillian's choice to go for black and white photography, life in Italy never feels beautiful and lush and seductive. Rather, we start off in a world that is decaying and deserted and rather drab.  It's hard to see what in Dickie and Marge's existence would be attractive to Tom. Their life doesn't feel particularly luxurious. And there's no sexual tension between Dickie and Tom, and certainly no apparent love for Dickie on Marge's part. It's just all so flat.

As we move into the second act, things pick up pace. The crime procedural has its own momentum. Whether it needs five episodes though, is doubtful.  We see the quality of Eliot Sumner as Freddie Miles in their pivotal scene with Tom.  A scene that is played very differently to how Philip Seymour Hoffman played it, but with no less menace.  The problem is that Eliot is a good fifteen years younger than Andrew Scott and seems to be in a totally different film.

So far so problematic, but where this adaptation totally loses it is in the final episode. We begin episode eight with a flashback to Caravaggio which is way too on the noise, and a clear case of a showrunner being given way too much running time to pad out. We also get a confrontation between the police inspector and Tom that's so literally incredible it destroyed any respect I had for this adaptation. Minghella's choice to have them never meet was the more elegant solution.

RIPLEY was released on Netflix today.

ALL OF US STRANGERS**** - BFI London Film Festival 2023 - Day 5

ALL OF US STRANGERS is the latest film from Andrew Haigh (WEEKEND) and yet another beautifully crafted, intimate, emotionally affecting film. It stars Andrew Scott (Sherlock) as Adam, a gay, forty something screenwriter struggling to deal with the death of his parents when he was a child. On successive visits to his childhood home he imagines he can tell them about his life now, come out to them, and tell them how the world has changed for him.  The scenes can only be described as truly heartbreaking. Adam flits between adulthood and childhood, delighting in being able to be cared for by his mum and dad, but then also bristling at their attitudes to his sexuality. They tell them they are proud of him and he is so riven with self-doubt and pain that he cannot accept the complement. Claire Foy and Jamie Bell are wonderful in these smaller but viscerally emotional roles.  

I found the present day relationship less successful. Adam strikes up a friendship with another man in his apartment block: they are seemingly the only two people home alone at Christmas.  Harry (Paul Mescal) seems more comfortable in his skin at first, or at least more able to articulate his need for connection and intimacy. But as the film progresses we realise that he is also deeply vulnerable.

Andrew Haigh's previous films showed a willingness to mine the emotional nuances of modern relationships. But I feel ALL OF US STRANGERS is a leap forward in its technical skill and visual and aural creativity. In particular, a bravura central scene in a nightclub shows a director increasingly confident in his work and willing to push himself stylistically.

ALL OF US STRANGERS has a running time of 105 minutes. It played London 2023. It goes on release in the USA on December 22nd and in the UK on January 26th.

CATHERINE CALLED BIRDY****

Lena Dunham's adaptation of Karen Cushman's apparently famous Young Adult novel is an absolute delight - but more than that - it's a film that is also profound and moving. It stars Bella Ramsay (Lyanna Mormont in GAME OF THRONES) as an early medieval tomboyish teenage girl whose impecunious aristocratic father has to marry her off to save his manor. We discover the constraints upon medieval girls through her naive but steadfast eyes. She is as fierce and captivating on screen as she was in GOT and shows real range - from physical comedy to high drama. 

But the real brilliance of this film is in the quartet of adults Dunham/Cushman surround Birdy with. Her father, Lord Rollo (a deliciously debauched Andrew Scott) could easily be the villain of the piece, given that he's effectively pissed away the family fortune, keeps knocking up his wife despite the risks to her health, and beats Birdy whenever she frightens away another suitor. But in writer-director Lena Dunham's hands, and thanks to an incredibly nuanced performance from Scott, Lord Rollo is actually a literally pathetic character - who knows full well the sacrifice he is asking his daughter to make, but sees no other way out. 

We get a similarly fascinating performance from Billie Piper as Birdy's "mumma" - a serially pregnant lady of the manor, with little actual power beyond endurance. She envies Birdy's spirit, which has not yet been broken, but sees no real out for her. We also see the possibilities within an arranged marriage - something that as an Asian I appreciated. Because while there is no doubt that Rollo married his wife for her title and money, there's also no doubt that he's desperately in love with her, and their children. Even if Birdy drives him nuts.

Similarly, the absurdly over-cast Sophie Okonedo (last time I saw her she was playing Cleopatra opposite Ralph Fiennes at the National for pity's sake) is joyously enjoyable as the glamorous, rich widow Ethelfrisa, but even she has to play the game within its rules, and yearns to run away. At first, we are seduced into the idea that at least SHE is picking her own spouse, and frankly, is objectifying him. But the reality is more complex. 

And then we have her spouse, Uncle George, played by Joe Alwyn aka Mr Taylor Swift - a man as his character used to being overshadowed by a brilliant, richer woman? His character is a meta investigation of the hero-knight teenage dream, clearly suffering from his experience in the Crusades, burdened with the unhealthy hero-worshipping of his niece, and in a marriage of convenience of his own.

Beyond the superb writing and acting, this film is extremely well put together, from its use of period locations, its character-propelling costumes, to a quite wonderful score from Carter Burwell that mixes haunting, otherworldly madrigals and recast modern pop tunes. If I were to have one criticism its that I found it perhaps around 20 minutes too long - a touch saggy in its middle sections before we continue on our plot-driven quest for Birdy's husband.

CATHERINE CALLED BIRDY is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 108 minutes. The film played Toronto 2022 and is on release on streaming services.

1917

World War One films are typically set in the muddy, fetid horror of the trenches - a dark and dank world of rat-infested boredom with the occasional "relief" of going over the top into barbed wire, decomposing horses and machine-gun fire. The typical theme is one of madness - both personal and of the entire enterprise.  And the style is static.  The war doesn't move.  In the words of the inimitable Blackadder:  "Field Marshal Haig is about to make yet another gargantuan effort to move his drinks cabinet six inches closer to Berlin."  Films of this type reach their apotheosis in JOURNEY'S END.

The innovation of Sam Mendes' new film is to set it in the final phase of the war, when the German's had retreated back to the Hindenburg Line, leaving miles of French countryside, previously so viciously fought over, empty. Of course, the Line was itself heavily fortified, and this sets up the plot of 1917.  Two young soldiers are selected by a general (Colin Firth) to get an urgent message to the new front line. The next morning, British forces will launch an offensive that will be a massacre: their commanders don't know about the fortifications. So these two lads have to cross No Man's Land, pass through the old German trench, get to a now destroyed French town, and down to the woods to the new Line.  

What this plot does is give us high stakes and fixed timeline, as well as - crucially - a dynamic style.  The entire film is a two hour journey against the clock, largely on foot.  And the emotional stakes are made even higher because of the boys, so carefully selected for the trip, has to save his own beloved elder brother, who is part of the new attack.  To give the movie an immersive and intensive feel, the director has worked with his DP, Roger Deakins (COEN BROS PASSIM) to make us feel as though we are with the boys every step of the way.   We never move away from their gaze - we experience the film as they experience the journey - in a simulated single-take movie. The result is absolutely impressive and emotionally involving.  But it doesn't feel like cinema in a way - more like playing Red Dead Redemption or Call of Duty, World War One edition.  That's fine - it just goes to show how influential video game style is in modern cinema.

There's much to love in Sam Mendes script (his first). By taking us over No Man's Land, and then into the French countryside behind it, he shows us the contrast between the rural paradise before the war and the bombed out nightmare after it.  He takes care to show us the better quality of the German trenches compared to the British ones.  And he doesn't shy away from showing us the devastation of the German razed earth policy - cities destroyed, livestock shot, a land made unfit for humans. We also see the change in landscape, from the mud of the old line to the chalk of the new line. It makes for an impressive visual contrast. 

His casting is also superb. Mendes even took care over the extras to show us that the war took really young men and made them weary and traumatised.  we see it in the faces of the men - in particular at a choral scene in a wood that's deeply moving. In the speaking roles there are some misfires.  Colin Firth is a bit pastiche as the noble, stiff-upper-lip British general who sets the film in motion, and Mark Strong's commander is similarly one-note - compassionate weariness. But I really loved Andrew Scott (FLEABAG) ias a cynical but actually helpful front-line officer. And the way in which Mendes overturns our view of Benedict Cumberbatch's front line commander in a very brief cameo is masterful. We start off thinking he's a gung-ho martial nut job but he's humanised very quickly.  However, it's GAME OF THRONES' Richard Madden who gets the best of the cameos - with a deeply moving performance all the more affecting because of the character's need not to fall apart. This is quite probably his best acting performance to date.  In the lead roles, I rather like GAME OF THRONES' Tommen (Dean-Charles Chapman) as the soldier trying to save his big brother, even if his accent does rather veer from cockney to posh and back again. It's George Mackay as his companion who really steals the show and epitomises that combination of youth and weariness I spoke of earlier. 

The result is a film that's technically impressive and deeply moving and largely well written and acted. It is, however, not without its flaws. First, there's a mid-film scene involving milk that jumps the shark in terms of schmaltz for me.  Second, there's a moment involving the Mark Strong character that had me almost yelling at the screen as to why he didn't do more practically to help.  And finally, while Mendes is to be applauded for showing the contribution of Imperial troops to the Western Front war effort (in sharp contrast to Nolan's DUNKIRK) he seems quite uninterested in showing the Germans as anything other than barbaric shits.  

1917 is rated R and has a running time and has a running time of 119 minutes. The film is on global release.

STEEL COUNTRY AKA A DARK PLACE

STEEL COUNTRY is a genuinely bad film, and all the worse for wasting the talent of lead actor Andrew Scott - the talent behind SHERLOCK's Moriarty and currently popular as the love interest in Phoebe Waller-Bridges' TV comedy FLEABAG.  A movie that should be a character-driven detective thriller becomes a boring, cliche-ridden murder without the mystery, pivoted on a performance hamstrung by a bad script and a strange choice of accent. 

Scott plays a rubbish collector is a poor American town with a learning disability and thus a slurring accent. He becomes obsessed with the disappearance and then death of a local boy and starts to literally tootle through people's rubbish to get to the truth.  We're meant to sympathise with him and hate the locals who are so prejudiced against this odd man that they think he did it. But the problem is that the character IS genuinely sinister. Just look at the way he obsesses over his Baby Mama, constructing a weird fantasy around her, refusing to acknowledge that she doesn't want him. I'd be applying for a restraining order stat.  

That said, the movie is beautifully shot by Marcel Zyskind, and builds towards a genuinely moving (if unsurprising) confrontation between our protagonist and the dead boy's mother.  Scott's genuine quality shines through here.  And we're about to move toward a rather emotionally satisfying conclusion until director  Simon Fellows (GOD THE FATHER) and debut screen-writer Brendan Higgins balls it up with an absurdly out of character, tonally jarring, and absurdly melodramatic ending. 

STEEL COUNTRY AKA A DARK PLACE has a running time of 89 minutes. It was released last week in the USA and is now available in the UK, in cinemas, and on streaming services. 

The last woman in England to watch SPECTRE, watches SPECTRE

Despite my avatar name, I actually don't like Bond. His glib superficial sado-masochistic fantasy world of spying struck me as thin soup compared to the morally murky but properly Romantic world of John le Carre. Insofar as I liked Bond, it was to appreciate the role that escapism and big brand consumerism has in all of our lives. In other words, if I must have Bond, let it be Bond - kiss kiss, bang bang - Roger Moore's arched eyebrow - absurd gadgets. And so I have struggled with Daniel Craig's Bond films, filled as they are with existential angst. They're Bond trying to be Bourne, lacking in self-confidence, desperate to show that they KNOW the very concept of Bond is absurd in our post-millennial world. Nowhere is this more obvious, nor as grating, as in SPECTRE.