THE DRAMA**** (spoilers)

Kristoffer Borgli's THE DRAMA is a nasty little relationship drama and social satire about good people doing bad things and bad people who are po-faced and judgmental. Zendaya and Robert Pattinson continue to make challenging and interesting choices that belie their teen-star good looks.  They play Emma and Charlie - a young loving couple who seem perfect for each other until goaded into reveal the worst thing they have ever done by their best friends Rachel and Mike.  Emma reveals that as a young teenage girl she planned a school shooting but did not go through with it and is immediately shunned by her maid of honour Rachel (Alana Haim) despite the fact that Rachel didn't just plan but did something really horrific - imprisoning a young developmentally challenged boy and leaving him for dead. 

In fact, there is something wrong with the whole way in which the friend group reacts. Nobody thinks to ask why young Emma might have been so disenchanted and alienated and bullied that she felt she had to commit an act of mass killing.  Nobody asks how she is feeling now that she has revealed it.  Just judgy Karen being the true villain of the piece and dragging her poor husband Mike along with her.  And nice earnest fiance making poor Emma restate her motivations despite the fact that reliving the memory is making her throw up.  

The resulting film is a nasty, raw and occasionally mordantly funny drama. I really believed in Emma and Charlie and wanted their relationship to work.  I also really liked how Borgli was very consciously playing with rom-com tropes - the meet-cute, the dumb cutesy in-jokes, even the .... well... end-cute?  It's like he's saying I know this is dumb and makes no sense and is incredible but go with me because I am using this genre-bullshit to show you what's going on with this young black woman in this hyper-white judgy scenario.  And I was there for it. 

THE DRAMA is rated R and has a running time of 105 minutes. It was released earlier this month.

MATERIALISTS*

Writer-director Celine Song's follow-up to her wildly, and rightly, praised debut feature PAST LIVES is a dud.  I just don't get it. It wasn't funny, it wasn't romantic, it didn't have a lot of dramatic tension, and it tried to balance wry commentary on modern dating with a very serious assault storyline that jarred tonally and was handled too lightly and peripherally for my liking. I don't think you get to use a plot device like that to further your protagonist's emotional arc.

Dakota Johnson stars as a modern day matchmaker dealing with New Yorkers' unrealistic expectations.  She values her clients according to material aspects - age, wealth, height - and given her childhood marred by parental fights over money - seeks a rich husband herself.  At a client's wedding she seemingly gets everything she wants in "unicorn" rich handsome Pedro Pascal.  But she also runs into her old boyfriend, a poor and shambolic wannabe actor played by Chris Evans. There is zero dramatic tension as to who the matchmaker will end up with.  This story is one of her journey to accepting actual real love as opposed to material comfort.  Even worse, there is none of that intimate, deeply felt, perceptive storytelling that we got in PAST LIVES.  There's only one scene that even approximates it, when Johnson and Evans' characters are observing a wedding from a distance, just as the couple created imaginary stories for diners at the start of PAST LIVES. What a tremendous let down.

MATERIALISTS is rated R and has a running time of 116 minutes. It was released in the USA in June and will be released in the UK on August 15th.

ENDURANCE***** - BFI London Film Festival 2024 - Day 4

The story of Sir Ernest Shackleton and the Endurance is one of those tales that obsesses land-lubbers like me.  I have always been fascinated by explorers who push themselves beyond the limits of ordinary endurance and especially those tails of against-the-odds survival. I am a sucker for docs on Everest, or films like SOCIETY OF THE SNOW, and an armchair specialist on Shackleton. So I came to the new documentary with high expectations, made even higher knowing that it featured restored and colorised stills and moving images from expedition photographer Frank Hurley thanks to my beloved BFI National Archive.

The film tells two stories in tandem. The first is that of the original expedition over a hundred years ago. Through contemporary photos and films, and audio and film recordings of its members, we hear of their journey to Antartica aboard the Endurance. We see how the ship is caught in pack ice and had to be abandoned. We see the men make camp on the ice, and then have to take to boats and row to an island on which they cannot survive.  At which point Shackleton takes one of the boats and four other men and attempts to reach the whaling station on South Georgia - an improbably journey and an improbable rescue. The men had been away for years, while a World War was raging. Most immediately signed up for service.

The story captures the imagination because it's one of failure but also of improbable survival. And it's also the story of a man who was a rogue, financially incontinent, and made several bad choices, but who also had tremendous courage and did his best by his men. 

The second story in the film is that of a 2022 expedition to discover the shipwreck of the Endurance, led by an international team of scientists and the popular British historian Dan Snow. We feel their excitement at finally uncovering the wreck and wonder at the HD scan of the largely in tact ship. 

Directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin (NYAD, FREE SOLO) and Natalie Hewit ably cut between the two stories and create a sense of excitement and tension even though we know the outcome of both stories. I particularly loved seeing the colourised archive footage which made the story seem vivid. And I also loved the way in which items in the wreckage were matched up to the iconic photos and movies at the end.  It made the whole thing feel real and contemporary rather than a tale of derring-do from the Edwardian era.

As I said before, I was primed to love this film and I was not disappointed. But I hope it will resonate with audiences less familiar with the Shackleton story.  Moreover, with its use of both archival footage and AI to recreate the expedition's voices, this feels like a documentary that shows mastery of how films can be created now and in the future. 

ENDURANCE has a running time of 103 minutes. It had its world premiere at the BFI London Film Festival. It does not yet have a commercial release date.

FLY ME TO THE MOON**

Director Greg Berlanti (LOVE SIMON) returns to our screen with half of a good film. The good part is Scarlett Johansson playing a smart, slick, wisecracking ad-executive in the misogynistic 1960s of Mad Men fame. She is hired by Woody Harrelson's shady Fed to run PR for the Apollo space programme, beset by costs Congress is loathe to fund. NASA desperately needs someone to make ordinary Americans fall in love with the romance of the space programme again, and in doing so, pressure their Congressmen into turning the funding back on.  

All of this crass commercialism comes up against an all-American square-jawed earnest Flight Director played by Channing Tatum.  I think this is the bit where sparks are meant to fly, and the screwball comedy really takes off. Except that debut feature screenwriter Rose Gilroy chooses to go sentimental and syrupy and to effectively numb ScarJo's spark. She inevitably discovers that earnestness has its charms and a third act falling-out is so swiftly resolved as to barely register as a relationship hiccup. What a waste!

I also note that this film has come under criticism for positing that NASA really did stage a fake moon landing under political pressure because the Cold War stakes were too high to risk a live stream of the real moon landing.  Apparently this plot point risks fuelling conspiracy rumours. To which I respond, that ship has sailed, and any any plot point is fair game The only sadness is that its deployed to so little effect.

FLY ME TO THE MOON is rated PG-13, has a running time of 113 minutes, and is available to rent and own.

FERRARI* - BFI London Film Festival 2023 - Day 5

Michael Mann (HEAT, THE INSIDER) returns to our screens with an execrable biopic of the iconic Enzo Ferrari.  It is a film that pays no respect to history, cultural specificity or the ethics of what one chooses to show on-screen of real-life horrific crashes.

In Mann's version of Ferrari's story, as written by Troy Kennedy Martin (THE ITALIAN JOB!) we focus on the year 1957. Mann and Kennedy choose to make this a make or break year for the company, whose road car sales are insufficient to subsidise the racing.  The notoriously paranoid, selfish, dictatorial Enzo Ferrari needs to bring in outside financing and give up control in order to compete with the advances being made in England and Germany. Films need stakes, so Mann/Martin argue that Ferrari must win the Mille Miglia road-race to attract investors. Yeah I guess.... But Ferrari was constantly in trouble and flirting with investors. 

Similarly, while Enzo may have transferred some assets to his wife's name for tax and political reasons, I cannot imagine he was walking around like a proto-feminist claiming they built the company together, and the book does NOT suggest that she was the business strategist behind the throne. This all sounds like modern retconning to give Penelope Cruz something to do other than scream hysterically.  Enzo WAS in fact a notorious womaniser and misogynist. The film only hints at how horrific he was. 

The truth of the film lies in how devastated both parents were at the death of Ferrari's only legitimate son Dino, and how Enzo kept the existence of his illegitimate son secret from his wife for many years.  It is not known how Laura finally learned about Enzo's mistress Lina Lardi, or of the existence of Piero, but it is true that Piero was only legitimised after Laura died. This was not, as the film implies, because of some cash-for-bungs bribe that Laura paid Enzo, but because of the constraints of the Italian legal system.

Now to move from history to drama. Is the film emotionally involving? No. Because the acting is terrible. Adam Driver is miscast as Ferrari. He is way too young. The Commendatore was 59 in 1957.  Driver is not yet 40.  He looks not yet 40 with a fake belly and a bad hair dye job. He looks nothing like Enzo - fine - Enzo has a very specific face. But he doesn't move or walk or talk like a c60 year old provincial Italian. Would it have killed them to either a) cast an Italian or b) someone who could do a passable Italian accent?

But this problem of bad acting is way worse when we consider Shailene Woodley's attempt at Lina Lardi.  Her accent is so appalling it isn't even Italian-adjacent. I was reminded of Jodie Comer's note perfect accent-work in THE BIKERIDERS and left with the cruel realisation that Woodley is simply a YA film actress over-promoted and best-forgotten.

Finally, we have Penelope Cruz - the only decent performance in the film but one that is for sure Spanish not Italian, and so at odds with the real woman as to be laughable. It's as if there is nothing of merit or interest in Laura's betrayal and pain unless she's a porto-modern boss bitch.

All of this I could have forgiven had the racing been good. And to be fair, most of the footage of the testing at Monza, and the road racing in the Mille Miglia is really well done with great recreations of the historic vehicles rebuilt with the help of the Ferrari factory. Kudos to Mann and cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt (MANK) for that. My only issue here is the very distinct choice Michael Mann has made to show very graphic crash footage, not just of Castelotti but also of Guidizzolo.  As one of the few audience members who knew exactly what was coming, I was in fear once I saw the Monza crash.  It's strange to say but in the history of motorsport films we have rarely if ever seen a frame by frame replay of an horrific crash, especially one involving civilians. Think of FORD VS FERRARI where Christian Bale simply disappears over a hill. Or even the way in which Asif Kapadia handles the crash in SENNA. But Mann shows no such finesse here. He does not leave anything to our imaginations. I found it pretty exploitative. I might have forgiven the choice, or understood it better, in a better film. But in such a trashy, melodramatic, soapy film, it felt cheap, and frankly disgusting.

FERRARI has a running time of 130 minutes. It played Venice and the BFI London Film Festival 2023. It will be released on December 25th in the USA and December 26th in the UK.

AMSTERDAM***

What a glorious failure AMSTERDAM is! A film that is indulgent, incoherent, tonally uneven and not as whacky as it thinks it is.  And yet, and yet, there's something noble in its square-on look at racism, fascism, class snobbery and misogyny - a film that shows us clearly what war actually does to vital bodies - at the same time as attempting a JULES ET JIM romance combined with a Coen Brothers'esque caper. Writer-director David O Russell is more than ever himself - for all his brilliance and over-reach. This film is absolutely his.  I found flashes of brilliance within it. And in a month where Germany convicted men of fomenting a far-right coup, the central message remains important.

Christian Bale channels Kramer from Seinfeld in his role as Burt, a World War One veteran with a glass eye and a fondness for self-medicating with gonzo drugs. Burt is balanced out by Harold, a black lawyer who oozes charm, calm and confidence in a much-needed straight performance from John David Washington.  The third partner in their friendship is Valerie Voze, a daring, courageous artist played with elan by Margot Robbie.  The three live a bohemian life in post-war Amsterdam, helping vets recover from their horrific injuries, until the boys return home to New York.  

Fast forward to 1933, where the film opens, and a glamorous rich young woman (Taylor Swift) is murdered shortly after asking our boys to investigate the suspicious death of her father, their commanding officer. So begins a shaggy caper in which we discover that a bunch of fascist sympathisers are trying to manipulate a US general (Robert de Niro) into launching a veteran-backed military coup. Sound too fanciful? It really happened. 

The resulting film is, as I said, a mess. But it's a well acted one with some amazingly funny set-pieces and a truly sinister slippery turn from Rami Malek and Mike Myers as a British spy standing out among the bit parts. The film also looks fantastic, with stunning production and costume design and a dreamy sepia tinted warm glow thanks to Emmanuel Lubezki's lensing. I don't know what this film truly is, genre wise. It doesn't coalesce. But I'm glad it exists. 

AMSTERDAM is rated R and has a running time of 134 minutes. It is streaming on Disney plus.

ENOLA HOLMES 2****

I was an enormous fan the original Enola Holmes film and I’m please to report that the sequel, reuniting most of the talent in front of and behind the lens, is just as smart and funny. It’s even more pleasing that the central murder-mystery is really well-constructed, and that the movie manages to incorporate its real history of the rise of the women’s labour movement with a light touch that is genuinely moving, rather than being crude or too on the nose.

The film opens with Enola (Millie Bobby Brown) struggling to find customers who take her detecting skills seriously. In desperation she takes the case of a missing match-girl which leads to the wider mystery of why so many of these factory workers are dying of typhus and why the profits at the factory have mysteriously rocketed. This brings Enola into the path of her famous elder brother Sherlock (Henry Cavill) whose case about corruption at the highest levels of government and industry is seemingly connected with Enola’s.  

Along the way, we get to re-connect with Enola’s aristocratic love interest Lord Tewkesbury (Louis Partridge), the martial arts supremo Edith (Susan Wokoma) and of course the proto-feminist that is Enola’s mum (Helena Bonham Carter).  And of the new cast members, David Thewlis is particularly scene-chomping as the nasty policeman, Inspector Grail. We also get a marvellous cameo from Sharon Duncan-Brewster, who was so impressive as Liet-Kynes in the recent DUNE remake.

The resulting film is fast-paced and often Guy Ritchie-inspired in its kinetic fight scenes.  There’s plenty of fun and even some meta-comedy at the expense of the knowing fourth-wall breaking catchphrase “Tis I!”

The only character I can’t get my head around is Cavill’s Sherlock, playing against type because his character has far less action than the female characters. He mostly looks grave and concerned and doesn’t entirely convince in his early scene as a drunk.  It’s interesting to see that the writers have given him a sidekick - Dr Watson - in the final credits scene. Let’s see how Cavill does in a more conventional buddy-comedy role.

ENOLA HOLMES 2 has a running time of 129 minutes and is rated PG-13. It is released on Netflix today.

THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7

Aaron Sorkin follows up his directorial debut MOLLY'S GAME with a movie whose subject is far more in his wheelhouse, and what an energetic, pointed, anger-making film he has created in THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7.  Its concerns are those that Sorkin has explored throughout his career:  the liberal fight against injustice, corruption and political repression.  He cast these ideas in a warm-fuzzy light where optimism won in his hit TV show The West Wing. He was angrier and more cynical in The Newsroom.  And in the Trump era, the anger is rightly turned up, and the absurdity of a system wherein the rule of law has been bent out of all recognition fully explored.  

The film opens with a montage that takes us back to the 1960s and the potent combination of the civil rights movement and anti-Vietnam protests. We see RFK beg for calm after the assassination of MLK before himself being assassinated. We then zoom in to the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago.  Protestors flooded into the City hoping to protest Vietnam in front of the media outside the convention hotel soon clashed with the police brutally trying to keep them away.  Once Nixon is elected his regime decides to prosecute the so-called ringleaders of the riots for Conspiracy to Incite Riots and other charges, even throwing in iconic Black Panther Bobby Seale, who had no part of it, for good measure.  The charges were clearly trumped up, the judge (Frank Langella) was clearly biased and bogus, the jury was tampered with to ensure a friendly verdict, and the defendants were clearly there just to be made an example of.

Sacha Baron Cohen is absolutely note perfect as Yippie leader Abbie Hoffman. He gets all the funniest lines because he is most comfortable with showing the absurdity of proceedings.  But it's Eddie Redmayne that has the more interesting role as Tom Hayden - the apparently more sensible, less showy leader of a student protest movement who hates Hoffman's grandstanding. Much of the intellectual back and forth of the movie comes between them as they throw barbs about how best to serve the movement.  And they are joined in a kind of Sorkin Triumvirate of Repartee by Mark Rylance as progressive attorney William Kunstler. It's so clear that the prosecution is bent (despite an ill-conceived attempt to soften Joseph Gordon-Levitt's prosecution attorney) that all the real intellectual fun is to be had in the arguments WITHIN the defense.  

The result is a courtroom drama that is thrilling and rightly anger-making, and a movie where Sorkin's trademark razor-sharp combative dialogue is absolutely right for the job.  But he has also come on leaps and bounds as a director of action. The way in which he reconstructs the riot as he interrogates the version of events that Tom Hayden is telling himself is a visual and editorial tour-de-force.

THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7 has been released on Netflix due to Covid. It has a running time of 127 minutes and is rated R.

ENOLA HOLMES

 

I thoroughly enjoyed ENOLA HOLMES - a wonderfully funny, earnest and kinetic young adult detective caper starring Millie Bobby Brown as the younger sister of Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes.  In this version of fictional history, Enola (Brown) is raised by her eccentric but learned mother (Helena Bonham Carter) until said mother mysteriously vanishes.  Stuffy conservative Mycroft packs Enola off to a boarding school but she soon escapes to find her mother.  That first mystery isn't really solved, setting us up for a sequel, although it is hinted that mum is a radical activist feminist. So we get a second mystery: just who is trying to assassinate handsome but feckless young Lord Tewkesbury (Louis Partridge).  As befits a progressive work, it is Enola who saves Tewkesbury rather than the other way around, and she solves the mystery of the case before her indulgent brother Sherlock (Cavill). The result is a pleasingly feminist and funny caper that shows just how good Millie Bobby Brown is at comedy. I doubt many other actresses could get away with breaking the fourth wall as often and with such wit as she does. I am very much looking forward to the inevitable sequel.

ENOLA HOLMES has a running time of 123 minutes and is rated PG-13. 

BIRDS OF PREY: AND THE FANTABULOUS EMANCIPATION OF ONE HARLEY QUINN

BIRDS OF PREY is another movie that should have still been in cinemas but is now available to stream because of Covid-19. It's a loose spin off of the risibly bad SUICIDE SQUAD, featuring the break-out star of that film - Margot Robbie (ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD) as Harley Quinn.  The demented former psychiatrist turned girlfriend of Joker starts the film dumped and "emancipated"- except without "Mr J"s protection every gangster she ever offended is after her.  So, she drums up a commission from local wannabe gangster-king, Roman Sionis (Ewan Macgregor) to find a little girl (Ella Jay Basco) who has stolen a super-valuable diamond.  Problem is - when Harley finds the kid, Cassandra Cain, she realises that she kind of likes being a big sister.  Harley also realises that Sionis is a total creep and she really doesn't want to hand Cain over to him and his knife-wielding sidekick Mr Zazz (Chris Messina).  So, Harley bands together in common cause with a bunch of women who have been after her for most of the film - the cop Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez) - the wronged mafiosi child turned vengeful masker heroine The Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) - and the genuine superhero Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett-Bell).

I have to say that I enjoyed this film far more than I was expecting given my awful experience with SUICIDE SQUAD.  I had also suspected that Robbie's high-pitched infantilised Harley Quinn might grate over an uninterrupted two hour run-time.  But amazingly, Robbie showed some depth in the role, and I really loved her athleticism in some superbly choreographed hand-to-hand combat, as well as her genuinely nurturing role with Cain.  I also loved seeing so many thirty-something actresses get parts where they are truly kick-ass and agents of their own fate - with a particularly scene-stealing turn from Mary Elizabeth Winstead as the bizarrely preppy Sicilian vengeance-machine. I also loved Cathy Wan's kinetic direction and the ballsy use of a non-linear timeline and breaking the fourth wall.

The only let-down was casting Ewan Macgregor as Soinis. He really isn't that menacing, and this is a particular problem with a troubling scene where he humiliates a woman in his club.  I kept wondering where the actors were nowadays who could pull of that kind of funny creepy turn that Christopher Walken did so well in KING OF NEW YORK. Harley Quinn deserved a better antagonist. 

BIRDS OF PREY has a running time of 109 minutes and is rated R. It's available to rent and own.

SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE

By now I'm not telling you anything you don't already know, but how wonderful to confirm that all the hype is justified - SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE is an absolutely delightful film! It's heart-warming, witty, visually inventive and has such a wonderfully light touch about diversity.  I cannot imagine a better version of Spider-man, and learning that this is based on a comic book series that pre-dates the latest live action version, I'm utterly disappointed that Sony/Marvel didn't take the bold step of using this continuity rather than reverting to the old one.

In this Spider-man story, Peter Parker dies early and his role as crime-fighting hero is taken over by a kind called Miles Morales (Shameikh Moore) - a young boy who just got bitten by a radioactive spider. Peter Parker  (Jake Johnson) is around just long enough to pass on a few tips before Spidey 2.0 is joined by a bunch of other Spideys from parallel universes - including a schlubby Peter Parker (Chris Pine), a female Spidey, a noir Spidey (brilliantly cast Nic Cage!) and even a Looney Tunes Spidey!  I am reliably informed that all of these are from old comic book series, and I have to say that I would pay good money to see a full length Spidey Noir movie starring Nic Cage.  All the different Spideys have to team up to save the world from evil Doc Ock - both sending back all the parallel universe spideys through Ock's evil machine, before Miles can destroy it for good.

What I love about this story is that doesn't condescend to it's young audience - giving them a story that hinges on parallel universes and rather hallucinogenic depictions of what it might look like to be in an unstable environment.  I also love the film's core message that anyone can be a hero - even if you haven't seen a hero on screen that looks like you before - whether because you're a girl, or an ethnic minority. In fact, anyone can be a supervillian too! Just look at female Doc Ock. It's a film that doesn't shy away from showing what it must mean to be a poor kid who gets selected for an elite school and has to leave his friend's behind. It's a film that will casually show a homeless person sleeping outside of a shiny building. And it's a film that will have a African-American/Latino kid speak to his mum in Spanish without feeling the need for subtitles. I love that courage, self-confidence and inclusion.

But most of all I just love how visually inventive this film is, and how manifestly the creators love comic books.  They have a real understanding about how the flow of panels works, how we turn a page on a story, even giving Miles thought bubbles as soon as he becomes a superhero.  This gives the film a wonderfully kinetic energy, real joy, and wit in also parodying the 3d blurring around its edges.

All in all, I really hope Sony/Marvel will capitalise on this film's success by continuing the Miles Morales storyline in animated form if nothing else.

SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE has a running time of 117 minutes and is rated PG. 

KING ARTHUR

I massively enjoyed Guy Ritchie's retelling of the KING ARTHUR myth - it was funny, fast-paced, had some really superb visuals and a kinetic score.  It sets itself up perfectly for a sequel that isn't going to happen because for some bizarre reason no-one else liked it.  Close your ears to their whining and give it a go because it's stonkingly good fun! 

In Ritchie's version of the tale, we have a mythical version of post-Roman Britain in which King Uther (Eric Bana) has been trained by a mage called Merlin and given a magical sword called Excalibur.  His evil brother Vortigern (Jude Law is superb cigar-chomping mode) kills his brother and seizes the crown but has one problem - Excalibur is stuck in a stone and he can't remove it.  He also has a second problem but he doesn't know it yet.  Uther's son Arthur (Charlie Hunnam) was saved as a baby and ended up being raised in a brothel.  The main action of this film sees him extract the sword from the stone, realise his true inheritance, struggle to accept it, but overcome this hesitation thanks to an ethereal Lady In The Lake, and save Britain from Vortigern's black magic. 

So far so good.  I have no truck with purists saying that Ritchie has changed the story.  It's a story that is endlessly malleable. It's a myth from an oral tradition that takes some shreds of actual history and runs wild, and has done for centuries. I also love how Guy Ritchie gets certain things really right - the clash between the forces of modernity and the old beliefs in magicks - this is Britain  at a time of deeply contested philosophy - pagan vs Christian - Briton vs Roman - you name it. 

Anyway, this is KING ARTHUR with all the energy, vivid characterisation, underdog energy and sharp dialogue of LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS.  What's even more impressive is that despite all the jokes and lad-humour, the movie worked on a deeper level.  There's a particular character moment that actually moved me because I was so invested in the characters. And the way in which Ritchie imagines the Lady in the Lake is stunning. Of course there's also lots of cheap CGI and silly fight scenes but it doesn't matter - because I liked hanging out with this group of usurpers - I loved the moment at the end when order was restored and Goosefat Bill became Ser William again - I loved the diversity of the Knights of the Round Table, and I want my sequel GODAMMIT!

KING ARTHUR has a running time of 123 minutes and is rated PG-13. 

OCEAN'S EIGHT

The OCEAN'S films - when they work - work because they show us a group of people who are all friends in real life, having a really good time getting up to no good.  The original Rat Pack oozed cool and elegance - they created an exclusive guy's club but had the generosity to let us inside for 90 minutes. The cast of the Stephen Soderbergh remake may not have all been best friends in real life, but the relationship between Brad Pitt and George Clooney was real enough, and they all did genuinely look like they were having a blast. Moreover, they were lucky enough to be filmed by Soderbergh with a deliciously luxe, cool, 70s infused kinetic energy, and to have a soundtrack of Dave Grusin-y goodness.

The problem with this new all-girl remake is that it fails to deliver that spark, that fun, that attractive glamour.  I didn't believe these girls were actually friends or had any kind of relationship.  The movie had no tension. It had only one genuine laugh. And at its centre - the message was rather cold. 

Let's break it down. The movie opens with Sandra Bullock playing the late Danny Ocean's sister Debbie. As in the Clooney version, she gets out of jail with a plan for a heist and assembles the gang to pull it off together with her best friend and sidekick Lou (Cate Blanchett in biker chic mode).  There are some surprisingly big names in the ensemble cast and then a smattering of younger musicians in there - Rihanna, Awkwafina - presumably to attract a younger more diverse audience. So much of this film feels made on a spreadsheet by the finance department calculating to maximise revenue. The con is that the girls will get a fashion designer (Helena Bonham Carter playing herself with an Irish accent) to insist that a Hollywood star (Anne Hathaway satirising herself) wears a $150m Cartier necklace to the Met Gala.  From there, the girls will make the actress eat a dodgy bowl of soup, throw up it the bathroom, and have the necklace switched with a 3-D printed fake.  Their jewellery expert (Mindy Kaling) will break up the necklace and the girls will wear different parts of it out. 

All of this sounds promising enough as a basic heist story. The problem is that the girls have no fun together.  Only Anne Hathaway really has any fun with it.  The script contains no tension or wit - and why you'd give such a major project to a first time screenwriter - Olivia Milch - is beyond me. I don't care if she's the producer, she's out of her depth, and the soggy, mediocre script sinks the movie. Then you later on pedestrian direction from Gary Ross (THE HUNGER GAMES) and a really mediocre repetitive score from Daniel Pemberton (ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD). The result is a film that can't really be truly bad given the talented cast, but one that simply fails to ignite. The final nail in the coffin is that this film has no heart. In the first movie we forgive Danny his criminality because he's charismatic and fun, but most of all because he wants to win back his girl.  In this film, his avatar is setting up a treacherous ex (Richard Armitage). This lends a subtly petty and nasty undertone rather than a loving glow. 

OCEAN'S 8 has a running time of 110 minutes and is rated PG-13. The film was released in cinema's this summer. 

MARK FELT: THE MAN WHO BROUGHT DOWN THE WHITE HOUSE

Director Peter Landesman (the superb JFK assassination film - PARKLAND) returns to iconic American history with this character study cum procedural of how Mark Felt - a 30 year veteran of the FBI - helped the Washington Post journalists Woodward and Bernstein expose the White House's involvement in the Watergate robbery and so triggered the resignation of Richard Nixon.

The resulting film is a handsomely shot and acted, compelling drama about a loyal man pushed to protect the integrity of his institution at great personal risk.  That said, he is also shown overstepping the mark in illegally wiretapping in pursuit of a terrorist group.  But overall, we are rightly meant to see Mark Felt as a hero. I loved the shooting style - Washington as a grey town full of grey men in grey suits.  I loved the subtle power plays - men overlooked for promotion - the flexing of political muscle. And I loved that Landesman allowed Felt to look compromised. Yes, he is doing something noble, but is there also a tinge of revenge against the man who got the job he wanted? This is truly nuanced and intelligent film-making and a must-see for all Watergate obsessives. 

MARK FELT: THE MAN WHO BROUGHT DOWN THE WHITE HOUSE has a running time of 103 minutes and is rated PG-13. The film played Toronto 2017 and opened that year. 

ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD

Ridley Scott's new movie is a true life thriller about the kidnapping of the 16 year old oil heir John Paul Getty III (Charlie Plummer) and his billionaire grandfather's refusal to pay the ransom.  There were many sensible reasons not to do this - such as not encouraging or indeed financing further terrorist acts, but as played by Christopher Plummer, Getty I's primary motive seems to be miserliness. There's no shade, no colour. He claims to love his grandchild but we see no evidence of it. Indeed, in Plummer's hands this becomes one of the most convincing and frightening depictions of greed on screen - when Mark Wahlberg's ex CIA fixer asks Getty how much money he would need to feel secure, he roars "more", and we believe him.  I won't spoil the consequences of this miserly response, but suffice to say that it pits Getty against his ex daughter-in-law Gail (Michelle Williams). She is seen as the voice of reason, familial love, and frustration. She's also, thankfully, not without her own smarts in going up against the oil tycoon.

There's lots to like in this thriller - and I genuinely didn't know how it would turn out for poor JPGIII.   Ridley Scott avails himself of some superb location photography, from LA DOLCE VITA recreated Rome, to sunrise in Marrakesh, to the menacing, claustrophobic, winding streets of a Calabrian hilltop town.  Williams and Christopher Plummer give excellent performances, Romain Duris is also superb in a supporting role in the kidnapper with a heart, and this offsets the somewhat banal presence of both Wahlberg and Charlie Plummer.  I also liked the screenwriter's willingness to mix up the linear timeline early on, and show us a younger version of Grandpa Getty and how ruthless he was.   That said, this movie is not without its flaws. It suffers from a lack of pace in its middle section, Scott is clearly not interested in the victim's experience, Wahlberg is just miscast, and Williams, whose performance is good, chooses to adopt a Katherine Hepburn style mid-atlantic accent that kept on pulling me out of the film.  

ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD has a running time of 132 minutes and is rated R. In the UK it is rated 15 for strong violence, injury detail, threat and language.

The film was released in 2017 in the USA, Greece, Israel, Canada, Belgium. France, Malaysia and Estonia. It opened earlier this year in Australia, Italy, Bulgaria, the UK, Ireland, Lithuania and Romania.  It opens on Jan 11th in the Netherlands, on Jan 12th in Finland, Jan 18th in Hong Kong, Jan 25th in Brazil, Denmark, Hungary, Portugal, Singapore, Norway, Poland and Sweden, on Feb 1st in South Korea, on Feb 15th in Germany, on Feb 22nd in Russia, and on Feb 23rd in Spain and Turkey. 

MOLLY'S GAME

Molly Bloom is a real life criminal who ran an illegal high stakes poker game in Hollywood and then New York. She raked the game, laundered money for the Russian mob, and if not illegally then unethically, exploited men with a gambling addiction to enrich herself. Eventually she was caught up in a Federal investigation into the mob and without spoiling the ending, this film sees her battling those charges while recounting her history.  

Bloom is played by a characteristically high class Jessica Chastain, more or less reprising her role in the superb MISS SLOANE. Her Bloom is smart, no-nonsense, and unsympathetic - a woman whose profession is clearly both illegal and unethical - and the game is to guess whether underneath all that selfishness they're a moral compass. Bloom's lawyer, played by Idris Elba, and the director/writer Aaron Sorkin, are convinced.  They give us a film in which Bloom is portrayed as a heroine who refused to sell out her players and ruin their lives by giving the Feds her records. This might be more convincing if played with some nuance - if we didn't have bombastic TWELVE ANGRY MEN speeches from Elba - and if it didn't contradict everything we see of Molly in the film. Yes, she might offer to get a player help with his addiction, but only after she's soaked him for days on end.  Sorkin shows us someone who is a predator on the weak - but he tells us that after all, she really cares about their families. We're also asked to believe that Bloom, as smart as she is, as rapier-fast and witty as her Sorkin dialogue is, didn't realise that when Russian mafiosi turned up with cash in satchels that they weren't money laundering - that she wasn't aiding and abetting pretty nasty crimes from happening. Sorry I'm just not buying it.  The other thing that jarred was Sorkin's trademark mansplaining. We get both the lawyer character and Bloom's father (Kevin Costner) try to explain to her and us why she did what she did. There Sorkin goes again - setting up a smart female character only to cut her off at the knees.

Thus, for all the brilliant acting and snappy dialogue, I just couldn't get into a film whose central character premise I didn't buy in to. I just didn't believe in Sorkin's version of Molly.  And that made the film a long - too long - dull slog through the legal machinations, and an ending that felt unearned. If you want to see Chastain playing a strong female character who actually owns her fate, doesn't need men to explain it to her, in a tightly paced, beautifully photographed movie, check out MISS SLOANE instead. 

MOLLY'S GAME has a running time of 140 minutes and is rated R. In the UK it is rated 15 for strong language, drug misuse and brief violence.

The film played Toronto 2016 and was released last year in Croatia, the Netherlands and the USA. It opened earlier this year in the UK, Ireland, France, Argentina, Greece, Hungary, Kuwait, Portugal, Singapore, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and the USA. It opens on January 11th in Russia, on Jan 19th in Sweden, on Jan 25th in Australia, on Jan 26th in Finland, on Jan 27th in Mexico, on Feb 2nd in Taiwan, on Feb 22nd in Brazil, Denmark, Thailand and Norway, on March 1st in Hong Kong and on March 8th in Germany.

THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E.

THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. is an extraordinarily handsome spy film that a little bit Bond, a little bit MISSION IMPOSSIBLE and a little bit OCEAN'S ELEVEN. It's stylish, slick and elegant but boy is it joyless too.  This Guy Ritchie directed franchise reboot has none of the wit or imagination of his SHERLOCK HOLMES series.  And where Robert Downey Junior and Jude Law are a truly memorable and charismatic double-act, this movie severely lacks any kid of chemistry between the leads.

The movie is set in the 1960s at the height of the Cold War.  Two secret agents, Solo and Kuryakin - one American and one Soviet - come together to save the world from an evil Nazi millionaire couple intent on acquiring their own bomb.  To do so, they have abducted a German scientist, and so our secret agents team up with his daughter, Gaby, who also happens to be very, very good looking.  And I'm not joking. This movie has a very Zoolander vibe to it. Every scene looks like a spread from Mr Porter.  It's not just that Henry Cavill (SUPERMAN) and Armie Hammer (THE LONE RANGER) are very, very good looking as Solo and Kuryakin, but they have been styled to within an inch of their lives and then draped decorously over the cityscapes of luxurious European cities like an advert for aftershave.  And Alicia Vikander gets the full sixties make-over, complete with bouffant hair, go-go boots and Jackie O sunglasses. It's hard to take proceedings too seriously after all that.

STEVE JOBS - BFI London Film Festival 2015 - Closing Night Gala

You can listen to a podcast review of this film here, or subscribe to Bina007 Movie Reviews in iTunes.

Danny Boyle (SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE) is a great director with a kinetic visual style and a great use of dance music. He creates fast-paced films and all his best traits are evident in this new biopic of the iconic Apple founder, Steve Jobs.  But this is not so much a Danny Boyle film as an Aaron Sorkin creation. The screenwriter famous for The West Wing and THE SOCIAL NETWORK has an instantly recognisable style - heavy dialogue - often combative - delivered at fast pace while the characters are on the move.  On top of that style, Sorkin has also chosen a highly theatrical conceit for structuring this movie. Rather than a conventional biopic, he splits the film into three acts, each forty minutes long, and each taking place behind the scenes of one of Apple's iconic shareholder meeting. And in each segment, Steve Jobs, as played by Michael Fassbender (12 YEARS A SLAVE) confronts the same people.  

First up are the techies. We've got Seth Rogen (THE INTERVIEW) in an utterly straight role as Steve Wozniak, Apple co-founder and genuine computer engineer.  He confronts Jobs about his desire to have everything frustratingly closed system and his unwillingness to credit the unsexy but cash-generative Apple II and its team.  We've also got the marvellous Michael Stuhlbarg as Andy Herzfeld, the engineer who we see as being serially bullied by Jobs.  

London Film Fest 2012 Day 2 - BLOOD

BLOOD is a disappointingly British mediocre crime thriller that would perhaps be better suited to the small screen, similar to one of those two hour episodes of an Inspector Rebus novel.  Every action, every moral disintegration, and much of the dialogue is predictable and the only saving graces are the performances from supporting actor Brian Cox and the vivid, elegant cinematography from DP George Richmond (WILD BILL).

Paul Bettany and Stephen Graham plays brothers Joe and Chrissy, both cops in a northern seaside town, growing up on self-aggrandizing tales of harsh policing from their father (Brian Cox), now suffering from Alzheimers. As the movie opens, they  have arrested a former sexual offender for the brutal murder of a  young girl, about the same age as Joe's own daughter.  The man's refusal to confess prompts a drunken Joe to go "Rampart" and the remaining hour sees the consequences of this turn to the dark side of policing. 

Screenwriter Bill Gallagher has a long background in TV drama, notably schmaltzy costume dramas like LARK RISE TO CANDLEFORD and THE PARADISE. BLOOD may be a contemporary cop thriller but it has the same air of inauthenticity and contrivance.  This isn't helped by the casting: it would take a far more engrossing film to force us to suspend our disbelief that Brian Cox, Paul Bettany and Stephen Graham come from the same family given their differing physique and regional/class accents.  There are other directorial choices from Nick Murphy (THE AWAKENING) that seem odd.  Why set the police department in what looks to be an ornate ex Church or City Hall, for instance?  I found the too polished production design deeply at odds with what was evidently trying to be a serious psychological drama.  The two lead performances are also deeply unsatisfying.  A classic example is when Joe receives some bad news and does that cliché thing of crumpling to the floor, raising two hands to his face.

Overall, a disappointing second feature after last year's festival début   That said, I suspect this is down to the casting and script, which suggests that, tied to a better quality project, Nick Murphy could still do good things.   

BLOOD played London 2012.  The running time is 87 minutes. 

London Film Fest 2010 Day 2 - SELF MADE

Turner Prize winning British artist Gillian Wearing's debut feature is a powerful and provocative documentary/ experiment. She takes a handful of ordinary people from the north of England - all volunteers - and puts them in a work-space with a method acting teacher, Sam Rumbelow. Together, they use basic method acting techniques to explore their emotional lives and use that material to create fictional "end-scenes" - little cinematic vignettes that are shown at the end of the movie. The resulting film is a deeply moving exploration of the participants' past lives - many of them are victims of abuse, neglect, violence. I was humbled by how honest and open they were and I was scared in some cases by the emotion on screen. But I think the reason why this movie affected me so much was that it made me consider how many hours a week I spend in the company of actors - and how far the performances I am watching are informed by inner hurt - and how far that is healthy for the actors and exploitative on my part. I mean, in using the method, the actor is basically cannibalising his own past, voluntarily, but how far should we be party to that? I also felt really uncomfortable by the fact that Wearing had clearly chosen the participants because "they had a story to tell" - in other words, she'd gone for the most vulnerable people - and then forced them to mine those vulnerabilities. These participants did not sign up to that, knowing in advance what the method was. So how far is that an exploitation? And shouldn't they have done this with a qualified therapist in the room, rather than an admittedly sympathetic acting teacher? So, a powerful film, to be sure, but problematic in the extreme.

The movie does not yet have a release date.