DREAMS aka DROMMER*** - Berlin Film Festival 2025 Golden Bear Winner

The third part of Dag Johan Haugerud's trilogy, DREAMS (SEX, LOVE), is a slippery, nostalgic and occasionally hilarious movie about a teenager's sexual awakening. 

Johanne is a 17-year old schoolgirl who falls desperately in love or in lust with her new French teacher and inveigles herself into Johanna with an A's life.  They hang out together at the teacher's apartment and for much of the film we are unsure of what exactly happening. Is Johanne with an E just a naïve schoolkid over interpreting every act of kindness or is she being groomed by a teacher who loves basking in her student's attention. This latter theory is given more weight when we meet another of the teacher's ex-students, though an adult, who says "there are many of us".  At this point one wonders how the schoolgirl will react? Mope and sulk or erupt into violence. And I love how quietly ambiguous the film is and for how long it refuses to give any clear answers.  Even in a final scene with the schoolteacher it is unclear just how complicit she was in what happened and how we should interpret this teenager's passionate and perhaps imagined love affair.

All of our uneasiness and questioning is given voice by the two older women in Johanne's life - her mother and her grandmother. Indeed, it's worth noting that men are almost entirely absent from this story except as a rather banal looking boyfriend or a rather banal therapist.  These scenes of inter-generational tussling are often hilarious but also signal how we, as adults, seek to pigeon-hole and explain and exploit the complex and sometimes unexplainable feelings of teenagers. 

These discussions are narratively induced by the fact that Johanne wrote her experience of her love affair in a book that is apparently preciously brilliant, and then gave the manuscript to her published poet grandmother and then to her mother.  At first Johanne's mother thinks her child has been the victim of sexual abuse.  But she quickly moves to thinking that the brilliant manuscript should be published as a queer feminist coming-of-age story.  And in some ways the disagreement between mother and grandmother over whether to publish is far more about their own tussles when the mother was a child than about Johanne at all.  I point you to an hilarious argument over the movie FLASHDANCE!

Ella Overbye gives a startlingly assured turn as 17-year old schoolgirl Johanne but all the female performances in this film are strong. I also loved the production design and directorial choices that show us cosy interiors with a romantic gauzy haze and feature endless beautiful architectural shots of staircases.

But this film is not without its flaws. I know that it needs to allow us into Johanne's experience of her love affair but the voiceover of banal teenage thoughts became rather tedious. I found myself clinging on for the comedy scenes between mother and grandmother. I also didn't find her voiceovers to be preciously brilliant (as described by them and by an editor) but to be the usual self-involved meanderings of a teenager.  Was this the point? Was it satire?  It was nonetheless boring for that.

DREAMS aka DROMMER has a running time of 100 minutes. It won the Golden Bear at the 2025 Berlinale.

MY OLD ASS***

Writer-direct Megan Park returns with he R-rated dramedy MY OLD ASS in which 18-year old Elliott (Maisy Stella - Nashville) takes some shrooms with her friends and suddenly finds herself talking to her 39-year old self (Aubrey Plaza - White Lotus). The films starts off being utterly hilarious with lots of shocked teenage horror that a 39 year old isn't married and is still in school. And why Stella may not look much like a young Plaza, she gets her give no fucks wry humour and confidence. 

At first, older Elliott's advice seems really good and helpful but there's one glitch.  Old Elliott tells Young Elliott to avoid a guy called Chad, even though they seem to have an instant connection that belies E's assumption that she is gay. The movie then takes a somewhat jarring tonal turn into a far more serious and affecting drama. Which is all good. I just didn't see it coming. And it felt a bit rushed and underdeveloped - and well - trite - by the end.  That said, Maisy Stella has a real talent for comedy and I hope this film leads to her getting more parts.

MY OLD ASS is rated R, has a running time of 89 minutes, and was released in September.

HOW TO HAVE SEX*****

Writer-director Molly Manning Walker's debut feature is an astonishingly raw, brave and affecting drama about a teenage girl's summer holiday turned horror.  I am unsurprised to learn that Manning Walker won the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes for her work, and can't wait to see what she does next.

The film stars Mia McKenna-Bruce as Tara, a sixteen-year old girl hoping to have some post-exam summer fun in Crete.  She is travelling with her two best friends, but we soon learn that friendship only goes so far when you both fancy the same boy.  We root for Tara to hook up with Badger (Shaun Thomas), who at least seems to have something of a moral conscience, but she inevitably ends up with his friend Paddy (Samuel Bottomley) who it is implied is more typical of the kind of guy you are going to meet on a party island.  Molly Manning Walker unflinchingly shows us the misogyny and sexual violence embedded in toxic holiday destinations like Cancun and the Med resorts. The most brutal part of all of this is how it manifests in the girls - the internalised misogyny of shaming someone for being a virgin, and the internalised pressure to have sex. You watch in terror as you realise the inevitable outcome of lots of booze, lots of pressure, and high-risk situations. All of this is portrayed with complete credibility by McKenna-Bruce and culminates in a final heartbreaking scene in an airport where she confesses the reality of what happened to her, and the evasive, equivocal reaction of her best friend. If you weren't worried about how teenagers think about consent before watching, you will be when you leave.

HOW TO HAVE SEX is rated 15 and has a running time of 91 minutes. It played Cannes and the BFI London Film Festival in 2023 and was released in the UK on December 29th. It will play Sundance 2024 before a February 2nd release.

LIE WITH ME aka ARRETE AVEC TES MENSONGES***

Two seventeen year old boys fall in love in small-town France.  One leaves for America to pursue his dream of becoming a writer and living a life true to himself.  The other stays back, weighed down by obligations toward his family farm, and maybe because of a lack of courage to come out.  Thirty-five years later the writer returns to find his lover has died, but also that a handsome young man, his son, is insinuating himself into the writer's life under false pretences.

The more accurate translation of this film's title isn't Lie With Me but Stop With Your Lies, or Stop Making Up Stories. And everyone in this film is lying. Stephane, the author, is lying about what Thomas meant to him, and why he writes, and fearful of publishing something that truly deals with what happened.  Thomas lied his whole life about his sexuality, but also left enough clues for his son Lucas to figure it out. And Lucas lies about his obsession with finding out until he is exposed. 

The resulting film is gentle, elegant, beautiful and moving but also rather slow, plodding and obvious.  It never really captured my heart. It felt rather safe and anaemic and gentle.  The novel upon which it is based is apparently a best-seller so I may try that instead.

LIE WITH ME played BFI Flare 2023 and is currently on release in the UK. It has a running time of 93 minutes.

WINTER BOY aka LE LYCEEN****

 

Theatre and cinema writer-director Christophe Honore (MA MERE) returns to our screens with a deeply personal, heartfelt and affecting retelling of the loss of his father and the impact this had on him as a young gay man.

The film opens in contemporary rural France with high-school student Lucas speaking not quite to camera as an unreliable narrator of his own story. We later find this is part of a therapy session. He describes his final trip to boarding school with his father, played courageously by Honore himself, who we come to realise probably committed suicide by driving his car into oncoming traffic.  Very quickly, the father is dead, and we see the rest of the film unfold in grief and trauma.

At the start of the film, Lucas is an out gay schoolboy with an active sex life. But when his father dies he decides to close off all feelings and live for physicality and the moment. He goes to Paris with his elder brother Quentin and develops a crush on Quentin's room-mate Lilio. He also flirts with religion, indulges in a random hook-up for the first time (nicely inter-cut!) and flirts with sex work in a kind of twisted act of protection for Lilio.

Clearly he is acting out, and struggling to come to terms with grief and his own sexual power as a near-adult. It's a lot and when the waves finally break the ramifications are severe and sensitively handled. 

There's so much to love in this film. First and foremost, newcomer Paul Kircher's magnetic central performance as Lucas but also Erwan Kapoa Fale's heartbreakingly sensitive turn as Lilio. I love that Honore depicts gay sex beautifully and openly, and also that he depicts the love-hate of siblings so authentically. Vincent Lacoste is fantastic as big brother Quentin. I really felt like I knew this trio and felt invested in their lives. 

But there are things I didn't like in the movie too. I didn't like that the opening therapy scene carried on into voiceover over the immediate reaction to the death. I found it mannered and distracting rather than elucidating. I think Honore means it to be mannered: he's making a point about a disjointed, fragmentary and contradictory narrator. Fine. I just could've done without it.  I also didn't like what felt like a forced focus on the mother (Juliette Binoche) late in the film. It felt as though Honore had to give her one big scene to get her to do the film.

That said, this remains one of the most beautifully told and affecting movies I've seen in a while, and well worth seeking out. I can't wait to see what Paul Kircher does next. 

LE LYCEEN has a running time of 122 minutes. It played Toronto, San Sebastian and London 2022 and BFI Flare 2023.

PREMATURE - BFI London Film Festival 2019

Ayanna (Zora Howard) is a naive bookish teenager bound for liberal arts college in the Fall.  But before that, her summer is upended by a chance encounter with Isaiah (Joshua Boone) that turns into a full-blown summer love-affair that - interestingly - she instigates.  He's older than her, and she loves his passion for music and ideas. She feels confident enough to open sexually and intellectually, sharing that she writes poetry.  It's intense and overwhelming, and ripe for a reality check when Isaiah's white ex-girlfriend shows up, or every time he gets into an argument with her friends over politics. The way in which both parties deal with the rift speaks to Ayanna's relative and understandable immaturity.  There's a third act twist that's beautifully and responsibly handled, and navigated, as the entire film, with real authenticity and nuance. And as we leave the couple at the end of the summer, there's a lovely ambiguity as to what will happen next.

I really was interested in the relationship, thanks mostly to Zora Howard's beautiful acting and writing. It also helps knowing she was pivotal in crafting the film alongside debut director Rashaad Ernesto Green, so that the explicit sex scenes don't come off as exploitative. But the really beautiful thing in this film is the backdrop to the relationship - our window into contemporary Harlem, in sunkissed 16mm - the way in which young people debate politics, or simply just hang out in launderettes, and the beautiful support system that young black women and their mothers have to provide for each other. 

PREMATURE has a running time of 86 minutes. It played Sundance and London 2019 and does not yet have a commercial release date.

A PARIS EDUCATION aka MES PROVINCIALES - BFI London Film Festival 2018 - Preview

Sweet tap-dancing Christ, this film really is the most boring pile of pretentious wank. Sit around for over 2 hours and watch whiny French film students have apparently deep and meaningful conversations about Art while fucking indiscriminately and being arrogant and bitchy.  The central character in this film - Matias - is meant to be our hero - an uncompromising wannabe auteur of integrity who worships the greats. But in reality he's just a jumped-up arrogant prick.  And he is worshipped by the film's protagonist Etienne - the provincial rube of the title who goes to Paris to study cinema, even before Etienne has even met Matias. In fact, as many women as Etienne cheats on his girlfriend with, this is the real love story of the film. The problem is that while Matias is unlikeable, Etienne is a banal void - dull, reactive, artistically blocked so we never actually see him create anything.  What makes this talky, endless, actionless nonsense even worse is that it's shot in black and white and laced with a Beethoven-heavy soundtrack for no real reason other than its director Jean-Paul Civeyrac is as pretentious as Matias. And let's be clear, this is not that kind of crisp elegant black and white photography of films like MANHATTAN. Nope. DP Pierre-Hubert Martin's whites are never white, his blacks lack depth - the whole thing just feels muddy.  Quite like the mind of its characters.  Avoid at all costs. 

A PARIS EDUCATION has a running time of 136 minutes. It played Berlin 2018 and was released in France and USA this summer. There are still tickets available for all three screenings at this year's BFI London Film Festival.

BEACH RATS

BEACH RATS is a beautifully observed brave film about a teenage boy struggling to come to terms with his homosexuality.  It's written and directed by award-winning sophomore director Eliza Hittman and benefits from delicately beautiful, 16mm, nostalgia-tinted photography from celebrated French cinematographer Helene Louvert (PINA!) The film stars British actor Harris Dickinson as a 19 year old high school graduate called Frankie, without job, car or aim in life.  His father is dying, his mum (Kate Hodge) is an exhausted caregiver, merely observing his comings and goings, and the only real emotional reaction we get from all that is Frankie looking bemused and distant and filching his dad's meds.  What he does have is a bunch of jock friends with whom he hangs out at the beach in Brooklyn, getting high, and up to no good. Against this typically "bro" hetero backdrop, boasting about conquests, Frankie attempts a tentative relationship with Simone (Madeline Weinstein), but she soon realises that he's not into her, and maybe gets the reason why. It's testament to the nuanced and subtle performances from both actors that we never truly know how far she gets it.  Simultaneously, Frankie is exploring the world of gay chatrooms, and moves from online flirting to midnight hook ups at the beach. I love the way that the director handles these without awkwardness or squeamishness, and never objectifies Frankie.  It's rare to see such an honest depiction of casual sex in any film, let alone showing homosexuality. Kudos to all involved but especially Harris Dickinson who gives a truly astounding break-out performance.

BEACH RATS played Sundance 2017 where won Best Director. It also played the BFI London Film Festival. It was released earlier this year in the USA. It was released in the UK and Ireland last Friday in cinemas and on streaming services. It will be released in Germany on January 25th 2018. The film has a running time of 96 minutes and is rated 15 for strong sex, nudity, drug misuse and language. 

LADY BIRD - BFI London Film Festival 2017 - Day 11

LADY BIRD is a funny, moving, beautifully observed relationship drama centring around the teenage girl of the title.  It's an assured directorial debut from writer-actor Greta Gerwig (MISTRESS AMERICA) and features another impressive performance from Saoirse Ronan (ON CHESIL BEACH) in the lead role, fearlessly matched by Laurie Metcalf (ROSEANNE) as her mother.  This relationship is at the heart of the film, with its class-frustrations echoed in Lady Bird's relationship with her long-time best friend.  To be sure, we also see the 17 year old navigate relationships with boyfriends too, but these aren't at the heart of the film

Christine McPherson is a quirky, smart but frustrated teenager who adopts the Lady Bird persona to mark herself as different from the bland Sacramento society in which she lives.  She dreams of moving to New York and attending a liberal arts college where she'll find people with interests similar to her own. The central tragedy of this film is that she takes that frustration out on those who love her the most, principally her mother Marion.  Marion is another strong personality, and as much as she loves her daughter, she's frustrated that Christine doesn't appreciate what her parents have sacrificed to put her through private school.  Marion is also deeply hurt when she discovers that Christine has been mocking their house as being "on the wrong side of the tracks" because it doesn't live up to the flashier houses that some of her friends live in.  This relationship is at the very heart of the film and is so relatable and brilliantly observed that it's worth watching the film for that alone.

But there's so much more to admire in this film. Christine is oblivious to the fact that her father (a beautifully tender performance from Tracy Letts) has lost his job.  And although he's not the centre of the film there's such humanity in seeing this highly qualified man having to apply for the same graduate entry jobs that his also over-qualified son is applying for.  He seems to be a truly selfless and decent man, and reminded me a lot of Willem Dafoe's character in THE FLORIDA PROJECT.  I also loved the relationship between Christine and her childhood best friend - and the way Christine ditches her for a more glamorous set to attract a new boyfriend.  It's a betrayal and reconciliation we've seen a million times in teen comedies, but so much more authentic and real here.  Finally, I loved the way Gerwig handled Christine's love life, and a particularly touching scene between Ronan and her boyfriend played by Lucas Hedges (MANCHESTER BY THE SEA). My only minor criticism of the film is that I wanted to see more of that relationship after that scene - it felt strange to me that it didn't continue.

Overall, this is a truly impressive directorial debut from one of the most original and intelligent voices in cinema.  I really admire Gerwig's mission to give us something that feels more authentic than typical coming of age dramas, and her willingness to show life as it is - financial struggles, selfishness, arguments, even Christine's deliberate acne - the movie we LIVE rather than the movie that plays in our head, as she said in the post-film Q&A. 

LADY BIRD has a running time of 94 minutes and is rated 15 for very strong language  and brief strong nudity. LADY BIRD played Telluride, Toronto and London 2017. It will be released in the USA on November 3rd, in the UK on December 29th, and in Spain on May 4th 2018. The film has a running time of 93 minutes.

SICILIAN GHOST STORY - BFI LFF 2017 Preview

SICILIAN GHOST STORY is a slow-burn drama that tells the tale of a mafia abduction in Sicily from the perspective of the teenage girl who had a crush on its victim. Descriptions of the film often play up the movie's fantasy elements but I found this to be a canard.  This is fundamentally a beautifully observed and melancholy tale of thwarted love and societal injustice. The fantasy elements, such as they are, are lightly handled and can be read as mere imagination and intuition.

The story takes place in a Sicilian hilltown amid verdant fairytale woods rather than in the dusty, oppressive Sicily of the Godfather films.  In a sunlit, giddy opening, our heroine Luna (Julia Jedlikowska) follows the kind, beautiful Giuseppe (Gaetano Fernandez) into the woods, and like any knight in shining armour, he saves her from a rabid dog. She then plucks up the courage to give him her love letter, and revels in this success that night by sending signals by torchlight to her best friend Loredana (Corinne Musallari).  But the next day at school, Giuseppe is nowhere to be seen, and Luna simply can't accept her parents and teachers explanations that he's sick or gone away.  The societal silence around his kidnapping, punishing his father for becoming an informant, is claustrophobic and brings Luna to the edge of madness. She cannot fathom why no-one will help her find her beloved when he can only be being held in the surrounding villages. Memories of their brief time together draw her back to the woods, and to the makeshift house where he is being held.  Her mother approximates a kind of buttoned up Mrs Danvers with her cool hardness and the owls are not what they seem. And all the time, poor Giuseppe is still imprisoned, clinging onto Luna's love letter but ever weaker and more apathetic.

The film works beautifully as an allegory of the impossibility of innocence in a corrupt world. Even outside of the main story, we see Loredana beaten by her father so much that she doesn't even seem to be bothered by it any more. At any rate, it gives her a magnificent toughness that puts her in a class of Badass Movie Best Friends all of her own.  But the real victory of the film is to be unflinching in its depiction of violence but also to give us some room for hope without seeming forced or simplistic.  After 90 minutes of very slow action, and an ending that I thought was all its own, the  movie continued and I was rather glad it did. It's also beautifully shot by Luca Bigazzi (YOUTH) and depicts a Sicily quite unlike that we have on screen before.

SICILIAN GHOST STORY played Cannes 2017. It was released in Italy earlier this year. It goes on release in France on November 15th and in Argentina on December 7th. Tickets are still available to see it at the BFI London Film Festival 2017.

MISTRESS AMERICA

Greta Gerwig - the writer and star of MISTRESS AMERICA - has fashioned a career as a writer and actress playing variations on a certain theme.  In we start with Whit Stillman's fantastic DAMSELS IN DISTRESS, Gerwig played a character called Violet that should've been insufferable - an arrogant, supremely confidence college student intent on making everybody's life better with her brand of wisdom. And yet there was something so knowingly absurd about her confidence that she became endearing, and I adored the movie.  Then we got FRANCES HA,  directed by Noah Baumbach, where Gerwig played a similarly eccentric twenty-something girl, but this time so indulged and flaky that I found her irritating beyond endurance.  Now we get Gerwig as Brooke Cardinas, the heroine of MISTRESS AMERICA, also directed by Baumbach.  She combines the arrogance of Violet with the flakiness and self-delusion of Frances, but somehow the result is a perfectly nuanced and captivating character, and a movie of real substance as well as wit.

WHO KILLED NELSON NUTMEG? - BFI London Film Festival 2015 - Day Four

WHO KILLED NELSON NUTMEG is a delightful, witty children's movie in the best tradition of Scooby Doo and The Famous Five.  Five intrepid friends gather to investigate the mysterious disappearance of the original Nelson Nutmeg - mascot at their summer camp.  As is typically the case, that's only part of a wider mystery that the pesky kids uncover! Moreover, we have the suspicious baddie in the form of thuggish Mr Slug, and Bonnie Wright aka Mrs Harry Potter enjoying a turn as the apparently diabolical new camp manager Diane.  The kids themselves have the right balance of age and youth, cynicism and romanticism, as we'd expect in such an adventure. I like that the writers have given us an age range for pre-teen to teenager so that we can explore first crushes, and gatecrashing your first disco as well as still believing in the power of the imagination. The performances of the five lead children are universally good and while the dialogue can be a little wooden at times, it's all about remembering your own youth and how we all used to go on these insane madcap adventures over the slightest of things.  And it's a melancholy tale about growing up - not just for the kids but the adults too.  

INSIDE OUT

INSIDE OUT is the phenomenally successful new Pixar movie from the directors of two films I really adored - UP and RATATOUILLE.  It's smart, witty and beautifully imagined and rendered. But for some reason it just didn't connect with me on an emotional level. In fact, two days after seeing it, the thing I remember most about my movie watching experience was the Pixar short film, LAVA, that preceded the feature. I can still sing that song and feel moved by the plight of the little volcano hoping for love.  INSIDE OUT was clever, and pretty, but I'm just not sure it's going to stay with me in that way.

This is often the problem with high concept film. INSIDE OUT posits a world in which our emotions are neatly split into five key feelings, and whichever of these controls our mood generates our memories and our feelings.  So, at first glance, our protagonist is an eleven year old girl called Riley, struggling with moving across country with her family, feeling pressured to keep a happy face for her stressed out dad, but inwardly hating it all.  But the real star of the show is Riley's emotion, Joy, played by Amy Poehler (PARKS & RECREATION).  Joy has, up to this point, been largely in charge of Riley's emotions resulting in lots of happy memories.  And Joy ascribes part of her success to keeping Sadness (THE OFFICE's Phyllis Smith) firmly off the controls.  So the coming of age journey is not really for Riley but for Joy, as she learns that everyone needs a little sadness to make the happier times happy by contrast. And sometimes a good cry, admitting your suffering, allows others to reach out to you and for you to resolve, rather than smother, your issues.  So in that sense, this is a radical children's movie, for while it still gives us a happy ending, that happiness is conditional on admitting that it's okay to be sad.

BOYHOOD

You can listen to a podcast review of this film here, or by subscribing to Bina007 Movie Reviews in iTunes:

In 2002, Richard Linklater (BEFORE SUNRISE) cast a six year old boy called Ellar Coltrane to play a kid called Mason, who lives with his sister Sam (Lorelai Linklater) and his single-mom (Patricia Arquette). He filmed the kids hanging out with their charismatic but clearly immature father (Ethan Hawke), cycling round their neighbourhood and acting out when their mom wants to move back home and go back to college.  Six years later and Linklater took up the project again.  The kids are dealing with life with a new stepfather, stepbrother and stepsister. Their mum has gone to college and gotten her career back on track, but the marriage is bad and their father is still a distant presence.  The difficulty of dealing with authority and life's sudden changes plays itself out.  The kids have an attitude because they can't see the full picture.  Fast forward another six years, and Sam has gone to college, and young Mason is on the verge of leaving. He's grown up now, but still growing - dating, excited and scared at the new life he's about to embark upon, sensitive and wise but still vulnerable and changeable.   Meanwhile, his dad has remarried and grown up and his mum has realised she's an empty nester.

LIFE PARTNERS

LIFE PARTNERS is a stealth movie. It starts off so quiet and banal and forgettable and then suddenly you realise you are engrossed in the characters' lives and when they get into arguments they feel lifted from your reality. This is the kind of observational dramedy that is harder to pull off - to truly make authentic - than it seems.  Accordingly, it probably should've gotten more attention than it did.  

Leighton Meester (Gossip Girl) starts as a twenty-nine year old girl struggle to reconcile herself to the fact that she hates her life. A dull secretarial job was meant to compensate for writing music, but she never really did that, and now she's just stick with no money, no idea of what to do with her life, and to cap it all, a best friend who is no longer available to her.  Why? Because that best friend Paige (Gillian Jacobs) has started her first serious relationship.  Paige wants good things for Sasha but mistakes her relationship misfires for a genuine career crisis - something which her new boyfriend actually gets.  

It feels so slight to say that this is a movie about two best friends growing up and growing apart before realising that their different life choices are okay.  But this is some of the most real stuff I've seen depicting twenty-something female friendship. It's also refreshing to see a lesbian character as the lead, and that her sexuality isn't the focus of the film. Yes, she's flaky at relationships but it accepts Sasha for who she is.  More films should do that. So kudos to director and writer Susanna Fogel & Joni Lefkowitz.  Can't wait to see what they do next.

LIFE PARTNERS has a running time of 93 minutes and is rated R. The movie played Tribeca 2014 and is now available on streaming services.

WE ARE THE BEST - a touching coming-of-age comedy

WE ARE THE BEST is an absolute joy! A funny, moving, authentic look at life as a young teenage girl rebelling against everything, no-one taking you seriously, and getting your heart broken. Its bittersweet tone and effortless depiction of close female friendship reminded me of GHOST WORLD - also based on a graphic novel - although the tone is less nihilistic than that. In fact, it felt closer to the delightful SON OF RAMBOW, showing just how much can be achieved by young naive kids who just don't know any better.

The story begins with a fight to control noise.  Bobo and Els are two teen punks in early 80s Sweden, constantly trying to block out the sounds of their fighting or partying loving but ultimately lackadaisical parents.  They try to hide out at their local youth club but under sound-attack from a shitty amateur prog-rock band they decide to book out the rehearsal space and, hey!, why not start a punk band!  This is, of course, the perfect idea because the key point of punk is that you didn't have to play, or play well, to participate. It was an inherently amateur concept. That said, when they see geeky Hedwig play classical guitar at a school concert, they realise they need her musical stylings and bring her into their group.  What follows is your classic SCHOOL OF ROCK style young kids form a band, go up against the prejudices of the community, and put on an awesome show.

That all sounds pretty hackneyed but the focus of this film isn't really on practice montages and winning some concert competition, but just on spending time with these friends and seeing how they interact.  I absolutely adored the feisty Klara with her boundless enthusiasm, absolute conviction and hilarious appropriation of adult terms.  Thoughtful introspective Bobo is something of an enigma, but the heart of the film - she's the one who perceives that geeky Hedwig might not want her hair shaved into a Mahican.  

A lot of the hilarity comes from seeing these guys write rebellious songs about hating their PE teacher, or debating whether God is a Fascist in these ponderous earnest tones. But what elevates this movie into something better and more worthwhile is the delicate way in which Lukas Moodysson essays the kids' relationships with their parents and the shifting loyalties between each other.  It's so rare to see childhood friendship depicted on screen with anything like authenticity - instead we just get those awful generic high school movies - and that makes WE ARE THE BEST all the more welcome.

Just one final note, for those of you familiar with Swedish auteur, Lukas Moodysson's previous films - the harrowing, uncompromising  LILYA 4-EVER and the more tedious but earnest MAMMOTH - don't be surprised when you find that WE ARE THE BEST is utterly different in tone and concern, and that the only commonality is the immediacy of the dogma-lite shooting style.

WE ARE THE BEST has a running time of 102 minutes and is rated 15 in the UK for very strong language. 

WE ARE THE BEST played Venice, Toronto and London 2013. It was released last year in Sweden, Iceland, Spain, Norway and Finland and it was released earlier this month in the Netherlands and Estonia. It will be released on April 18th in the UK and Ireland. 

THE SPECTACULAR NOW - LFF 2013 - Day Three

Director James Ponsoldt's THE SPECTACULAR NOW starts with such verve and pace and authentic humour that it feels almost like a great John Hughes teen comedy.  In fact, the lead actor, Miles Teller (RABBIT HOLE), seems to be channelling a young John Cusack with his portrayal of charming, fun-loving but troubled teen Sutter  - a kid who thinks he's the life of the party but is really just a nascent alcoholic who's letting his issues with his absent father cloud his relationship with his well-meaning but distant mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and his sweet new girlfriend Aimee (Shaileene Woodley - THE DESCENDANTS). The first half of the film stays firmly in that John Hughes vein, despite the growing unease about the amount of drinking Sutter does, and how in dating Sutter, Aimee starts sipping from a hipflask too. But we're still just in the mode of looking at a meet-cute, an odd-couple dating story, with wryly observed tales of still being drawn to your ex-girlfriend, and Prom. 

But then something happens about half-way through the film that totally undoes its balance.  The lovely Aimee persuades Sutter to find his father, and casting Kyle Chandler against type, we can a lovable selfish drunk, who makes Sutter so self-loathing that he puts Aimee and himself in danger.  I won't say more for fear of spoiling the film, but it really bothered me that there were no consequences - whether emotional or external - to these events.  Worse than that, it broke that feeling of integrity and authenticity to the movie, and I was progressively less and less engaged with how it all worked out. I'm not sure whether that sharp right turn into nonsense is the fault of the original author, Tim Tharp, or the screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H Weber (500 DAYS OF SUMMER). Either way, it's a real shame because it undercuts the great work done in the movie's first half. 

THE SPECTACULAR NOW has a running time of X and is rated R

THE SPECTACULAR NOW played Sundance, where it received the Special Jury Prize for Acting, SXSW and London 2013. It opened in the USA and Canada earlier this year and will be released in Australia on December 5th.

HOW I LIVE NOW

HOW I LIVE NOW is a deeply odd film - half teen angst romance, half dystopian road movie.  In the first half, precocious teen actress Saoirse Ronan (ATONEMENT) plays the rebellious American teen Daisy who is shipped by her uncaring father to stay with her country bumpkin cousins in England.  At first, she's cool and aloof but is soon won over by their ramshackle charm - especially that of the brooding eldest son (and her first cousin) Edmond, played by George Mackay (SUNSHINE ON LEITH).  The backdrop to this sunkissed coming-of-age summer is an impending war.  What I really like is that because these kids are in the country, rather than in some sprawling urban metropolis, we're not seeing those standard shots of terrorist bombs in London. Rather, we're seeing fighter jets fly over head and small kids say, "wow, that's cool" before running off to a picnic.  

Once the war comes, the surrounding topsy-turviness allows Daisy and Edmond to have a taboo relationship and to commit, in their narcissistic teen angst, to make their way back to the farm if they are split up, which naturally they soon are.  What then follows is a kind of road movie through wartorn Britain, where we see the standard, rather lazy shots of cars overturned on motorways, and troops rounding up civilians.  There are hints at how the terrorists have brought England to its knees - and apparently much of Europe too - by poisoning the water supply, for instance.

Each part of the movie worked well enough on its own terms.  Ronan is a good enough actress to bring greater authenticity to the love story than the kids in TWILIGHT ever did.  And I liked the hints and glimpses of the dystopian England and found them to be truly sinister.  I even liked the fact that director Kevin Macdonald was allowing his heroine to be spiky and selfish rather than an instant maternal figure for her little cousin.  But the two halves of the film just didn't cohere.  And despite some strikingly gruesome visuals, I never felt the heroine was in genuine peril - or at least enough peril to make the final road movie genuinely thrilling.

All in all, a rather disappointing film, then - bulging with interesting ideas but lacking in follow through. 

An audio review of this movie is available below:

HOW I LIVE NOW has a running time of 101 minutes and is rated 15 in the UK. It played the Toronto Film Festival in 2013 and is currently on release in the UK, Ireland and Hungary. It will be released in the USA and Russia on November 8th, in Greece on November 14th and in France on February 19th. 

THE WAY WAY BACK

You can listen a podcast review of THE WAY WAY BACK here, or subscribe to Bina007 Movie Reviews in iTunes.

THE WAY WAY BACK is a curious film - often lacking in pace, often obvious in its plot choices, with a style of humour that barely breaks in to laugh-out-loud comedy.  And yet... and yet... there's something about its loveable quirky homespun style that is memorable and enjoyable.

The movie is a classic teenage coming-of-age story set in a contemporary east coast holiday resort that has a ramshackle nostalgic early 80s air.  The teenager in question is a kid called Duncan (Liam James) whose vulnerable and easily led mother Pam (Toni Colette) is dating a passive-aggressive philandering slick-talker called Trent (Steve Carell). Hang-dog, ignored or insulted, he escapes the rather reckless and juvenile adults who are supposed to be supervising him, and wends his way to a ageing, crusty, old school waterpark, where he finds a new kind of family - the kind that boosts your confidence, brings you new opportunities and broadens your horizons.  The employees are led by the frustratingly youthful cool boss Owen (Sam Rockwell).  

There's a lot to love in this tale and it's usually in the unspoken margins of the film.  The on-off romance between Owen and Caitlin (Maya Rudolph) that becomes apparent, in all its nuances, in the spaces between the script.  The joy of seeing Steve Carell playing a properly nasty character.  The nostalgic feel of the production design.  And there's just enough dark backing to the mirror to keep the film sharp.  The holiday escapism of the adults really does have damaging consequences - both for them and their kids.  And there's a real truth to the desperation and vulnerability of the divorced women - played for laughs by a deliciously blowsy drunk Allison Janney, and dramatically by Toni Colette.  So, for all its predictability, kudos to directors Nat Axon and Jim Rash (who wrote THE DESCENDENTS) for pulling it together. 

THE WAY WAY BACK has a running time of 103 minutes and is rated PG-13.

THE WAY WAY BACK played Sundance 2013 and was released earlier this year in the USA, Canada, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Israel, New Zealand, Finland, the UK and Ireland. It opens on September 12th in Singapore, on October 2nd in Belgium, on October 3rd in the Netherlands, on October 24th in Germany, on November 15th in Spain, on November 21st in Argentina, on November 27th in France and on December 5th in Italy.

KICK-ASS 2

You can listen to a podcast review of this film by clicking here, or by subscribing in iTunes.

KICK-ASS 2 is a movie about two kids who happened to be masked vigilantes, working out whether to turn their backs on a life of danger and try to be "normal". In other words, should they stop subverting justice, stop swearing and stop beating people up?  The movie itself happens to be grappling with exactly the same problem.  And while writer-director Jeff Wadlow has his hero and heroine throw off the shackles of society and embrace their destiny, he himself has the balls of a little girl - well, any little girl except Hit Girl.  Wadlow chokes, giving us the same egregious violence and swearing as the original, but couching every single scene with heavy-handed parental guidance, quite literally giving Hitgirl a swear jar. 

The resulting film is not without its fun.  I had a good enough time during its 100 minute run-time. I loved Chloe Moretz as Mindy, struggling with the Mean Girls at school, and spoofing one of my favourite teen movies, FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF.  She steals the show as the teenage girl who gets her first crush, goes on her first date, and puts the mean girls in their place.  Brilliant!  I even liked the nascent romance between Aaron Taylor-Johnson's Kick-Ass and Night-Bitch.  There was a little dust in the theatre when Dave/Kick-Ass faces the consequences of his continued vigilante activity, and I really do want to see what happens to Dave and Mindy in the inevitable threequel.

But most of the rest of the movie falls flat. Ser Jorah Mormont looks completely out of place - far too good/serious a performance - as Chris/Red Mist/The Motherf***er's uncle.  By contrast, Jim Carrey is utterly anonymous as Colonel Star-and-Stripes. In fact, I literally forgot he was in the movie.  And the subversive swearing just seemed gratuitous once it lost its shock value from the first film.  

So, overall, a mixed experience.  KICK-ASS is what it is. It needs to stop doubting itself, and pandering to its critics, and just revel in its gonzo madness. Bringing back the original director, Matthew Vaughn, would be a good start. 

KICK-ASS 2 has a running time of 103 minutes. It is rated R in the USA, and somewhat generously, 15 in the UK for strong bloody violence, sex references and very strong language.

KICK-ASS 2 is on release in the UK, USA, Ireland, the Philippines, Austria, Germany, Hong Kong, Israel, Italy, Switzerland, Canada, Cyprus, Finland, India, Latvia, Mexico, Romania, Sweden and Turkey. It opens on August 21st in Belgium and France; on August 22nd in Australia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, the Netherlands, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia and Thailand; on August 23rd in Estonia, Iceland, Norway, Poland and Taiwan; and on August 29th in Denmark, Malaysia and Portugal; and on August 30th in Spain and Lithuania. It opens on September 5th in Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Russia, Serbia, Ukraine and the UAE. It opens on September 11th in Egypt; on September 12th in Croatia; on September 13th in Indonesia and on September 27th in Panama and South Africa. It opens on October 4th in Colombia; on October 9th in South Korea; on October 10th in Argentina and Chile; on October 17th in Peru and on October 18th in Brazil.