THE PROGRAM - BFI London Film Festival 2015 - Day Four

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Stephen Frears’ new fictional retelling of the now sadly familiar Lance Armstrong story is NOT a great film, but it does contain a great performance. And if Ben Foster doesn’t win an Oscar for his turn as the disgraced seven times Tour de France cheat, then there’s a really outstanding movie out there that I have yet to see.

Hugely informed by USADA’s investigation, Floyd Landis’ testimony and the heroic David Walsh’s investigative journalism, this film is not a straightforward biopic. We never meet Lance’s mum, or spend time with his wife or children. This movie is, to invert the book title, all about the bike, and all about the dope. We meet Lance as a young racer in the early nineties literally getting mud splashed in his face by dopers he will never beat unless he “gets with the programme” - and that’s the programme of micro-doping, EPO, testosterone and cortisone invented by the ever-proud and morally deficient Michele Ferrari. John Hodge’s script loses no time in taking us on a fast paced tour through Lance’s early failure, cancer, that fateful and contested meeting with Andrieus, and onto his Tour success. We’re an hour in and he’s the ultimate sports hero. But we see vanity cut him down as much as it drove on - both in returning to the Tour and in cutting Floyd Landis lose.

BRIDE WARS - not as bad as the reviewers are making out

BRIDE WARS is clearly a rather shamelessly commercial enterprise aiming solidly at the demographic that falls for schmaltzy formulaic rom-coms like MADE OF HONOUR and P.S.I LOVE YOU. The direction is pedestrian, the writing is mediocre, the clothes are lovely and the ending is entirely predictable. Kate Hudson is about the least convincing lawyer I've seen on screen. Anne Hathaway shows none of the nuance that powered her role in RACHEL GETTING MARRIED. Still, given the shit that has been thrown at the movie, I was pleasantly surprised by how watchable it was. I wouldn't want to watch it again, but it was a perfectly pleasant way to pass ninety minutes.

It may have sub-plots that deal with relationships with men, but the movie is really about female friendship. In its defense, the movie is pretty honest about the lamentable amount of pressure some women put on themselves to have a perfect wedding and the competitiveness and neuroses that underlie some friendships. When the two lead characters, Liv and Emma (Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway) attend a third girlfriend's wedding, as happy as they are for her, they can't resist making digs about the floral arrangements. And when Liv and Emma announce that they are getting married, their other girlfriends hit the ice-cream and anti-depressants, worried that they're falling behind the curve. Finally, when a mix-up by the wedding planner (Candice Bergen) means that Liv and Emma have to get married on the same day at same hotel, neither wants to back down. Each firmly believes that she should have her day in the spotlight.

What then unfolds is a rather unedifying series of sabotage plots until everything goes so far that the two girls realise what we knew all along: it simply isn't worth it.But for all that, Kate Hudson is very watchable as high-achieving, competitive Liv, and her character actually develops as the movie unfolds. I actually rather like Kate Hudson as a light comedic actress. Anne Hathaway is a bit more anonymous as passive-aggressive Emma but Kristen Johnston (3rd ROCK FROM THE SUN) provides some genuine laugh-out-loud moments as Emma's egotistical maid of honour.

BRIDE WARS is on release in the UK, US and Turkey. It opens next week in Australia, Spain and Sweden and on January 22nd in Singapore and Estonia. It opens on January 29th in Hungary; on February 5th in Argentina, Croatia, Germany and Brazil; on February 11th in Belgium, France, Portugal and Norway; on February 20th in Finland and Italy; on February 26th in Russia and the Netherlands and on April 2nd in the Czech Republic.

PRIME - fairly funny but ultimately forgettable romantic-comedy-drama-whatever

This review is posted by guest reviewer, Katya, who can normally be found here:

In a nutshell: David is 23 and Jewish. Rafi is 37, and not. They meet, they like, they get jiggy. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to all, Rafi’s psychotherapist is none other than David’s mum. Prime lasts an hour and three quarters, and it has enough to keep you entertained for the duration. Uma Thurman and Bryan Greenberg are both perfectly competent in the rôles of their respective characters, and, as is to be expected, Meryl Streep excels. Dialogue makes up much of the film– and in most cases, the viewer finds themselves genuinely interested in how each conversation is going to turn out. There are also a fair few moments of real humour – albeit of the “smiling wryly” variety, rather than the “falling off your seat” variety.

But all in all, this film disappoints, and feels empty and ultimately unsatisfying. It’s like a bag of popcorn when you wanted a steak, or at the very least a cheeseburger. First of all, while the acting is all quite adequate, the two main protagonists seem frankly thin and two-dimensional – while we may watch their individual interactions with curiosity, we find that we do not, in the end, much empathize with them, or care what happens to their lives. While both profess love and passion, I found myself utterly unable to believe it – there was no sense of the reality of those feelings for me – and when things went predictably pear-shaped, I was unable to stir up anything bar equanimity, if not outright apathy.

Far more interesting are the emotional and ethical ambiguities of Meryl Streep’s character – the inconsistencies and the double-standards which, as the film progresses, she begins to confront at least partially. Which rôle is closest to reflecting her true human values – therapist or mother? When does “help” slide into manipulation? How much do labels matter? None of this gets resolved, of course, and the movie hardly qualifies as any sort of profound exploration of the issues – but at least here we have a character that seems more than paper-thin.

In summary, this film fails any way you cut it: as a comedy, a love story, a tragedy, or a treatise on the human condition. You won’t be gnawing your own arm off to stave off the boredom, but you may be left with a hollow feeling that later crystallizes into a wish you’d spent your money elsewhere.

And a few words from Bina007: PRIME features Uma Thurman (most recently Ulla in the remake of The Producers) as Raffi – a thirty-seven year-old recent divorcee. Raffi has the kind of life we see depicted in a certain kind of Woody Allen movie, or perhaps an episode of Sex and the City. She lives in a Manhattan where everyone is beautiful, works in fashion or the arts and has a fantastic apartment decorated with Rothko prints. But, again with the Woody Allen, she has never been happy. Her Upper East-side shrink recommends that she throw herself into life, even if that means dating a hot 23-year old wannabe artist – a relationship that clearly cannot go anywhere. Of course, this being a movie, the endearingly sweet* 23-year old turns out to be the therapist’s son. Which of course would be fine if the shrink applied the same “embrace life” attitude to her own family. But instead, the Meryl Streep character is not only horrified that her son is dating a much-older woman, but also that he is dating a non-Jew. So, there’s the set-up and the movie unravels in a fairly predictable manner. People have witty conversations while walking through perfectly lit streets in the Village or have dinner over Allen-esque noisy Jewish dinner tables. In an act of homage, they even meet in queues outside old playhouses (NOT cineplexes) showing difficult post-war Italian movies. None of this is a critique, of course. You can commit worse cinematic crimes that simply re-interpreting cinematic greats, but by the time we ended with the Annie-Hall-style montage of “best of” moments from Raffi and Dave’s relationship I thought the writer/director was digging a comparative hole for himself. This is because while PRIME is a perfectly harmless, often very funny movie it is never completely engrossing. And it certainly is not a Great Film, whatever that may be. The friend I went to see it with said that it was a signal that the movie had failed that she wasn’t more moved by the ending. I think that sums up the movie for me. Go see PRIME for Meryl Streep hamming it up. Go see it for the best-friend of the “hero” throwing cream pies in the faces of girls who have dumped him. Go see it for the grandma bashing her head with a skillet. Just don’t expect to remember much about it the next day.

PRIME has been on release pretty much everywhere but finally hits the UK on Friday.*If you want to see how sweet slide your cursor over the picture to read a quotation from the movie.