DUNE (2021) ****

Frank Herbert's iconic ecological sci-fi/fantasy series, Dune, begins its first book with our hero, a young aristocrat called Paul Atreides, being yanked off his luscious home planet to travel with his family to an arid desert planet called Arrakis. The evil Emperor has lured them there with the promise of Arrakis' riches - the ability to mine "spice" - a drug that makes interplanetary travel possible. Really, the Emperor is jealous of Paul's father's charismatic power and is backing House Atreides rivals, the Harkonnens.  But Paul's father feels he can mount a challenge if he can form an alliance with Arrakis' indigenous population of Fremen....

Dune is notoriously unfilmable and yet it feels like every film-maker who read it as a teenager or somehow got their hands on Jodo's epic designs (see Frank Pavich's superb documentary JODOROWSKY'S DUNE) has somehow filmed it without acknowledging it openly.  To read Dune is to realise how much everything from Star Wars to Game of Thrones has borrowed heavily from its tale of political infighting, inter-galactic warfare, and mystic religiosity. This means that anyone who ACTUALLY films Dune risks looking like they're ripping off later works who themselves ripped off Dune.  (Tatooine, Saarlaks and the Force anyone?!)  And then there's the terrifying experience of David Lynch in the mid-80s, creating a Dune that was a commercial failure, where he didn't have final edit, and where despite flashes of design brilliance the whole thing feels like a pantomime ghoulish mess. (See my DVD commentary here). 

So it takes a real fanboy to have the balls to actually film Dune, and that fanboy is Denis Villeneuve, most famous for his superb sci-fi film ARRIVAL and the recent  moody but unnecessary BLADE RUNNER sequel. It tells you a lot that despite his commercial track record, the studio was not willing to finance both films that would've covered book one of the series, wanting to wait and see if part one actually found an audience.  Hollywood scars run long and deep.

Villeneuve's DUNE is, I am relieved and happy to say, a visual and aural triumph.  From his creation of Caladan in the Norwegian fjords, to his stunning depiction of shifting sands in Arrakis, this is a film-maker with a keen sensibility who leaves us with instantly iconic scenes.  I also really loved his design aesthetic - with beautifully rendered space-ships and palace interiors and ornithopters that actually look like flying insects.  Where Lynch leaned into the grotesquery of Baron Harkonnen, Villeneuve realises that what lives in our minds when we read a book can look absurd when visualised on screen, and so he uses that character sparingly and in a very pared down design. Indeed, all the costumes and make-up feel sleek and and as modern as possible. Finally, behind the lens, Hans Zimmer's score is another triumph, and I am unsurprised to learn that he's another fanboy. 

The acting is by and large fine - with Charlotte Rampling's Bene Genesserit Reverend Mother the standout cameo. Timothee Chalamet - well he looks young enough as Paul - almost pre-pubescent - but it's just another Chalamet role where he plays a brooding kid.  He has zero range - or at least no range that I've seen. Let's see if he can actually look like a leader as and when the next film is made.  Javier Bardem is fun as Stilgar, but we see very little of him.  Where I started to have problems was the use of humour in the film. Herbert's book is really dour and unfunny and the insertion of a couple of deliberately funny scenes around Josh Brolin's Gurney Halleck sat awkwardly with the film's overall tone. And then there was the problem of the audience i watched this with laughing at Zendaya's Chani as she mocked Paul.  And again, given that she needs to take a much larger role in any sequel, that may prove a big problem.

Overall, my feeling is that I enjoyed being in Villeneuve's world and fanboys will be happy that setpieces such as the fight with Jamis make the cut. BUT - BUT - I did find myself looking at my watch a lot.  It's a really weird decision not to film the whole book and because of that not much actually happens, there's no real narrative drive, and it's all just set-up. That's fine for me - I'll happily wait for another film, but is a mainstream audience going to wait? And if not, is this film going to make enough money to warrant a sequel?

DUNE is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 155 minutes.  DUNE played Venice and Toronto 2021 and opens in the UK on October 21st and in the USA on October 22nd.

THE LITTLE STRANGER - Crimbo Binge-watch #7

Lenny Abrahamson (ROOM) returns to our screens with another film based on a prize winning book - this time the slow-burn period haunted house story THE LITTLE STRANGER by Sarah Waters. The adaptation is faithful and so shares the books strengths and weaknesses.  Its strength is its evocation of post-war England in which the great estates are being bankrupted and social change is afoot. Our protagonist is a doctor (Domnhall Gleeson - Star Wars' Hux), soon to become part of the NHS. He still resents the fact that his mother worked herself to the bone in a grand country house, and while he ingratiates himself with the family carries a working class chip on his shoulder.  The grand family hard on its luck are made up of a still grand mother (Charlotte Rampling), a brutally war-injured son (Will Poulter - superb in a "posh" character role), and Ruth Wilson who as ever seems to be operating on a far higher emotional level than the other actors she's working with.  She's really the focus of our attention - a woman who is clever and capable but is stuck trying to keep the family together against financial ruin and now - apparently - spooky goings on.  I also love the theme that Sarah Waters often explores of how women, no matter how smart, are often under-estimated, unheard, or worse wilfully disbelieved simply because of their gender. 

What I like about the film is its patient slow build, but I can see why this might frustrate fans of more pacy and punchy horror. After all, I am a notorious coward when it comes to watching horror so if I can get through the film you know it's not really that scary - more of an emotional exploration of the history that is haunting the family.

THE LITTLE STRANGER is rated R and has a running time of 111 minutes. It was released earlier this year. 

RED SPARROW

I sat down to watch RED SPARROW with limited expectations given the poor reviews and controversy surrounding the Jennifer Lawrence spy thriller.  But I found the film to be beautifully cast and acted, superbly photographed, evocatively scored, with a script that was intelligent and provocative and a directorial eye that rightly forced us to address all of the darkness inherent in the #metoo movement. I have since read some of the reviews and it feels as though many people are utterly missing the point of this slippery film.  But I would urge you to watch it, and to keep your wits about you and your loins girded.  No other film better speaks to our times.

The movie opens in contemporary Russia where Jennifer Lawrence's prima ballerina Domenika (shades of BLACK SWAN - Darren Aronofsky was originally attached to the film!) is savagely injured on stage and her career ruined.  Facing eviction and no means of supporting her sick mother (Joely Richardson - saying more with one look than many actresses with pages of screenplay), Domenika is lured into working for her uncle (Matthias Schoenaerts - a dead ringer for a young Putin), the Deputy Director of the Russian secret services. He essentially pimps her out to an oligarch, deliberately putting in the way of sexual assault. When Domenika then becomes witness to that oligarch's murder she is given the non-choice of being assassinated herself, or joining the Russian SS4 spy school and essentially continuing her career as a spy/whore for her country.  Her specific mark is an American CIA agent based in Budapest, played by Joel Edgerton, who is running a mole in the Russian secret service. Her task is to seduce him and get the name of the mole. Meanwhile, she runs a side-con, offering him the information that a senior American official is selling state secrets.  

Let's start with the unequivocally good stuff. This is a movie that looks gorgeous. Every detail of the shabby 70s looking Budapest and Russian apartments contrasted with the ornate Russian government offices and ballet theatres is sumptuous and evocative, creating a world that I utterly believed in.  The cinematography and editing is similarly superb - particularly in the opening scene that intercuts the ballet accident and a spy meeting in Gorky Park that goes wrong. Even that name is evocative - and this is a film that clearly knows and respects the history of its genre, complete with a final handover scene straight out of SMILEY'S PEOPLE. Moreover, with the exception of a few very violent set-pieces this is not really an action movie at all. It's a genuinely tricksy intelligent spy thriller that has you genuinely guessing as to which side Domenika is on, and who the mole is.  It has the confidence to make its audience work hard, and to confirm a theory with a simply subtle smile between two characters rather than with heavy-handed exposition. 

And now to the controversy. RED SPARROW is a film about how men exercise power over women, subtly, obviously, through coercion or outright aggression, and more often than not through sexual violence.  This sexual violence graphically shown and so it should be  - to show the sheer fear of a woman physically assaulted by a powerful man - and to contrast with how Domenika slowly takes back that sexual and intellectual power from pretty much every man in the film.  It is - then - a film that doesn't shy away from showing scenes of rape, attempted rape, and sexual manipulation and humiliation. But each time, there is a power shift.  And how refreshing to see a woman's sexual power explored on film by an actress who was firmly in control of the film's development and her own nudity.  In other words, this isn't - per many reviewers - a sexist film - but a film about sexists.  It's a film about a woman's political awakening. And that couldn't be more relevant. 

RED SPARROW has a running time of 140 minutes and is rated R. The film was released in cinemas in March 2018 and is now available to rent and own. 

45 YEARS

Andrew Haigh (WEEKEND) returns to our screens with another deeply affecting, beautifully directed character drama.  45 YEARS stars Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay as an apparently happily married couple approaching their 45th wedding anniversary when a letter is delivered reporting the discovery of the frozen body of the husband's former girlfriend, Katya.  Although she died before the couple even met, his references to "my Katya", the fact that they pretended to be married, the way it has affected him, all deeply affect his wife.  The husband disappears into the attic to look at old letters and play old records and even smell old perfume. And the formerly trusting, loving wife becomes distrustful and insecure - checking up on him, changing from a perfectly understanding reasonable woman into someone unwilling to even hear the other woman's name.  

What I love about the script is that you feel sympathy with both characters even as they do things that are unsympathetic or self-involved. These are two real people, with all their faults and strengths, facing up to emotions long forgotten and long suppressed.  As we see the wife become sneaky and cold, her position is utterly understandable. As she demands a public show of loyalty at their anniversary party, and we see her husband almost child-like in his desire to please her, we still understand both sides.  The tragedy is shared and irrevocable, as summed up in the most haunting close up on Rampling's face that closes the film.

This is film-making at its most raw and elegant - the melancholy blue-gray misty Norfolk landscape a perfect backdrop for the melancholy regret.  It's a film that contains no grand emotional break-downs but is absolutely paralysing in its depiction of mis-trust.  Andrew Haigh has established himself as one of the most assured directors of actors and I can't wait to see what he does next.

45 YEARS has a running time of 95 minutes and is rated  15 for strong language and sex. The movie played Berlin 2015 where Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay won the Silver Bear.  It opened earlier this year in Estonia and is currently on release in the UK, Ireland and Slovenia. It opens in Germany on September 10th, in Denmark on October 8th, in France on November 4th, in Sweden on December 4th and in Greece on December 10th.

JEUNE ET JOLIE - LFF 2013 - Day Two

‎I am still mulling over François Ozon's bored teen turns hooker drama, JEUNE ET JOLIE. I'd heard about references to the iconic BELLE DE JOUR and expected something fantastic and weird and subversive and instead I got something that was...well...rather dull.

The movie takes place over the course of a year with an affluent Parisian family. The 16 year old daughter, Isabelle loses her virginity in a rather perfunctory manner on a summer holiday, and when she returns to Paris goes on the game. Around half way through the film her family discover her secret, as one of her nicer but older tricks dies in media res, naturally leading to police involvement. The family react in an incredibly dignified manner, and it's all very French and open. They even tell her precocious kid brother.

The result are some rather funny scenes of family discomfort, particularly involving the stepfather. But overall we don't really come any closer to understanding what Isabelle is up to: other than a mild aversion to boyfriends she's just slept with. Of course, there's nothing wrong with mystique and enigma, as anyone who's watched BELLE DE JOUR knows.   But with Isabelle it's less assuming glamour and more frustrating opacity.

Still, I'm a big fan of Ozon and would like to suspend my judgment until I've seen this flick another time.

JEUNE ET JOLIE aka YOUNG & BEAUTIFUL has a running time of 95 minutes.

JEUNE ET JOLIE played Cannes 2013 and opened earlier this year in France, Belgium, Estonia and the Netherlands. It opens in Italy on November 7th; in the UK on November 29th and in Denmark on July 10th. 

The Best of 2012 - GENRE MOVIES

Critics drawing up lists of the best films of any particular year tend to focus on the arthouse wonders and avant-garde. You know what I mean - the latest subtle deeply affecting Iranian agit-drama in which the death of a tree symbolises the ruling neo-fascist kleptocracy. And there'll be more of that to follow. But in this post I want to give mad props to all those film-makers who took the hackneyed genre tropes that make up the vast majority of theatrical releases and reinvigorated them.

First up, CHILDREN'S movies, and PIRATES! IN AN ADVENTURE WITH SCIENTISTS!  This is an absolutely hilarious, beautifully created, intelligent kids claymation picture that casts Hugh Grant as a hapless but well-meaning pirate going up against the nefarious Charles Darwin.  This movie has heart, but not in that schmaltzy manipulative Pixar way (controversial!)  It has wit, style, irreverence, a very British sense of humour, and a kickass Queen Victoria.  Why don't we see more of Hugh Grant in roles like this? 

I don't really watch HORROR movies, as I'm totally gutless, so in this category, I'll have to nominate FRANKENWEENIE, Tim Burton's return to form with this poignant horror homage featuring a little boy who re-animates his beloved dog, Sparkie. This is a kids movie that's really for cineastes, with wonderful in-jokes and references, and a genuine love of cinema-history.  Again, no false schmaltz here, but a genuinely tearful experience.  Just goes to show you can make a great film that clocks in at under 90 minutes. Not sure you really needed the 3D though. 

Next, DRAMA. For me the best was J C Chandor's MARGIN CALL. I have an on-going beef with how Hollywood represents my day job, and this is the first (and probably last) time that I've seen the reality of life in an investment bank depicted accurately on screen. If you want to know what really happened in the Global Financial Crisis, watch this film, and realise that we were all drinking the cool-aid.  Also memorable for a genius slippery cameo from Jeremy Irons as a thinly veiled version of Lehman Brothers' chief, Dick Fuld. This is the movie WALL STREET 2 should have been.

The London Film Festival brought us the best THRILLER of the year.  ARGO came with the fanfare of the Hollywood machine, cueing itself up for Best Picture. It's basically just a very well put together political thriller, but there's  no harm in being just that. Even though I knew the outcome of the US diplomats trying to escape from Iran, I was on the edge of my seat for the whole film.  And, let's face it, we and the Academy love a movie in which Hollywood saves the day!  With ARGO and THE TOWN, Ben Affleck becomes the best actor turned director since Clint Eastwood, and given the latter's recent poor form, perhaps the best currently working. It's just a shame the phrase "Argo fuck yourself" never caught on. 

Perhaps the most unexpectedly brilliant film of the year was debut director Barnaby Southcombe's City-set NOIR, I, ANNA starring Charlotte Rampling as an enigmatic murder suspect pursued by Gabriel Byrne's rumpled cop.  Beautifully acted and shot, satisfyingly slippery and stylish - a movie whose confidence belies its low budget.

When it came to DISASTER movies, Joe Carnahan's THE GREY blew me out of the water. Taut, spare, tense, emotional.  Who knew Liam Neeson would emerge as an action hero with actual klout, flying in the face of the buff, waxed, pumped up muscle-hounds that fill the pages of Men's Health. Don't go gentle, motherfuckers.

When it comes to BUDDY COP movies, especially those set in LA, you can assume that you're going to get 2 hours of profanity, macho bullshit and corruption.  The genius of David Ayer's END OF WATCH is that it turned that assumption on its head, with a portrait of true, real friendship and integrity.  Sad to say that we live in such a cynical world, seeing two good guys just going about their business is enough to be considered genre-redefining. 

My penultimate choice is a movie from a genre that I think is typically ill served by mainstream Hollywood: the ROMCOM.  I'm not sure why  modern rom-coms are so banal and assinine, when the golden era of precode Hollywood produced such wonderfully acerbic, pugnacious and magnetic relationships. What kind of a world takes us from HIS GIRL FRIDAY to the latest Katherine Heigl vehicle?  Anyways, it was refreshing to see David O Russell give us an off-beat odd-couple in SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK.  Perhaps the cutest moment in this year's cinema is when Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence unconsciously hold hands as they walk into the pivotal dance comp at the end of the flick and each denies they did it first. 

Finally, hands down the best genre film of the year belongs to the franchise that has become a genre in its own right, the BOND movies.  SKYFALL was, to my mind, the best Bond of the modern era.  Psychologically realistic, beautifully shot and superlatively cast.  And yet it had enough irreverence and good humour to understand that just as we don't want stupid gadgets ("What were you expecting, an exploding pen?") we still do want to see a glimpse of the Astin Martin.  Truly, this was a post-modern Bond and worth every second of its three-hour running time. And remember, my dear readers, if you need any advice on mixing martinis, don't listen to that nucklehead Ian Fleming, but head over to our sister site, CYBERMARTINI.

London Film Fest 2012 - Day 3 - I, ANNA

I, ANNA is a beautifully made, unnerving psychological thriller from writer-director Barnaby Southcombe.  Set in contemporary London, the movie has a style and control and slow-building tension that is utterly breathtaking.  It's one of the best films I've seen at the Festival so far, and an utter surprise!

The movie stars Charlotte Rampling as Anna, an apparently divorced woman living with her single-parent daughter, nervously entering the speed-dating scene.  She has a certain eery quality from the start.  Maybe it's her anachronistic use of phone boxes, or that we see her wandering apparently aimlessly through a  windswept Barbican at odd hours of the morning, moments after a brutal murder has been committed.  Similarly lonely, aimless and eery is Gabriel Byrne's cop. I love that he's not that clichéd hard boiled-lives-for-his-job cop of low-rent TV series.  Rather he has a melancholy, soulful air, and even when he starts stalking Anna there's something almost gentle about him.

I guess it isn't the most original plot device to find that the woman the cop is stalking turns out to be involved in the crime, but the movie deals with that quickly (within the first 30 minutes), rather than teasing us with obvious red herrings.   This is a grown-up film more worried about the psychology of an event and the emotional ramifications of a crisis, than with "whodunnit".  And the screenplay still has enough tricks up its sleeve to genuinely surprise us in the third act and build to an unbearably tense denouement.

The two lead performances are convincing and compelling, particularly Gabriel Byrne in, perhaps, a softer and more ambiguous role than we've seen in some time.  It was also a pleasure to see Eddie Marsan play a straightforward jovial decent cop rather than the rather shifty characters he normally gets landed with.  Behind the camera, particular praise has to go to Ben Smithard whose cinematography beautifully recasts banal urban architecture into unreal, empty backdrops echoing the protagonists interior moods. The smooth, modern, hard-lit surfaces created a feeling of alienation that was perfectly complemented by K.I.D's electronic score. 

Overall, I, ANNA is a sophisticated, compelling modern noir thriller with enough nods to the history of the  genre to satisfy cinephiles and one genuinely superb plot twist to give us something new to be dazzled by.  This has to be a strong contender for the Festival's First Feature prize,  and I hope that it gets the audience it deserves.

I, ANNA played Berlin, Sydney and London 2012.  It was released in Sweden earlier this year and is released in the UK on December 7th. It will be released in Germany on April 18th 2013. The running time is 93 minutes. 

George Ghon on MELANCHOLIA

Andreas Gursky's Rhein II

Doom and gloom are high on the agenda nowadays. Lars van Trier’s poetic Melancholia is one of the more beautiful jigsaw pieces that deal with the sombre mood in an arresting way, creatively speaking. A big blue planet named Melancholia approaches earth on a trajectory, which will eventually lead to a fatal crash, terminally extinguishing humanity. Given that background, we follow the wedding party of Justine (Kirsten Dunst) at a remote, neo Gothic estate, owned by the rich husband (Kiefer Sutherland) of Justine’s sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg). The newly wed couple (with Alexander Skarsgård as Michael) arrives in a pristine mood, trying to wiggle their oversized limousine up a narrow mountain road, delaying their arrival, but keeping their state of general excitement and mutual enjoyment. Only when faced with the party guests, her parents (a confused John Hurt and a cold Charlotte Rampling), and her unscrupulous boss (Stellan Skarsgård), Justine’s fragile emotional composure comes to light and we witness the mental pains of a pretty girl, which seems to have, by all conventional standards, a pretty good life. 

If we remember the Justine of de Sade’s eponymous novel as a victim of society in pre-revolutionary France, whose virtuous intentions get callously exploited by powerful figures (representations of church/law/aristocracy), Lars van Trier’s character is a bit more subtle, her suffering largely self-inflicted, or so it seems. There is no apparent traumatizing event that links to her mental condition. The Melancholia from which she suffers comes out of the blue, like the menacing planet that is spiralling towards earth on its fatal course. On a superficial level it could be afflicted by it, but speaking in more symbolic terms, the planetary crash could act as metaphor for the threat that Melancholia, the illness, is to contemporary society. In this context, Slavoj Zizek’s book ‘Living in the End Times’, which was originally published in 2010, gains new relevance. In a chapter on depression he asks the crucial question: ‘If the twentieth century was the Freudian century, so that even its worst nightmares were read as (sado-masochistic) vicissitudes of the libido, will the twenty-first be the century of the post-traumatic disengaged subject (…)?’ The libido recedes in that transformation, leaving Thanatos to overpower Eros. 

Or the libido takes its funny turns, to say the least. Instead of procreating with her understanding husband, Justine opts for the quicky with the dumb office boy on the nightly golf course to momentarily please her wavering sexual desire. It has to be said that the men in this film don’t live up to their roles. The boss is an asshole, the father doesn’t listen, and the only thing the brother in law can think of is his money. The male characters are bystanders on the sideline, one-dimensional lightweights that merely accessorize the plot, which is driven by the emotionally complex interactions of the two sisters, Justine and Claire. As the end of the world approaches, they have to face the tragedy without any masculine comforting. Claire is ridden with terror, but Justine doesn’t fear the approaching apocalypse. Mankind is evil, she concludes, and the universe better off without it. She is longing to die, can’t wait to swap the bland reality she experienced for something that might turn out to be spiritually more fulfilling. 

This abstract desire to annihilate the human race and trade it in for something more sublime, is equally apparent in Andreas Gursky’s photograph Rhine II, which just sold for $4,3m at Christies in New York and broke the prize record in a photography sale. The large print shows the grey Rhine River framed by its green bed under a foggy sky. Ultra-minimalist composure, strangely attractive, but with every human trace carefully removed in the retouching process of the digital file. Why are the aesthetes longing for a post-human equilibrium so much these days? Both Gursky and van Trier suggest a pretty radical solution to the struggles of society in the 21st century: Complete wipe out. Let’s hope that this message can be seen in a metaphorical way, too, and be understood as a mere hint that it is time to change, soon. 

MELANCHOLIA played Cannes 2011 where Kirsten Dunst won Best Actress, and Toronto. It opened earlier this year in the Czech Republic, Denmark, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Brazil, France, Estonia, the Netherlands, Greece, Ireland, Romania, the UK, Germany, Italy and Hungary. It opened earlier in November in Spain, Canada and the US. It goes on release in December in Portugal, Slovenia and Australia. It opens in January in Hong Kong and Turkey and in February in Japan.

London Film Fest 2010 Day 1 - NEVER LET ME GO

NEVER LET ME GO is a patiently paced, melancholy sci-fi movie that looks like a Merchant Ivory film - BLADE-RUNNER meets THE RAILWAY CHILDREN.  As it opens, Kathy, Tommy and Ruth are children at a picturesque English boarding school called Hailsham. They are good little children - they accept what their teachers tell them about the dangers of the outside world and the importance of keeping well. They are, and I'm sure everyone knows by now, bred as organ-donors. Indeed, the strength of the film is that this fact is taken as read. Far more interesting to avoid petty suspense and to spend precious cinema time examining the ramifications of that fact.  The children know they are donors but also know that they are human - they feel, love, make art - in short have souls - an idea that is deeply disturbing, indeed repugnant, to the society that has bred them.

The sci-fi/pol theory content of the book and film is softened by its immersion in an emotional drama. Kathy (Carey Mulligan) and Tommy (Andrew Garfield) fall in love as teenagers, making Ruth (Keira Knightley) resentful and ultimately destructive.  What could be more human than love and jealousy?  And what is more powerful than confronting people with the consequences of their actions?

But, as with many a London Film Fest Opening and Closing Night Gala, this movie is technically well-made (director - Mark Romanek, ONE HOUR PHOTO) and by no means unwatchable, but it's lacks any real spark.  The pace is too lugubrious for me - the emotions too restrained. Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield are superb as Kathy and Tommy but Keira Knightley is utterly flat as Ruth.  I'm not sure how far this is down to Alex Garland's adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel - in the novel Ruth has more passion to her, more spark - or whether it's just that Knightley is quite simply outdone by Mulligan.  At any rate, by the time the whole thing limped into a final scene with a clumsy voice-over I was rather bored by it.

NEVER LET ME GO played Telluride and Toronto 2010 and was released in the US last month. It open sin Singapore and the UK on January 20th 2011, and in Belgium, France and Germany in February.

Preview - BOOGIE WOOGIE

BOOGIE WOOGIE is a highly enjoyable, acerbic satire on the contemporary art world, directed by debutant Duncan Ward and based on the novel by Danny Moynihan. Both are art-world insiders and the film has the feel of authentic anecdotes on speed.

The film has a large cast and many sub-plots, but these all coalesce around the gallery of Art Linson - a Jay Jopling like art-dealer who stands at the centre of the London art scene. Art is played in trademark oleaginous, sinister mode by Danny Huston, who needs to seriously worry about typecasting. Three main stories whir around Art. First, his main clients - art collectors Jean and Maclestone (Gillian Anderson and Stellan Skarsgard) are fucking a young artist and a gallery assistant (Amanda Seyfried) respectively, and are engaged in a bitter battle over who gets the art. Second, naive Dewey (Alan Cumming) is trying to promote his best friend, video artist Elaine (Jaime Winston) who ditches him for Art's assistant Beth (Heather Graham). Finally, ageing collector Alfred Rhinegold (Christopher Lee) is being manipulated by his wife (Joanna Lumley) and her butler (the ever brilliant Simon McBurney) to sell a valuable painting, at a price manipulated by art dealer Art Linson.

In short, the majority of characters are self-involved, sexually promiscuous, and care more about jockeying for money and fame than about art itself. Only a few - Alfred Rhinegold and Dewey - have a genuine passion for the work - and they basically get screwed over for their pains. It's not that the art world is indifferent to their pain, but that characters like Beth and Elaine will actually exploit it. After all, in the era of reality TV and constant self-exposure, pain is just another means to create a sensation.

The movie moves quickly; finely balances humour and disgust; assuredly handles its large cast; and is sharply photographed by John Mathieson (HANNIBAL, GLADIATOR). Art aficionados will appreciate the fact that the art was curated by Damien Hurst. I presume that when this finally gets released, it will be very limited. But this flick is definitely worth seeking out.

Additional tags: Joanna Lumley, Christopher Lee, Alan Cumming, Duncan Ward, Danny Moynihan.

BOOGIE WOOGIE played Edinburgh 2009 and will be released in the UK and US in April 2010. It is, rather improbably, currently being shown on British Airways long-haul flights.

London Film Fest Day 3 - LIFE DURING WARTIME

Todd Solondz is back in the place he loves best: contemporary Jewish-American middle-class suburbia where normal looking people deal with drug addiction, perversion, pedophilia, suicide, neuroses, and anything else you might deem "inappropriate" to talk about in front of the kids. Solondz picks up characters from his previous, brilliantly disturbing films WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE and HAPPINESS and has them deal with events from those flicks. In the case of the family recovering from the father's child rape conviction, the action takes place in sunny Florida rather than the more typical Jersey ("a state of irony") bu the grim humour remains the same. In short, if you like Solondz you'll love this film.

Tech credits are, as ever, polished, with sunny-suburban production design contrasting with the painful subject matter. Casting is superlative. Special praise is due for Allison Janney as the wife of the convicted paedophile, and Shirley Henderson as her sister, who works with convicts and whose lovers have a habit of topping themselves. Ciaran Hinds skulks around as the pederast and achieves something very difficult: he evokes our sympathy. Charlotte Rampling is typically strong in a cameo as frustrated older woman. The glue that binds all these characters together is the idea of forgiveness.

LIFE DURING WARTIME played Telluride, Venice (where it won Best Screenplay), Toronto, New York and London 2009.

THE DUCHESS - hollow

I came to Amanda Foreman's biography of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, as someone passionately interested in the politics of the late 18th century - particularly the relationship between Fox and Pitt the Younger, and the impact of the French revolution on British political culture. I was drawn to the book because of Amanda Foreman's thesis that Georgiana, as wife of a powerful Whig patron, had a profound influence of the role of women in electioneering, by deliberately exploiting her influence as a woman of fashion.

I was far less interested in the social history of Georgiana. Yes, it is tragic that she was trapped in a loveless marriage, legally her husband's property and valued only as a means to produce an heir. But this is the history of many women before the late twentieth century and one might as well read THE FORSYTE SAGA or histories of Marie-Antoinette. That Georgiana, like Marie-Antoinette, masked her troubles at the gaming tables was also not especially interesting to me. I found it far more fascinating that men who would rule the country and its finances, such as Fox, would game all night and politick all day.

It seemed to me that the biography sold because of readers' prurient interest in the fact that the Duke of Devonshire kept his mistres, the Duchess' best friend, Lady Elizabeth Foster, in the same house as his wife, apparently with his wife's consent. This new film panders to that prurience, especially in its ill-judged marketing campaign.

By stripping away the social and political context - the gambling, the significance of the electioneering, the profound disruption of revolutionary politics - the film becomes a mono-dimensional romantic drama. Naive young Georgiana is excited to make a dazzling marriage into the very pinnacle of society. But her husband is uncommunicative and, given her failure to produce a male heir, disrespectful. He callously keeps his lover, her best friend, in their house(s). And when Georgiana finds some happiness with her lover, the Duke forces her to renounce him and their love-child, or to give up her legitimate children. Georgiana does the honourable thing - after all, this is a woman so maternal that she has raised the Duke's illegitimate child as her own.

This hard-boiled story was not enough to satisfy me. The Duke (Ralph Fiennes) is a void - a misogynistic adulterer who communicates nothing. The mistress (Hayley Atwell) is insufficiently drawn and given insufficient motive. She knives her best friend so as to see her children. Very well. But Atwell is given little scope to make her seem sympathetic or even interesting. And she and Fiennes have no sexual chemistry. The Duchess (Keira Knightley) is again rather one-dimensional. Stripped of her gambling addiction, and made to renounce her lover for the noblest of reasons, she is so virtuous as to be uninteresting. That said, Keira Knightley gives a nuanced performance that brings her to life more than one could've expected given the script. This is a good performance. It's not, let's say right away, Oscar-worthy. Sadly, Dominic Cooper is rather out of his depth as her lover, Grey. He lacks the gravitas to play a potential Prime Minister, and speaks with a pronounced Estuary accent.

Will the film get away with the hollowness and thinness at its centre? Perhaps. Audiences will wallow in its lush period settings and handsome costumes. Charlotte Rampling gives a fine cameo performance as the Duchess' mother and Simon McBurney is typically captivating as Fox. Still, this could have been a far more substantial film, either in terms of content (if they had tackled the politics and gambling head on), or in terms of the visual style (if they had taken a more daring approach, as with Sophia Coppola's MARIE-ANTOINETTE.)

THE DUCHESS is on release in the UK. It is released in the US on September 19th; in Hong Kong on October 1st; in Australia on October 2nd; in France on November 12th; in Israel on November 13th; in Belgium on December 3rd; in Italy on December 23rd; in Finland on January 9th and in the Netherlands on January 15th.

BABYLON A.D. - All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing

Over-budget, over-schedule, unloved by its studio, disowned by its director, heavily edited down and released in two versions....BABYLON A.D. is a confused movie with a void at its centre, and I'm not talking about Vin Diesel. Writer-director Mathieu Kassovitz, who made the brilliant flick LA HAINE, has a done stitch-up job on the studio, accusing them of blocking his artistic vision with harsh editing. He's right. This dystopian thriller, based on the novel by Maurice G Dantec, has had its guts ripped out in the editing suite. The poor viewer never really has a clear idea about what the frack is going on.

My vague feeling is that a hundred years in the future, Russia has turned all of Europe and Asia into satelite states that have disintegrated into cyber-punk savagery. America is a locked-down haven of functionality but at a price - culture has been commercialised to the point where religion is sold through billboards like face-cream. Years ago, a mad scientist created a cylon baby who would have a virgin birth, propelling a particular sect to world domination. This baby, now a woman, is to be smuggled to the sect's headquarters in New York by a mercenary called Toorop and, for no particular reason other than sheer improbaility, a kung-fu nun.

The key point is this: the only bit of that plot summary that comes across coherently in the actual film is the final sentence. In other words, this movie is just one long chase scene for no particular reason. The only real pleasure is in observing the production design, which veers from a cool, gritty Kreuzberg like Europe, via Canadian snow-scapes, to a futuristic New York.

Mathieu Kassovitz claims that the studio hacked his film to death. I believe him. Still, that's only half the problem. The other half is the piss-poor casting. On the one hand you have Vin Diesel who, gods love him, can't really depict characters in the midst of moral dilemmas. And then you have Mélanie Thierry who plays the girl. Now, for the first hour of the film I swear to god I thought she was about fifteen. But then, in a really excruciatingly embarassing scene, her character comes on to the mercenary and you think, oh my god, she's actually meant to be in her twenties! I came home and looked up the actress' age on IMDB. She's actually 27!!! Amazing. Put it this way, you can cast her as your lead actress, but you need to put her opposite someone who looks like he could conceivably have a relationship with her without being accused of pederasty or indeed crushing her to death in the palm of his hand.

So all I'm saying is this. Kassovitz needs to come clean. Yes, the film is shit. Yes, the studio probably did bad things with FinalCut Pro. And maybe, just maybe, they forced Vin Diesel onto him. But he acquiesed. And then he cast an actress who looked 15 opposite him.....

BABYLON A.D. is on release in France, Belgium, Russia, Canada, the UL and the USA. It goes on release next weekend in Indonesia, Argentina, Portugal, Mexico and Panama. It opens on September 11th in Austria, Germany, Singapore and Brazil. It opens in Spain on September 19th. BABYLON A.D. opens in October in Australia, South Korea, Finland, Italy, Norway and Egypt and in November in Venezuela and Greece.

London Film Fest Day 15 - ANGEL is a fiasco

ANGEL takes the prize for biggest fiasco of London 2007. It's also the only movie I walked out of - after 90 minutes of its 135 minute run-time. I simply couldn't take any more.

Francois Ozon has adapted Elizebeth Taylor's novel about a head-strong, self-centred young girl who turns herself into a famous novelist almost by sheer will alone. Her novels are pure trash - romantic melodramas reminiscent of Barbara Cartland. She becomes rich, buys a husband, has a Sapphic personal assistant (his sister), and the country house of her dreams. But during World War One she turns pacifist, loses readers and her husband's love.

Ozon's movie is a vulgar pastiche of the genre of novel that Angel writes. This is no loving, gentle parody or sensitive reinterpretation in the manner of Todd Haynes' FAR FROM HEAVEN. Rather, it is a simple-minded send-up that sneers at the genre and raises cheap laughs from an audience complicit in its sneering. Sets are over-done; costumes are ridicuolous; the orchestral score is all soaring strings; the actors ham it up for all its worth; the dialogue is (presumably deliberately) absurd.

One does, of course, laugh at the deliberately ropy back-projection shot of Angel and her publisher riding in an open-top carriage past the Houses of Parliamnent. But after around 45 minutes the one-note humour and banality of the central conceit of this film become boring beyong belief.

This film is a sad waste of an admirable cast and the proven ability of Ozon. In 8 WOMEN he modernised and subverted genre cinema to great effect. By contrast, ANGEL is just a worthless piss-take.

ANGEL played Berlin, Toronto and London 2007. It opened in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Russia, Germany, Austria, Poland, Lithuania and Italy earlier this year. It opens in Turkey and Australia in November and in Japan in December. It opens in Singapore on January 31st 2008.

HEADING SOUTH/VERS LE SUD - provocative French-language drama

HEADING SOUTH/VERS LE SUD is an intelligent drama set in a beach resort in Haiti. The resort attracts ageing lonesome women from around the world. The movie hits the ground running with a painfully tragic dialogue between a middle-aged Haitian woman and a Haitian man in the airport arrival hall. She approaches him – a stranger – and in a quiet, dignified voice, offers him her fifteen year-old daughter. Being poor and beautiful, the woman fears her daughter will end up on the streets unless she has this man’s “protection”. Immediately we are made aware that this is a chronically poor society in which poverty has made conventional morality impossible. The woman also offers the man, who refuses her offer, some advice. She says that all people wear masks – good and bad – and that it is not always possible to tell which is which. The message may seem trite, but spoken with such sincerity it attains a profundity and sadness.

The movie then changes its gaze to a run-down beach hotel. It attracts middle-aged lonely women who are more or less happy to pay for the services of a host of attractive young Haitian men. The alpha-female in this group is a French-speaking Englishwoman who teaches at Wellesley. Her name is Ellen and she is played by Charlotte Rampling as a materialistic, cynical, bitter and imposing woman. Ellen commandeers the services of a young man called Lejba every summer. Ellen is put out when Brenda arrives also looking for Legba. It appears that three years ago, when visiting the resort with her husband, Brenda had an affair with Legba that she regards as the defining moment of her life. Brenda is mocked by Ellen for romanticising a commercial arrangement, but as the movie progresses we come to realise that it is Ellen who is the romantic and Brenda who is objectifying these young men.

I found this to be a fascinating but disturbing movie. The material seems to be handled sensitively, but by the end of the movie you realise that while many of the main characters have been given the opportunity to talk directly to the camera and explain their position, Legba remains an enigma. This, coupled with the way in which he is photographed, means that even the film-makers are to some extent objectifying him. One wonders if this is a deliberate provocation...

HEADING SOUTH/VERS LE SUD played Venice and Toronto 2005. It was released in France and Belgium at the start of 2006 and is currently playing in the US, UK, Spain, Netherlands and Italy. It opens in Germany on September 21st.

THE NIGHT PORTER - a reconsideration

In my recent review of HARD CANDY, I called the film trash. I accused it of exploiting themes of paedophilia in order to juice up a rather conventional revenge thriller. I compared it to Liliana Cavani's movie THE NIGHT PORTER, which was also famously accused of exploiting the Holocaust to "beef up" a rather sordid erotic thriller. In doing so, I realised that this might be a little rash. After all, I had only seen THE NIGHT PORTER once before - when I was fifteen - and hardly able to judge its moral, historical, cinematic or sexual content. I managed to track down a copy on battered VHS and so now can give a rather more considered judgement. Naturally, this will involve plot spoilers.

To those blissfully unaware of the brouhaha surrounding this film, THE NIGHT PORTER was released in 1974. It is a movie made by the Italian director, Liliana Cavani, perhaps best known to modern audiences as the director of RIPLEY'S GAME. The movie is set in post-war Vienna. It is in the 1950s and an ex-SS officer called Max (Dirk Bogarde) is working as a night porter is a swanky hotel. He lives a sordid life, procuring whores for rich guests, and even more sinister, injecting another guest with a tranquiliser or a stronge narcotic? The scene has under-tones of sexual abuse, made the more disturbing by the fact that the apparent victim is clearly paying for this "service." In flashbacks, we see that Max used to be one of a string of brutish, morally repulsive concentration camp guards, and that this hotel guest once danced ballet for them, practically nude. We also see SS officers raping the camp inmates.

The thematic material of the piece is thus established. We are to exist in a world where death is eroticised and sexual relations are abusive - where victims can appear to be oppressors. Fascinating, dangerous material. The odds are increased with the introduction of Lucia (Charlotte Rampling.) Lucia is a beautiful young guest at the hotel, who recognises Max from the concentration camp. Her flashbacks show her as an emaciated, yet still stunningly beautiful, shockingly young girl, with cropped ginger hair - shocking colour in a morbidly grayscale flashback. What was their relationship?

Max is being investigated by a group of elderly Nazis. They gather up evidence and provide some - what is the word? - peace of mind - for other Nazis. Better to be accused and perhaps acquitted by a friendly, discreet panel, than exposed before the world. Best of all, the devil's advocate (in this case, the *prosecution*) will destroy all the evidence - killing any witnesses if necessary. Now, Max nervously asks the panel, having seen Lucia, if it is not possible to let the witnesses live? A bizarre act of mercy, until we find that Max and Lucia were in fact lovers in the camp. Lucia seeks out Max in the hotel and they have a reunion that is violent, passionate and finally a relief. Lucia laughs in joy. The lovers are reunited. As one of Max's Nazi guests responds - "What a beautiful romance!"

And so, we see their relationship unfurl - both as it is now and as it was then. The scenes are cut to melt between now and then. In one typical scene, Max feeds Lucia a spoon full of soup. He brushes some soup from her lip. She sucks on his finger and then moves to fellate him. The scene melts into Lucia fellating Max in the camp. But the most notorious scene is where Lucia, dressed in a soldier's trousers, braces, long leather gloves and officer's cap, sings a German song for the officers in the camp.

Finally, in order to save Lucia from the Nazi panel, Max and Lucia hole up in an apartment and literally starve to death, all the while continuing with their bizarre relationship.

How is the viewer supposed to react to such scenes -and such imagery? On the one hand, I rather like the idea of reflecting this period in history - when morality was inverted and events were at the limit of evil - with a story of a relationship which is also at the limits. However, there is something very slippery in the way in which the scenes are shot, cut and scored. Think of the rape scene in IRREVERSIBLE. Here, the rape scene does not show the woman as a sexual object or porn star - using close ups of her flesh. The camera is unrelentingly fixed with no cuts and no score. The experience is properly brutal.

By contrast, in your typical rape scene, the victim is fetishised by the camera, with largely the same shooting style used for a rape as for a love scene. And that is exactly what happens in THE NIGHT PORTER. Lucia is made into a sexual object. She claims that she is with Max, literally chained to the flat, of her own free will. And if this were genuinely so then perhaps Liliana Cavani's artistic choices would have some merit. If this were genuinely a plea for understanding on behalf of a sado-masochistic couple perhaps it would be okay. However, this is not a relationship freely entered into, even if Lucia thinks it is. After all, it is a relationship begun under extreme duress by a man who holds life and death in his hands with a young girl who is one move away from the gas chamber.

I suppose that what I am getting at is that I just don't buy Cavani's claim that this is simply a love story - one played out against a unique and taboo background - but a love story between two adults nonetheless. For me, this is simply a tale of a sick man who has brutalised a young girl. He has exploited her, and by filming her in an erotic manner, Cavani makes voyeurs and exploiters of us all. For that reason, I feel justified in calling this movie trash - no matter how good the acting. However, in one respect it is a superior product to a movie like HARD CANDY. For Cavani aimed high with this movie - judging from interviews her intentions evidently were to push the boundaries of art and understanding. By contrast, I fear that the makers of HARD CANDY were looking for an easy way to shock without any artistic pretensions. If the NIGHT PORTER is a noble failure, HARD CANDY is just re-casting the bunny-boiler.

Apparently, THE NIGHT PORTER is available on DVD in the US.

LEMMING - Another day, another disappointing movie

It seems like all I watch these days are film that are not so much bad as disappointing. From X-MEN 3 to THE KING, I watch films with actors, directors and production teams that I admire, but which fail to engage or excite. Today's offering is a French supernatural revenge thriller called LEMMING. The movie is a four-hand piece set in contemporary France. We are introduced to a young couple called Alain and Benedicte Getty. They are a "model couple" living in a nice suburb. The husband works for a high-tech company that makes fancy kit for monitoring one's own house - little flying webcams to spot leaks and such. He finds a lemming in the drain. This being a moody French film, that is a Significant Fact. Alain and Benedicte become entangled with Alain's oleagnious, whoremongering boss Richard, and his veangeful wife, Alice. The film unfurls at length into a supernatural thriller which I found dull, dull, dull. It was never spooky, never scary. Neither the script nor the camerawork created any tension or paranoia. The symbolism - spy-cams and suicidal lemmings - was hamfisted. The nightmare scene elicited unintended laughter. As for the ending, we are given an attempt at a tantalising enigma. But it is not a par with the final frames of that outstanding movie, HIDDEN/CACHE. The film fails badly and this is all the more pitiful considering that is directed by French wunderkind, Dominik Moll, and stars four great actors. Alain is played by Laurent Lucas - the actor who played cabaret-singer Marc Stevens in the superb Belgian horror flick, CALVAIRE. His wife Benedicte is played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, who played JANE EYRE in the outstanding Zeffirelli production and also featured in 21 GRAMS. Andre Dusollier plays the lecherous old Pollock - an actor I'll always remember for his similarly creepy performance in UN COEUR EN HIVER. Finally, the iconic Charlotte Rampling plays his veangeful wife, Alice. What a waste.

LEMMING opened Cannes 2005. It is at the fag-end of its super-limited UK release and at the start of a limited US release. It opens in Germany on July 13th 2006. I do not know of an Austrian or Australian release date.

BASIC INSTINCT 2 - My not-so-secret shame

So I found myself in the West End with a couple of hours to spare and I decided to check out BASIC INSTINCT 2. My motives were pretty miserable: curiousity and a sort of malevolent will to laugh at something bad. So, I slapped down my ten squid, armed myself with some happiness-inducing ice-cream and braced myself for the worst. Two hours later I left the theatre in a state of shock and shame - my entire worldview had been shaken - I had to admit to myself that I *really* enjoyed this movie. Which is, as far as I can tell, a minority view. When something like this happens you have to ask yourself: is the rest of the world completely wrong about BASIC INSTINCT 2 and/or was I smoking crack?

Well, as painful as it is, let's try and work out exactly why I think you too should go see BASIC INSTINCT 2 this weekend. BASIC INSTINCT 2 is an erotic thriller. And before you think that sounds sleazy, you have probably seen and enjoyed more erotic thrillers than you think: Fatal Attraction, Where The Truth Lies, Mulholland Drive, In The Cut....And this sequel is far less erotic and far more a thriller than the original. (I am not saying that this is a good or a bad thing, just noting it for the record.) There is far less explicit sexual content, no obligatory lesbian sex-scene. Indeed, most of the time, sex is hinted at, off-screen, or we just see the sordid consequences of it. In many ways, then, BASIC INSTINCT 2 has taken its relocation to London seriously, and while the content hints at dark-doings, these are no worse than your average British political sex-scandal. (And no, I am not *just* talking about the spoofing of the famous Christine Keeler photo.)

A big sales factor for me is that the movie is shot not just in generic London but in precisely the part of London in which I live. And London looks bloody brilliant: all hyper-modern blade-runner skyscrapers in Canary Wharf and the City contrasted with claustrophic Gothic trophy buildings. It captures everything that I love about this town - that you can walk through the medieval glory of the Tower of London and five minutes later amble by the Lloyds building. And Soho (which these days is rather a gentrified tourist trap) has never looked more like a page from an Alan Moore novel.

But anyways, on to the plot and performances. The plot is pretty similar to the original movie. Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone) is a successful author of pulp fiction. Her novels involve sex, drugs, murder: "the basic instincts", and usually describe sleazy crimes that later just happen to occur. In the first five minutes of this movie she speeds off a road into the Thames while having sex with C-list British footballer, Stan Collymore, leaving him to die. This brings her to the attention of the local police, one of whom (David Thewlis) wants to bang her up (ho-ho) whether or not he has the evidence. Catherine is referred to the state's psychologist, Dr Michael Glass (David Morrissey). Glass diagnoses her as a "risk addict" whose own death will be the only final boundary to her reckless actions. He then takes Catherine on as a private patient. A tangled web of affairs and evil-doings unfold involving David's ex-wife, her lover - a tabloid journalist threatening to expose murky secrets in Dr Glass' past - and David's mentor, played by the ever-amazing Charlotte Rampling. As in the first Basic Instinct, as the murders pile up we ask whether Catherine really is a psychopath, or whether Dr Glass, or even the dirty cop, are committing them to save their respective assess.

So far, so good. The plot ticks all the right boxes. How about the execution? Like I said, director Michael Caton-Jones (who bizarrely has the diametrically opposite movie, SHOOTING DOGS in UK cinemas at the same time as this) creates the perfect backdrop in London. London shimmers and seduces in exactly the same way that Catherine should. And, to my mind, Sharon Stone really does pull it off - although I am a "gurl" so clearly am no judge compared to all those moronic guys on blogs posting that she is too old to play the part. Alls I know is that I cannot imagine anyone else acting this outrageously and looking completely authentic while they are doing it. I am less sure of David Thewlis as the dirty cop and David Townsend as Dr Glass. Thewlis goes for over-the-top hammy - presumably on the say-so of the director - and Townsend is little better than a foil. It would have been infinitely more satisfying had they cast a heavyweight actor - whether Yank or Brit. Someone like Clive Owen, I suspect, would have done better.

But finally, I think the film works on a basic level as a whodunnit. The two hours flew by as the bodies mounted up (hehehe) and the plot became more complex. Yes I know some of it is a bit silly, not least the Stan Collymore episode, but you have to admire any film-makers that understand that genre and revel in its possibilities. And I defy any audience not to enjoy the scene where Catherine immitates Christine Keeler, gets Dr Glass hot, and then announces, "I think our time is up, Doctor!" That was one of the many INTENDED laughs that this film got.

So there we are. I really liked this film. What's next? I develop a taste for Jennifer Aniston rom-coms?

BASIC INSTINCT 2: RISK ADDICTION is on global release.