ONE OF THEM DAYS****

There aren't enough genuinely funny, genuinely heartwarming buddy comedies out there, let alone buddy comedies starring black women. So it's a pleasure to report that ONE OF THEM DAYS, directed by Lawrence Lamont and penned by Insecure's Syreeta Singleton, is a really good time. It came out almost a year ago and I am utterly unsurprised that it was such a commercial hit and that it's getting a sequel. I am equally unsurprised that it has been nominated for Independent Spirit awards. 

The film stars Keke Palmer (HUSTLERS) as Dreux, a hard-working fast-food worker applying to become a franchise manager. She lives with her best friend Alyssa, a talented but uncompromising artist played by the musician SZA in her screen debut.  The plot is set in motion when the two girls need to make their rent by 6pm to avoid being evicted, because Alyssa's feckless boyfriend squandered the money.  Added to this, they need to get Dreux to her interview and avoid a local gangster who thinks they nicked his rare kicks. So the movie is set up as a zany caper full of madcap adventures and setbacks and quirky characters. My favourite of these are the loan-shark played by Larry David's Curb nemesis Keyla Monterroso Mejia and the madman standing outside her loan-shop called Lucky. Everything resolves beautifully, as we would expect, thanks partly to a white girl ex machina played with disarming earnestness by Euphoria's Maude Apatow. 

This film has a lot to say about how this economy is screwing over Gen Z - about housing unaffordability, gentrification, unequal opportunities, and the prison system of credit scores.  But it does so with gusto and fun and I really found myself rooting for, and believing in, the female characters. I will definitely be watching the sequel.

ONE OF THEM DAYS has a running time of 97 minutes and is rated R. It was released last winter.

THE SON AND THE SEA**** - BFI LFF 2025 Preview

Writer-director Stroma Cairns' feature directorial debut, THE SON AND THE SEA is a beautifully rendered story of four young British men trying to find their place in the world. The film stars the director's brother, and debut actor, Jonah West as Jonah, a frustrated twentysomething man trapped in the nihilistic London party scene. He decides to take a train to a coastal northern Scottish town to visit his ailing great-aunt, now in a dementia-care nursing home. His best mate Lee (Stanley Brock) tags along but their relationship is one of alternative laughs and bickering as Lee tells Jonah he needs to stop making excuses and sort himself out. Once they get to Scotland, Jonah and Lee meet two more young men: Charlie and feckless twin brother Lee (Connor and Luke Tompkins). Both have hearing disabilities but it's great to see this treated in a very straightforward way rather than as a plot device. 

Stroma Cairns captures something really beautiful and perceptive about how young men are with each other and the drifting, aimless vulnerability of not having a plan for your life. It's a patient film that watches them derp around but also face moments of real crisis, lensed beautifully by DP Ruben Woodin Dechamps, with a banging soundtrack from Toydrum (Slow Horses).

THE SON AND THE SEA has a running time of 102 minutes. It played Toronto and will play the BFI London Film Festival 2025.

THE TRAVELERS aka LES VOYAGEURS***** - BFI London Film Festival 2025 - Preview

In a world where illegal immigration dominates the political agenda in almost every developed market - where undocumented migrants are in fear of being taken off the streets in America - and where even in multicultural London, lamp-posts are draped in St. George's flags - Cameroonian director David Bingong has made a film that drips with empathy, insight, and even joy. I challenge anyone to watch it and not feel greater empathy and even admiration for the young men who risk their lives, fully cognisant of the risks, in order to make it in Europe and send money back home.

THE TRAVELERS is David Bingong's own journey from Cameroon to the Northern coast of Africa, across the sea to Spain.  He made the journey just over a decade ago and documents it with his handheld camera.  He is with a group of twenty or so twenty-something Cameroonians who have to sleep rough in the forest, and then take shelter in safe houses and tents where they find them. At one point we watch them inflate a perilously flimsy dingy for the crossing. It was so flimsy at first I thought they were inflating a mattress for the night.  They worry about nature, the tides, the weather. They worry about the police and army who could shoot them. They face prejudice from the Arab-Africans in the North let alone the Europeans when they land. But throughout it all, this band of travellers are in buoyant spirits, and express their hopes, dreams and fears through a cappella singing.  These songs are infectious and wondrous, but are sharply juxtaposed with the reality of the journey.  One smash-cuts to the news that a group that made the journey ahead of them has all been shot in the water.

I am no bleeding-heart liberal: this blog used to be called "Movie Reviews For Greedy Capitalist Bastards".  But my word, to spend time with these young men is to admire their courage, pluck and entrepreneurial flair. I cannot help but think that if young people with these minerals want to come and enrich our countries, why wouldn't we make an easier path for them?  

I truly hope this doc gets wide distribution. I will not forget its "characters" - or that they are real men, their stories and their drive.  It's so easy to see numbers and get scared. Far harder to see actual human beings and make those same judgments. This is film-making at its most powerful and urgent.

THE TRAVELERS has a running time of 60 minutes. It is playing at the BFI London Film Festival but both screenings are sold out.

SLY LIVES! AKA THE BURDEN OF BLACK GENIUS*****

Questlove returns to our screens with another banging music doc, and the second this month, with his investigation of the genius that is Sly Stone.  We begin in the 60s in the Bay Area where this gangly multi-talented multi-instrumentalist is DJ'ing across genre-lines. Pretty soon Sly forms a band that will cross colour and gender-lines and make some of the most iconic funk tracks of the late 60s and early 70s. These are tracks that suffused by childhood on my parents' vinyl and then dominated the airwaves when sampled by the artists who decorated our walls and filled our bedrooms in the 80s - from Prince to Public Enemy.

Musical talent from Andre 3000 to Chaka Khan to Nile Rodgers to Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis are on hand to tell us just why Sly and the Family Stone's tracks were so gripping and so continuously influential. They are interspersed with archive footage of the band rehearsing and playing, and contemporaneous interviews with Sly. We see a man who is evidently a musical genius and demanding of his collaborators.   A man whose progressive message and musical style were overtaken when the 70s turned bad.  And a man who ultimately wasted his talent on decades of drug abuse.  He could have become an influential producer himself - like Nile Rodgers. 

Questlove's message is ultimately hopeful. Sly Lives! through every artist influenced by him today.  But I wasn't convinced by his thesis that there is something uniquely difficult and burdensome about black genius. The film argues that black artists are disposable commodities for a cruel entertainment industry and still predominantly white audience.  But having just watched heartbreaking documentaries about Boyzone and Robbie Williams (and I am NOT claiming equivalence of genius), I think the perils and pitfalls and exploitation are endemic in the industry no matter the colour of the artist.

SLY LIVES! AKA THE BURDEN OF BLACK GENIUS has a running time of 112 minutes. It was released on Hulu earlier this week.

ELTON JOHN: NEVER TOO LATE** - BFI London Film Festival 2024 - Day 2

I was desperately disappointed by this new documentary by the iconic R J Cutler (BILLIE EILISH: THE WORLD'S A LITTLE BLURRY) and Elton's husband David Furnish. The framing device is Elton preparing for his final American gig at Dodger Stadium, which then allows Elton to take us back to the height of his fame and his epic 1975 Dodger Stadium gigs. Don't get me wrong. Elton is an astoundingly good musician and performer and so charmingly candid about his life that he makes for an interesting subject. The problem is that there wasn't anything here that hadn't already been explored in the wonderfully entertaining and deeply moving ROCKETMAN. In that film we get the suburban childhood and gigging, the rebellion into rock and roll, the insecurity over appearance, the confusion over sexuality, the drug addiction and domestic abuse. I guess what we get here is the framing device - the miraculous recovery and fulfilled family life - but unfortunately that's not where the focus really is.  The balance is far more to the looking back to the career. As a result, this doc just felt a bit redundant.

ELTON JOHN: NEVER TOO LATE is rated PG-13. It played Toronto and London 2024 and was released on November 15th on Disney plus.

CATCHING FIRE: THE STORY OF ANITA PALLENBERG***** - BFI London Film Festival 2023 - Preview

The more docs I watch about the supposedly glamorous sex drugs and rock'n'roll 60s and 70s the more dark and toxic I realise it actually was. CATCHING FIRE: THE STORY OF ANITA PALLENBERG does nothing to over-turn that opinion, but impresses with its crisp well-organised construction, its access to key players, and its superb use of Pallenberg's unpublished memoirs and previously unseen home video footage. All of these give the film an intimacy and understanding of what it must have been like to be at the centre of the Rolling Stones whirlwind.

Directors Svetlana Zill and Alexis Bloom try hard to make the case that Italian-born German model and actress Anita Pallenerg was worthy of notice in her own right. They speak to her charisma, her intelligence, her style, and the fact that she might have been a great actress.  Kate Moss speaks of her as the original Boho Rock Chick.  I was not convinced.  Sure, with her European upbringing and language skills, Anita was streets ahead of the Rolling Stones in style and confidence, and contributed to THEIR success, but what was actually hers? Do we really get a feel for her acting talent from a cameo in BARBARELLA or her role in PERFORMANCE? If nothing else those roles show how exploitative that era was. Roger Vadim notoriously abused his wife Jane Fonda in their relationship and the latter film was a vehicle for Mick Jagger who Anita inevitably slept with. And in the most telling moment of all, the radical revolutionary Stones were actually good old fashioned patriarchal misogynists - or at least Keith Richards was - making Anita give up her acting when they got together. So, from my perspective, while the film wants us to think of Anita as this strong, smart, inspirational woman, she actually comes across as yet another victim of men who wanted her, and her addictions.

The film opens with a young Anita falling into the orbit of the neo-famous Stones. She starts dating Brian Jones, but his addiction spins out of control and she ends up as physically abused carer, falling into addiction herself to cope. Did we know he was physically abusive before this doc? Listening to Scarlett Johansson's emotionally affecting reading of Anita's unpublished memoirs gives us a hitherto unknown insight into how horrific that time was for Anita. It broke my heart. We now know that she didn't so much jump from Brian to Keith Richards out of love, or lust, but as a means of self-protection.

And so we come to the period when the Stones were on the run, threatened with prosecution for drug use. They start recording Exile on Main Street in a French mansion that attracts free-loaders and junkies. Keith and Anita are using heavily despite the fact that they now have a young son, Marlon.  By the time they get to Switzerland, they also have a daughter, Angela, and in the words of a neighbour, interviewed here, Marlon though a toddler, is basically the man of the house.  At this level of neglect, it becomes abuse, and it speaks volumes to the character of Marlon and Angela that they speak of their mother with compassion and understanding.  It's also telling they refer to her as "Anita" rather than "mum".

The most heartbreaking moment of the film is when Keith and Anita's third child, Tara, dies of what we would now understand to be SIDS. She questions if she could have done more if sober. He goes on stage that night, weirdly numb, but in his explanation to stop him shooting himself. They seem to love their kids, but they simply are too high to be parents. 

Eventually they split, she gets sober, and has a second life away from the shadow of the Stones, taking a degree, modelling, acting again. She seems happy. In a sense it becomes a story of survival and reinvention - maybe discovering who she really was all along.  But one really thinks about those wasted years of addiction and oppression, of not working as an actor because Keith didn't let her, of basically running a flophouse for junkies in France.  You can only describe it as tragic. 

CATCHING FIRE: THE STORY OF ANITA PALLENBERG has a running time of 110 minutes. It played Cannes 2023 and will play the BFI London Film Festival. 

LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT**

The really annoying millennial assistant from White Lotus season 2 (Haley Lu Richardson) and Eastenders' Peter Beale (Ben Hardy) fall in love at first sight at a New York airport lounge. She's going to London for her father's second marriage, he's going to a living memorial for his dying mother.  Back in London, she decides to crash the aforementioned memorial and then he follows her to the wedding reception and all's well that ends well. 

Vanessa Caswill directs her debut feature with good pace but DP Luke Bryant's coral palette feels cloying.  Katie Lovejoy's script based on Jennifer E Smith's novel is similarly grating thanks to a condescending and unnecessary voiceover from a recurring character played by Jameela Jamil. The only real reason to watch this film - and a star each for both - is the genuinely moving love story between the English boy's parents. Dexter Fletcher and Sally Phillips play thespians who have lived a wonderful life together, thwarted by her now dying of cancer.  The living memorial is truly emotional, and I must admit I shed a tear.  THAT - not to the stupid meet cute between the kids - is the heart of the story, and the only thing in this film worth a damn.

LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT has a running time of 90 minutes, is rated PG-13, and is on global release on Netflix.

SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL****

With SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL, director Yuval Adler (THE SECRETS WE KEEP) teams up with debut feature writer Luke Paradise and cinematographer Steven Holleran to create a stylish, unabashedly nasty, almost Grindhouse thriller. I suspect your tolerance for the film is going to be dependent on how far you enjoy Nic Cage being insane, and whether you enjoy a pastiche of Tarantino pastiching the ultraviolet revenge thriller genre. But for me, this taut 90 minute two-hander is impressive in its commitment to a simple, brutal, story.

The film opens with Joel Kinnaman's uber driver going to see his pregnant wife give birth, driving through the dark neon-lit streets of off-strip Vegas. Barely a beat passes and he is carjacked by Nic Cage with luminous red hair and a large gun.  What then transpires is a talky, occasionally hilarious, sinister, twisty thriller. The title of the film is some kind of hint, but who really is the devil?  We get two superb set-pieces. The first, a fantastic diner scene that can only be described as Peak Cage.  The second, an incredibly stylish shoot out that delivers smoky burnt orange skies and a hellscape that felt supernatural and sinister in a way that deeply impressed me.

This is a small low/no release film that will really repay your efforts in seeking it out.

SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL has a running time of 90 minutes and is rated R. It opened in the USA in late July and is now available to stream on demand in the UK.

ROCKY AUR RANI KI PREM KAHANI*****

ROCKY AUR RANI KI PREM KAHANI (Rocky and Rani's love story) is everything we expect from a Karan Johar film. It's a multi-generational family dramedy with broad laughs, beautiful clothes, wonderful music, and moments that genuinely make you cry.  But more than that, this is a movie that is daring in its surface message of progressive inclusion, and even more radical in its meta-message of queer acceptance. 

On the surface, this is a typical Karan Johar multi-generational dramedy. Rocky Randhawa (Ranveer Singh) is the scion of an incredibly wealthy Delhi family that is traditional and Punjabi (North Indian). He is a flamboyant, luxury-label obsessed, gym-obsessive who speaks broken English, and whose father bribed his teachers for his grades. The family is run by the frighteningly strict matriarch Dhanlaxmi (Jaya Bachchan) and her equally fearsome son Tijori (Aamir Bashir). Tijori's wife Poonam (Kshitee Jog) is servile and their daughter Gayatri (Anjali Anand) is mocked for being overweight. 

Contrast this to Rani Chatterjee (Alia Bhatt), a deeply intellectual, American-educated news-anchor whose Bengali family are cultured, bohemian and socially progressive.  Her mother, Anjali (Churni Ganguly), is the breadwinner and a university professor. Her father Chandan (Tota Roy Chowdhury) is a male classical Indian khatak dancer.  Her grandma Jamini (Shabana Azmi) recites poetry at recitals in their house. They are so progressive that her father can happily discuss why Rani's relationship with Shomen broke up - he was a bad lover. 

Chance brings Rocky and Rani together. Rocky's beloved grandfather (Dharmendra) is suffering from dementia and Rocky thinks that if he tracks down the women he once had a love affair with - Jamini - this might trigger his memories.  At first Rani mocks Rocky for his ignorance and crass personality but they soon start their own affair, just as the grandparents are also reconnecting.  

The first half of the movie is basically the two realising that they do have genuine feelings for each other despite their cultural differences.  The second half of the movie sees them move in with each others' families to see if those differences can be overcome. Can the cultured Chatterjee's help Rocky become more progressive while also becoming less snobby themselves? And can the Rhandawas accept a daughter-in-law who speaks her mind, speaks English, and doesn't cover her head?

So far so rom-com with a side-order of melodrama. What elevates this film about the norm is its surface message of progressive inclusion.  Rocky gives a powerful speech about feeling judged by the Chatterjees for his poor English - a real issue in India given that most education is private and language can be interpreted as denoting class. Mrs Chatterjee gives an amazing speech about how Indian men use the language of "honour" to disguise misogyny, and that they might sing lewd songs about what's behind a sari blouse (chola ke peetchay kya hai?) but are too embarrassed to utter the word brassiere. Most powerfully, Mr Chatterjee gives an amazing speech describing his joy at dancing Khatak but also the incredible mockery he has faced his entire life because of it. 

I commend the (now) openly gay director Karan Johar for including this material. Even more, I commend Ranveer Singh for undercutting his hyper-masculine image and partnering with the supremely talented dancer Tota Roy Chowdhury in dancing the khatak inspired and iconic Dola Re song from Devdas.  Just as the evil matriarch mockingly laughs behind her scarf, I can imagine many viewers doing the same. For Ranveer Singh to show this kind of allyship is powerful and explodes the hypocrisy of an Indian Bollywood culture where it's totally fine and not at all queer for straight men to wax their chests and dance around to Bollywood songs, but heaven forfend they do classical dance, which is still seen as the province of women.

Indeed, one can take this radical message one step further. I would argue that ROCKY AUR RANI is really a film about questioning gender roles and sexuality, and for a less toxic masculinity. After all, when you think about it, we have come a loooong way from Johar's 2001 film KABHI KUSHI KABHI GUM. In this film both families are run by financially dominant women, with Jaya Bachchan taking the evil patriarch role that her real-life husband Amitabh took in KKKG. And in the current generation it is Rani and Rocky's sister Anjali that are smart and earning a living, while Rocky is just a nepo-baby.  

In both families the patriarchs are criticised for a love of the arts that is somehow seen as not masculine enough in India's toxic hyper-masculine culture. Rocky's grandfather was scorned by his wife Dhanlaxmi for his love of poetry, and she kept their son Tijori from spending time with his father for fear that somehow this anti-masculine behaviour might be contagious! By contrast, Rani's mother and grandmother have stood by her father and his love of the arts, but his father beat him for dancing.  Maybe it's because we all know Karan Johar's real-life journey of self- and societal acceptance that I think we can read this entire storyline of what it would be like to come out not as a khatak dancer but as a gay man in India today.

The resulting film is one that wears its politics as well as its heart on its sleeve, but remains entertaining throughout. Pritam's songs are fantastic and the choreography, outfits and sets are wonderfully over the top.  In particular, I love Manish Malhotra's brightly coloured chiffon saris for Alia Bhatt's Rani, and Ranveer Singh brilliantly self-parodies his real life image as a fashion obsessive as Rocky.  Karan Johar expertly uses the iconography of DEVDAS in his pivotal khatak scene, and my only real criticism is the heavy product placement for a certain music back catalogue's hardware in the grandparents' reminiscence montage. As for scene stealers - well it's lovely to have Dharmendra and Shabana Azmi back on the screen, although I could have done without Jaya Bachchan's two-dimensionally-written evil grandma.  I think it's actually Anjali Anand as Golu/Gayatri who really steals the show with a late movie singing scene that cracked me up. 

ROCKY AUR RANI KI PREM KAHANI has a running time of 168 minutes plus an interval. It is rated 12A for infrequent strong language, moderate innuendo, sexual violence references.

SQUARING THE CIRCLE (THE STORY OF HIPGNOSIS)****

Pity Gen Z for many things, but especially for never knowing the joys of vinyl - the waiting in line for new releases, the reverential first play, the endless mooning over the iconic cover art, interpreting and reinterpreting now iconic images.  Noel Gallagher sums it up best when he observes that his kid doesn't even know what cover art is, least of all why anyone would pay for it.  Thumbnail schnumbnail. But in the old days of prog rock when drum solos could last half an hour and record companies were allowing their stadium bands unprecedented freedom, the album cover was the art of the masses (again, aptly put by Noel).  And if album covers were art then Hipgnosis aka Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey "Po" Powell were the most influential artists of their time.  Almost every classic cover you know from Led Zip, the Floyd, 10CC, Peter Gabriel, and more besides were designed by this duo.  They seem to have fallen into the job by way of psychedelic drug-taking and happening to know Pink Floyd. It's the kind of weird whacky shit you can't make it: they amass their first lighting rig from Roman Polanski who was shooting REPULSION in the same apartment block. Drugs killed Bono and video killed Hipgnosis. There was a half-arsed attempt at becoming video artists but it broke up without record companies to under-write their (or specifically Storm's) excesses. But what a time they had.

Photographer and fiction feature director Anton Corbijn (CONTROL) tells this story in his trademark black and white, with only the album covers themselves in glorious colour.  The doc is centred around a candid and deeply moving interview with Po and old footage of the design studio members at their height. We also get context and insight from new interviews with members of Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Peter Gabriel. Their respect for the art of Hipgnosis is clear. And with this doc we all get to go behind the scenes of some of their most iconic album cover shoots and relive their glory. Splendid stuff.

SQUARING THE CIRCLE (THE STORY OF HIPGNOSIS) has a running time of 101 minutes. It played Telluride 2022 and Sundance 2023 and was released in UK cinemas and streaming platforms last weekend.

PRETTY RED DRESS****

Dionne Edwards debut feature is an assured and humane drama featuring incredibly strong central performances from its core trio of actors.  Natey Jones starts as Travis, a South London DJ just released from prison and returning to his family and a shit job in a restaurant.  His wife Candice (Alexandra Burke) is desperate to break out of her shitty jobs to star in a musical as Tina Turner.  She welcomes her husband back, and they seem to have a mutually supportive and sex-positive relationship. The drama begins when we realise that Travis is attracted to the stunning red dress he has bought his wife for her audition. When his teenage daughter Kenisha (Temilola Olatunbosun), and then his wife catch him wearing it, he tries to laugh it off as a drunken joke.  But we realise it's something far deeper, and soon so do they.  Their reactions feel authentic and complicated.  Candice wants to be supportive but also needs him to be her husband as he used to be - for her, there's a difference between role-play and questioning identity.  Meanwhile Kenisha, who is also starting to come out as gay, feels that she has to defend her father from homophobic language and is on the verge of being excluded from her school. We realise Travis is a good man when he defends his daughter's acting out despise his internalised homophobia. But I couldn't help but feel that the final scene let the family and the audience off the hook a little too easily.  Nonetheless, this is a great debut feature and I look forward to seeing what Dionne Edwards does not. It's also really refreshing to see contemporary real London on screen.

PRETTY RED DRESS has a running time of 110 minutes. It played the BFI London Film Festival 2022 and was released in the UK last month.

WHITNEY HOUSTON: I WANNA DANCE WITH SOMEBODY**

I said pretty much everything I wanted to say about Whitney Houston in my review of the two documentaries that came out after her death, Kevin MacDonald's WHITNEY and Nick Broomfield’s WHITNEY: CAN I BE ME? I felt the latter was particularly insightful about the problems Whitney faced due to her sexuality in a homophobic world; her persona as a post-racial artist in a highly racially charged world; and the less that ideal family life that certainly included drugs from the start, and potentially also sexual abuse. The docs were both good but both helped and hindered by lack of co-operation with the family.  By contrast, this new fictionalised biopic is both helped and hindered by the reverse.

Clive Davis, Whitney's record label CEO, is one of the producers on the film, and as played by Stanley Tucci is an avuncular witty and caring presence. No shit. The villains of the piece are her controlling and exploitative father (Clarke Peters), and the burden of expectations of an ever-greater entourage and family and public.  Bobby Brown is unlikeable as an abusive adulterer but Whitney's drug use is conveniently enabled by an anonymous white - natch - drug peddler. The film mostly proceeds as a series of set-piece performances that we are already intimately aware of, and while Naomie Ackie does a really great job imitating Whitney's facial expressions, it's just not the same as watching the old footage. The problem is that when you devote tens of minutes to music montages, there's very little space left for actual explorative dramatic writing, and even if there was, I'm not sure writer Anthony McCarten would be the man for the job, given his hackneyed  work here and on BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY.

I think anyone embarking on a project like this - or any artist interpreting a subject that has already been treated many times -  should ask themselves what they can bring to the table. What is their particular take - their particular insight? Or failing that, what is it that the medium of fiction film can bring that documentary can't? Well, clearly if we're just imitating Whitney's videos and concert performances that's low value add, if not value negative to watching the real footage. What a dramatic treatment COULD have brought is real insight into her state of mind, and the emotional toll of being closeted, hated by her own black peers, and exploited by her own family. I wanted less music and more drama. Still, you shouldn't review the film that wasn't made, just the one in front of you. And it's fine. Really fine. But the docs are better.

WHITNEY HOUSTON: I WANNA DANCE WITH SOMEBODY has a running time of 144 minutes and is rated PG-13. It was released last December. 

A spoiler-filled essay on BABYLON***** but also Zero - it's an alpha gamma film

It pains me to say that Damien Chazelle hasn't made a wholly decent film since WHIPLASH and it's clear where he's gone wrong. WHIPLASH was tight as a drum, taut with tension, constructed with precision and escalated from a whisper to a bravura climax. It centred on a single story and a single relationship that captured us and spat us out at the end, exhausted and exhilarated. By contrast, BABYLON starts at eleven and keeps on going, throwing everything at the screen in bravura set piece after bravura set piece. Some of it works. In fact the first 100 minutes or so is some of the most impressive cinema I've ever watched. But it all goes wrong when Tobey Maguire appears on screen. No disrespect to Maguire but his performance is clearly a misdirected misfire of epic proportions that jumps the shark, or leaps over the alligator, or whatever. And the film never gets back on track. After that it's just overlong repetitive unnecessary coda after coda culminating in one of the most patronising epilogues of all time. Yes, Chazelle, we get that you're telling the story of SINGIN' IN THE RAIN as tragedy rather than comedy. We. Get. It. We are clever. Stop trying to hammer it home. Stop trying to big yourself up.  Stop trying to place yourself at the heart of the unending unspooling of cinematic history because you are doing yourself no fucking favours.

Anyways. Long pause for breath. Let's talk about the stuff that is absolutely amazing in this film. Let's talk about a film that is in love with what film means to its audience, and the madcap pioneers who made it all happen, but is also under no illusions about the cruelty and crassness and exploitation of the industry itself, as depicted in its earliest scene where an elephant shits over the audience. 

We open with a 30 minute bacchanalia at a movie producer's house in proto-Bel Air, surrounded by desert scrub and bristling in saturated dry heat.  Everyone is part-naked, coked-up and fucking. Jean Smart's thinly veiled Hedda Hopper-style gossip columnist wants to see the secret room upstairs where the producer keeps the underage girls. A thinly veiled Fatty Arbuckle is getting pissed on by a wannabe starlet who is soon to OD, and will be smuggled out by cover of elephant. 

Lest we think Hollywood has corrupted these people, Chazelle shows us they started out corrupt.  Margot Robbie's wannabe starlet and Clara Boy cipher Nellie LaRoy arrives at the party wearing nothing and looking for drugs, and when she gets her big break she decides to bear her iced nipples: she's no naive innocent and no-one is forcing her to be lewd.  As a result, it comes as something of a surprise in the film's second act when she seems shocked and saddened at being called "low" - so saddened that she acts out by trying to wrestle a snake, leading to perhaps the coolest, crudest and sexiest meet-cutes of all time. Thankfully Nellie's attempts at reformation are short-lived. She doesn't progress or learn or grow. Maybe a drug and gambling addict can't - at least not in an environment of enablement where every set has a friendly dope-pedlar. In her fragile vulnerability and incapacity to escape herself I found myself thinking of Elizabeth Short, now known as the Black Dahlia, another vulnerable woman who came to Hollywood for stardom.  There but for the grace of God.  When LaRoy disappears into the night, high as a kite, dancing to the music in her head, was any other ending ever possible? Or maybe the other ending is that ascribed to LaRoy's mother, institutionalised. Maybe Hollywood is to be lauded for at least allowing a "wild child" to be wild?

Similarly, Chazelle has cast newcomer Diego Calva for his dreamy eyes, but his Manny Tores is shrewd from the start. It's his idea to use the elephant as cover and he will literally do anything for access to a movie set including disavow his own family and racial heritage. So it comes as no surprise that an hour later into the film he will cruelly decommission Nellie's lover and Anna May Wong cipher Lady Fay (Li Jun Li) as inconveniently gay at a time when the wild west of Hollywood is about to be self-policed by the prurient Code.  I was happy when Manny came a cropper and didn't buy into the importance of his epilogue redemption. Do I give a shit that Manny now sees the magic of film? Or understands his former colleagues' place in its history? No.  And his casual dismissal of Lady Fay echoes Chazelle's inability to give Li Jun Li the story she deserves because of the constraints of the story he is telling. She has to escape to Europe for a career when the Code cuts her short. And so she disappears from BABYLON much to its loss. The same holds for Olivia Hamilton who plays an early female silent film director. This film cannot say much about her because Hollywood did not allow her to thrive. But it was wonderful to see  the early female directors recognised. 

In fact, the irony is that the least corrupt characters are arguably the old-hands: Jean Smart's gossip columnist and Brad Pitt's kind-hearted old-fashioned silent star, loosely based on John Gilbert. They love the movies for what they are - honest working class entertainment providing an escape for the lonely and poor.  Pitt's Jack Conrad gets one of the best scenes in the film when he tells his thespian fifth wife that the audiences a Broadway show pulls would be considered a flop in Hollywood. And it's heartbreaking to see him fail to make the transition to sound, and the toll this takes on him in his final scene.  It's even more heartbreaking because we know that while Jean Smart offers him immortality in exchange for heartbreak, those early nitrate films barely survive and are rarely seen. It was a bum deal, and somehow Jack Conrad always knew it. 

But Jack Conrad's self-managed exit from the stage isn't the films most heart-breaking moment. That is reserved for Jovan Adepo's jazz trumpeter Sidney Palmer. He starts the film at the aforementioned bacchanal and ends up benefiting from the move to sound films, earning vast amounts of money but at the cost of enduring patronising white folks at a fancy country club dinner where Nellie, perhaps viscerally expressing what Sidney is feeling, ends up projectile vomiting over the pretentious cunts who act as gatekeepers. Later, he will be asked by Manny (a fellow minority presence in Hollywood but in full denial of his ethnicity) to black up so that his face doesn't look too white on screen.  No cinema in the South will show an integrated band.  Manny, by this time fully a tool of the system, emotionally blackmails Sidney and tells him the whole band will be out of a job if he doesn't comply and you can see every calculation - emotional and logical - that Sidney goes through - and what it costs him - with no words but etched on his face as he plays the trumpet.  It's a brutal scene that will stay with me for a long time. Thank Christ Sidney escaped to Harlem and got back his self-respect. But again, how sad for us and the film that he has to perforce leave our screens, yet another reason why its final hour is  - with the exception of Jack Conrad's exit - woeful.

So this isn't a terrible film, as many reviewers would have you believe. It's a brave bold beautiful disgusting chronicle of a brave bold beautiful disgusting set of people who wanted to create art, make money and make us laugh and often exploited people - and themselves - in order to do so.  Their aim, Chazelle's aim in highlighting what they endured, is noble. And if the film makes just one person pick up an autobiography of Clara Bow, or find an old clip of a silent film on BFI Player, then it's all worth it.

BABYLON is rated R and has a running time of 189 minutes. 

GETTING IT BACK - THE STORY OF CYMANDE - BFI London Film Festival 2022

If you've listened to track by The Sugarhill Gang, The Fugees or Soul 2 Soul you've probably heard Cymande sampled.  Their sound is cool jazz, soul, funk, unique.  What you might not know is that they came together in early 1970s South London, first generation immigrants from the West Indies, and despite being ignore at home, discriminated against by society, they rose to be the first British band to play the Apollo, before splitting up in 1975.  After that they might have slipped into obscurity were it not for generations of hip-hop artists that discovered and sampled their work, resulting in a mid-2010s return to touring.  

This documentary is a labour of love from documentarian Tim Mackenzie-Smith and benefits from interviews with five band members, including leaders Steve Scipio and Patrick Patterson. (The latter too became lawyers which helped in actually getting paid for all that sampling!) It also benefits from a lot of interviews with famous musicians talking about how they went on their own journeys to find the band behind the sound, and were inspired by Cymande in their own work. 

Even more consequentially, we see how Cymande's refusal to conform, and refusal to be held back by societal discrimination, spoke to kids experiencing just that - not least a young Craig Charles.  

The result is a film that will speak to fans of Cymande who didnt even know they were - people like me who instantly recognise their sound from endless reinterprations. But it deserves to be seen by anyone with an interest in the post-war British immigrant experience and remains shockingly relevant to our time. What I really loved was its message of getting on with it anyway, refusing to be pigeonholed and ignored, and carving your own path.

GETTING IT BACK - THE STORY OF CYMANDE has a running time of 89 minutes. It played SXSW 2022 and will play the BFI London Film Festival in October.

GOD SAID GIVE 'EM DRUM MACHINES - BFI London Film Festival 2022

Kristian R Hill's kinetic, fascinating documentary tells the forgotten story of how a group of talented, innovative black men invented techno in 1980s Detroit, years before white DJs started making bank playing to thousands of bourgeois white folk in Ibiza.  

I love documentaries like this - documentaries that are rigorously researched; fast-paced; and feature pretty much everyone who was important to the story barring the late lamented Frankie Knuckles - in particular The Belleville Three of Derrick May, Juan Atkins and Kevin Saunderson.

For those of us who grew up dancing to Inner City and 808 State it's a total nostalgia kick - but more than that - like learning about the roots of the genre that you saw in its later, commercial state. I had no idea that techno was named in a business meeting, prompted by a London distributor. I had no idea that it had its roots in George Clinton's Funkadelic and Kraftwerk with a side order of the Motown rhythm section. And I loved seeing how each iterative technological change - from the 303 to the 808 to the... 909 - allowed for further innovation.

The only problem with the doc is its focus on Derrick May and then the final scene revelation that he has been accused of sexual assault and dropped from gigs, but denies the accusations and has not been charged. It left me breathless - like, wait, what, that's just what we're getting - a line of text? and no way of now working out what this means for his legacy. I know this doc is probably not where to litigate these claims but still this felt.... casual and cursory.

GOD SAID GIVE 'EM DRUM MACHINES has a running time of 92 minutes.  The film played Tribeca 2022 and will play the BFI London Film Festival. Tickets are available here. 

C'MON C'MON*****

Mike Mills (20th CENTURY WOMEN) returns to our screens with the beautifully shot and acted drama that's ostensibly a bonding road-trip between an uncle and his nephew, but is actually a hymn to single mums everywhere. It stars Joaquin Phoenix (JOKER) as Jonny - a wonderfully empathetic, rumpled, charmingly vulnerable radio journalist whose job is to travel America and listen to teenagers describe their struggles and joys in life. He transfers all those brilliant listening skills to taking care of his young nephew Jesse, played in one of the performances of the year by Woody Norman (THE CURRENT WAR).  Jesse is a really sweet, smart kid being raised as such by his brilliantly loving and strong mother Viv (Gaby Hoffman - Transparent). Viv and Jonny clearly love each other but drifted apart after their mother's death. But they reconnect when Viv needs her brother to help out because she has to take care of her ex-parter Paul (Scoot McNairy - IN SEARCH OF A MIDNIGHT KISS) who is suffering through an acute episode of bipolar disorder. 

The resulting film speaks to the fears and joys of parenthood, and feels so real in its depiction of authentic family relationships. I loved every moment of it and feel as if I know the characters intimately. It never strays into mawkish predictability and handles its topic of mental health with sensitivity.  The superlative acting and writing is matched by DP Robbie Ryan's stunning black and white photography:  LA and Manhattan haven't looked as beautiful in years. 

C'MON C'MON played Telluride and the BFI London Film Festival 2021. It has a running time of 109 minutes and is rated R.

ENCANTO*****

60 movies in and Disney finally made one where my childhood self might have seen herself on screen: brown, bespectacled, curly-haired, clearly not a Princess, no magical powers, not at all submissive or mild, but definitely curious and loyal, from a large loving multi-generational family.  It's easy to say the phrase "representation matters" and it's another to truly feel it in your bones and to believe that you could be a Disney hero.  What I would've given to have seen ENCANTO as a kid. 

The film is an absolute joy: a riot of colour and dance, best seen on a big screen with a great sound-system. Lin Manuel Miranda provides songs that are instantly recognisable as his - mashing up musical genres but reaching back to latin roots. And Mirabel (Stephanie Beatriz) is just a wonderful heroine. She clearly loves her eccentric, magically gifted family, but harbours a secret sadness that she is the only one without magical powers. That said, she's smart, and realises that something bad is happening to her enchanted family house, and that her family's magic might be under threat. And in exploring why, she realises that all of her family have their own stories too:  the super strong Luisa is buckling under emotional stress; perfect princess-like Isabella actually just wants to "let it go". The final act twists are deeply satisfying and I found myself in tears at the ending, with all of its affirmation and emotional release. Kudos to all involved.

ENCANTO is rated PG and has a running time of 102 minutes. The movie is on global release.

THE SPARKS BROTHERS*****

I came to Edgar Wright's new documentary thinking that Sparks was a novelty act. The weird glam rock singer and Hitler-looking grim keyboard player singing This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Both Of Us. I only new that they were still around when Leos Carax' brilliantly bizarre ANNETTE was released, with music by the duo. But by the end of this long and loving documentary I had come to a new found respect and eve love for the band, and can't wait to dive into their 25-album-and-counting back catalogue. I turned to my husband at the end of the movie and said that the fact that such a deeply weird, witty, intelligent and NICE band had survived all these years and had new generations of fans said something good about humanity. And certainly about them. It's nice to see a pair of musician-brothers not turn into the feuding Gallaghers, and not become commercial sell-outs, and not become parodies of themselves. Just carry on, making cool, weird records. 

This is Wright's first doc and he brings reverence for the music together with visual flair.  There are so many brilliant jokes in how the interviewees (Bjork, Beck, Katie Puckrick, Flea and sooo many others) are subtitled and how vintage footage is intercut with the interviews. But most of all Wright just has the grace to give this story the run-time it deserves and to give each album its due, no matter whether it was a hit or a bomb. And yes, there seem to have been a lot of ups and downs in their career. The result is that we feel invested in their success and if not their success then their happiness and artistic fulfilment. There's a deeply touching moment near the end where Ron thanks the audience and says that he doesn't take the fans for granted. They really are gentlemen. 

THE SPARKS BROTHERS is rated R and has a running time of 140 minutes. It played Sundance and SXSW 2021 and was released earlier this year.

JUMP, DARLING - BFI Flare 2021

JUMP, DARLING is a beautifully shot, deeply moving, darkly funny relationship drama about the unlikely friendship between a grandmother and her grandson. The grandma is played by acting icon Cloris Leachman, who sadly passed away earlier this year. She brings all of her steely dry humour to this role as a feisty 80-something woman called Margaret who clearly needs someone to care for her, but is resisting moving into an old age home. The grandson, Russell (Thomas Duplessie), is licking his wounds after a break-up and decides to stay with his grandma while tentatively dipping his toe back into the drag performance world.  

What I love about this film is its nuanced depiction of really tough topics with sensitivity but also humour.  To start off with Russell, he's clearly struggling with owning his choice to be a drag performer rather than a mainstream actor, and this ambiguity is partly forced by his boyfriend's contempt for his profession. Is he performing as a drag queen, OR is his narrative that he's just doing this while he tries to become a mainstream actor the real performance? 

We chart Russell's growing confidence via a scene where he uses a powerful drag performance to effectively shame the closeted guy he is currently sleeping with.  Again, the question of who is really performing is raised: is it Russell as a drag queen, or the gay guy pretending to be straight?

And in the final, most powerful and moving scene of the film, we see Russell respond to an almost aggressive interrogation by an elder in the drag scene - and admit he does drag because it's his vocation. That acceptance is something truly beautiful and powerful, especially becuase in both their stories we see the price he is going to have to pay - not least rejection by some in mainstream society.

There's a similarly impressive and nuanced approach to the theme of suicide and suicidal ideation.  The grandmother and grandson are both dealing with memories of the grandfather committing suicide and imagine themselves in his shoes in dreamy unnerving scenes.  One senses that the grandmother both fears the memory and works it into her nightmarish vision of what it would be to move into a nursing home. For Russell it feels more like an exploration. 

I'm not going to lie. Like many people I booked this film because of the legendary Cloris Leachman - and she is wonderful here.  But it's Thomas Duplessie who really impresses in a performance that is by turns vulnerable, powerful, bitchy, flamboyant, contained.  I also absolutely loved the music choices for the pivotal drag lip sync scenes and the neon-lit dance scenes shot by DP Viktor Cahoj. This really is a film that in its look, sound, style and performances punches way above its weight as a low-budget debut feature. 

JUMP, DARLING has a running time of 90 minutes and is not yet rated. It played the Toronto Inside Out Festival and is currently playing BFI Flare. It does not yet have a commerical release date.

BILLIE EILISH: THE WORLD'S A LITTLE BLURRY

I'm clearly not the demographic for Billie Eilish's whispered teenage angst slash stomping jumping Gucci clad stage persona. But I was curious to watch R J Cutler's new two hour documentary and learn more about this teenager who is both a pop culture icon and has swept the Grammys. I was sceptical at the over two hour running time going into the film, but I have to say that the documentary did indeed hold my interest for two hours and I would recommend it as a sociological depiction of any young star catapulted to fame.

Billie Eilish comes across as a nice kid - talented? yes although her resistance to singing beyond a whisper makes it hard to discern how much.  I was actually far more impressed with her elder brother who evidently writes a lot of the music and produces it - and surely its the ethereal electro tone that's the real trademark here. I wonder if he resents her success as the face of his music?  The parents are a bit weird as is the whole home-schooling/ minor league actors/singers creating little talent show performers vibe. But you can see they really love their kids and are loved in return and that they have a justified fear about what happens to Billie now she's famous. The most moving part of the doc is when Billie passes her driving test and drives off, and the dad has this emotional moment where he's worried about her leaving but needs to let her - rationally he'd coddle her forever but knows he can't.

There's a deep foreboding throughout this film. Billie's insta-famous open-ness with her fans is concerning, and we see she clearly has issues with setting emotional boundaries in her relationship with her douchebag ex-boyfriend. And yes she has a close relationship with her family that's saving her but what happens when one day she falls out with her brother or her mum and is left vulnerable to the world? And how on earth is that relationship going to stay normal when the brother depends not his sister for employment and the mother's role is to coddle Billie with reassuring reviews of her performances? It's so telling that when Billie (totally justifiably) flips out at meeting endless studio hacks after a show, her mum's immediate response is "we failed you". This isn't a relationship of honesty but of keeping the bandwagon on the road.  Billie can never do wrong.

Maybe it's my recent viewing of Framing Britney Spears, but I just look at Billie Eilish and see an accident waiting to happen, and when it happens it's going to be worse because it's going to involve her family. Lets just hope that her body and mind hold up.

BILLIE EILISH: THE WORLD'S A LITTLE BLURRY has a running time of 140 minutes and is rated R. It was released by Apple+ in February.