LURKER** - Berlin Film Festival 2025

LURKER is the derivative and directionless directorial debut of screenwriter-producer Alex Russell (The Bear, Beef) whose underwritten screenplay lets down its talented young cast.

It's a story that we have seen many times on screen, typically done better, from ALL ABOUT EVE to THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY. A slightly creepy acolyte of a charismatic star becomes a cuckoo in the nest, usurping the places of the hitherto best friends and ultimately of the star themselves.  In LURKER, the star, a feckless young musician called Oliver, is played by the charismatic young British actor Archie Madekwe, who has graduated from usurped friend in SALTBURN to object of attraction here.  His stalker, Matthew, is played by Theodore Pellerin, all innocent, voluble face and seething jealousy.

Over the course of the film we see the star, Oliver, quickly pick his lurker, Matthew up, and make him Instagram-famous. Of course, when Oliver and his crew then turn their attention to Matthew's colleague Jamie, Matthew quickly becomes violently possessive.  Only Oliver's solo female friend Shai (played beautifully by Havana Rose Liu) is on to Matthew from the start.

The performances are all good, and there are some genuinely hilarious moments of Entourage-style bros hanging out and social satire of vapid, narcissistic stars. But I felt like Alex Russell didn't have the courage of his convictions or the willingness to push the film into more edgy psycho-sexual areas. The result was a film that kind of meandered its way into an ending that felt - dare I say it - derivative of HBO's awful TV series The Idol.  In that show we spent a lot of the episodes thinking the star was captive to the lurker only to find out that it was the lurker who was being exploited all along.  I don't know who wrote which ending first, but needless to say that this LURKER felt like a stitched together version of so many similar films and shows that I was never surprised by it and never entranced by it. 

LURKER has a running time of 100 minutes. It played Sundance and Berlin 2025.

SALTBURN** - BFI London Film Festival 2023 - Opening Night Gala

Emerald Fennell's second directorial feature is a desperately disappointing mash-up of superior works.  We begin with forty minutes of Brideshead, before morphing into The Talented Mr Ripley by way of The Blandings and Kind Hearts and Coronets. Worse still, Fennell uses transgressive sexual acts to paper over the unoriginal and meandering plot. The film is not as darkly funny as she thinks it is. And its only saving graces are Rosamund Pike as the AbFab clueless matriarch, and Carey Mulligan in a touching cameo as the mother's addict friend Pamela. One star for each of them, and half a star for Richard E Grant shouting "Just eat the bloody pie!"

Barry Keoghan stars as the Ripley-esque Oliver Quick, a Fresher at a fantasy Oxford where  you drive up to the Rad Cam, smoke in your room, and students not tourists drink at the KA. Oliver is drawn into the in-crowd when he helps out Felix Catton (Euphoria's Jacob Elordi), and lands an invitation to his Brideshead-style country house, Saltburn. In addition to Felix, Oliver charms the Wodehousian ditsy father, caustically selfish mother and vulnerable sister (newcomer Alison Oliver). The only person who seems on to his manipulations from the start is the family's poor relation Farrell (Archie Madekwe - GRAN TURISMO).  Game senses game. 

The film proceeds at a leisurely pace, with every plot twist telegraphed years in advance. The way the film develops will not surprise anyone with a shred of (cine-) literacy. There are occasional lines or scenes that are mordantly funny and brilliantly constructed, mostly involving Pike and Mulligan.  But between them, ennui and an infantile desire to shock.

Fennell's first feature, PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN, was just that. SALTBURN is a step back. Will her inevitable third feature show this to be a mis-step? Will her directorial choices add to her narrative or to continue to be puzzling (why the 4:3 aspect ratio?) or showy without effect (look! mirrors!)?

SALTBURN has a running time of 127 minutes. It will open in the USA on November 24th.

GRAN TURISMO**

There's an essay to be written on what happens to spiky independent directors who sell-out to dumb franchise movies, cf Ben Wheatley's MEG 2 and Neill Blomkamp (formerly of the superb DISTRICT 9 and CHAPPIE) helming this piss-poor piece of product merchandising.  It's hard to see anything of Blomkamp's political satire and visual artistry in GRAN TURISMO. Instead, we get a painfully tired, cliched, nakedly commercial, underdog sports film about a sim racer turned actual real life racing driver, based on a true story.

There are many flaws with this film, and a ham-fisted script is the largest one. Second, we have a cast basically phoning it in (that's you David Harbour), or playing it one shot shy of a camp Bond villain (Orlando Bloom). But the real problem is that the racing doesn't excite. I love a bit of F1 and have watched many an autosport movie. It says a lot that you can stage scenes at some iconic tracks - not least the beast of the Nurburgring - and not set my pulse racing. I think the problem is that Blomkamp doesn't distinguish between sim and real racing. In fact, he does the opposite. He makes real racing feel like sim-racing by adding on visual trackers and taking away any real life feel for track noise and atmosphere. When I watch a racing movie, I want to feel the heat, the sound, the the tension, the stakes. I want to smell the burning rubber.  This film gave me none of that.

Still, I am awarding the film two stars. One for its young lead actor Archie Madekwe who puts in an earnest and compelling central performance. And one for the comedy value of seeing real-life F1 Principal's wife and ex-Spice Girl Gerri Halliwell uttering the immortal line "these lentils are nice".

GRAN TURISMO has a running time of 134 minutes and is rated PG-13. It is on global release.