THE DEAD DON'T DIE

THE DEAD DON'T DIE is an unashamedly indulgent movie who's success relies on the audience wanting to be in on the joke.  I went along for the ride and found it to be uproariously funny, silly, shaggy and joyful - and hands down one of my favourite films of 2019.  This isn't a film for those over-obsessed with tight-plotting, consistent pace or an aversion to jump the shark moments. But as I said, if you go with the silliness, there's a lot of fun to be had.

The film opens in small town USA, reminiscent of original Twin Peaks. There are some slow-witted nice cops, played by Bull Murray, Adam Driver and Chloe Sevigny. And there's policing a dispute between Hermit Bob (Tom Waits) and MAGA-supporter Farmer Frank (Steve Buscemi).  There's pace is lackadaisical and their hearts decent.  It soon becomes apparent that polar fracking has caused the earth to move off its axis resulting in whacky daylight hours and a zombie apocalypse. The rest of the film sees how our heroes cope with the impending doom ("kill the head") - not to mention the newly arrived Scottish mortician with hardcore Samurai skills (Tilda Swinton). 

We get lots of references to George Romero, including an update on his consumerist satire, as zombies wonder round in desperate search of wifi.  We also get a hopeful message about how "the children are our future". But mostly this is a film of supreme visual comedy - a shot of Adam Driver pulling into a diner parkway in a tiny red convertible Smart car - a shot of Tilda Swinton applying 1980s New Romantic makeup to a corpse - or a re-animated Iggy Pop hunting for coffee.  

Any film is worth watching that gives us even one of those things. So yes, I get all the critics and I see the film's weaknesses but I just dont' care, because when it delivers it's absolutely hilarious!

THE DEAD DON'T DIE is rated R and has a running time of 104 minutes. The film played Cannes 2019 and was released in the USA in June. It opens in the UK on Friday.

WILSON

To quote the back of Daniel Clowes' darkly brilliant graphic novel, "Wilson is a big-hearted slob, a lonesome bachelor, a devoted father and husband, an idiot, a sociopath, a delusional blowhard, a delicate flower, 100% Wilsonesque!"  In this new movie from director Craig Johnson (THE SKELETON TWINS), Clowes adapts his own work faithfully to give us a film that is funny, melancholy and sometimes plain crazy.  Woody Harrelson plays the protagonist as a shambolic man with no sense of proper behaviour.  Spurred by the death of his father he tracks down his ex-wife Pippi (Laura Dern - CERTAIN WOMEN), who's now a recovering addict. She tells him she had the child he thought she aborted, and put her up for adoption.   Much of the rest of the film concerns this deeply dislikable and yet somehow charming man trying to forge a relationship with the girl (Isabella Amara - SPIDERMAN THE HOMECOMING) and navigate the wild twists that life throws at him.  To say more would be to spoil the surprise. 

PATERSON - BFI London Film Festival 2016 - Day 7

Move over LA LA LAND. Lovers of romance have a new movie to watch - the quietly beautiful and unassuming love-letter, PATERSON.  Directed by Jim Jarmusch, the film stars Adam Driver (THE FORCE AWAKENS) as a mild-mannered bus driver called Paterson, who also happens to live in Paterson, New Jersey.  As he drives the morning shift, he smiles wistfully to himself as he listens to the funny conversations of his passengers.  Some of things he notices and sees find their way into his poetry (written by real-life poet Ron Padgett), much of which is addressed to his girlfriend Laura (Golshifteh Farahani).  She is a creative soul too - decorating their house, her clothes and cupcakes in abstract black and white patterns.  She utterly supports her boyfriend in his poetry and he her wide-eyed dreams of success.   At first they seem somewhat naive, but this is a loving relationship played without irony.  I suddenly realised how rare this is to see on screen - a couple quite simply in love - accommodating of each other's foibles - supportive.  

Pantheon movie of the month - ERASERHEAD

David Lynch - master of surreal suburban horror. Things that seemed egregious and silly to reviewers of his first feature back in 1977 (check out the dismissive, excoriating review in VARIETY) now seem like early examples of style and themes that have been consistently mined over his career. To my shame, I hadn't seen ERASERHEAD until yesterday despite being a hard-core Lynch fan. (Two weeks ago, some friends and I did a Twin Peaks Series 1 marathon - Series 2 is next weekend).

What shocked me was how much now-classic Lynchian tropes were present in ERASERHEAD and how, even in his first film, he managed to find a perfect balance between beauty and horror. Take the haunting song sung by the deformed Lady in the Radiator. It's as beautiful as the song Donna and Maddie sing with James in Twin Peaks but far more unsettling. Even the design is similar to later works - little things like the pattern on the floor, or the style of dress.

The plot sees a repressed man with iconically frizzy hair father a deformed child, perhaps the result of the machinations of the Man in the Planet. The mother leaves him, unable to cope with the child's mournful crying. The father is plagued with nightmares in which his severed head is sold to a pencil company to be used as erasers. He has an affair with the Beautiful Girl Across the Hall, who then cuckolds him. In a fit of pique, the father unwraps the swaddling bandages of his baby, only to find that they are part of the baby's flesh. In an electrical storm, he is transported to another place with the Lady in the Radiator.

It's pointless to try and lay down what all this means. Far better to linger on the nightmarish, Freudian images of a father threatened by his own offspring - visions of impotence - the dread of suburban family existence - the possibility of spiritual salvation.

This movie is source-gold for Lynchians, and I suspect, more annoying to non-Lynchians, than anything else in his oeuvre. It's obscure, but in a manner that provokes emotional, visceral responses, as opposed to the more opaque, and frustrating INLAND EMPIRE. It has been referenced by tens of films, its music has been covered by many a band, and it was reputedly one of Kubrick's favourite films. It prompted the offer to direct ELEPHANT MAN and also, rather bizarrely RETURN OF THE JEDI. You can see a lot in ERASERHEAD, but I'm not sure whether you can see anything to make you think of cute cuddly Ewoks.

ERASERHEAD was released in 1977, after a five-year, cash-constrained shoot.

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

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

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

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

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

THE NAMESAKE - lyrical immigrant story

THE NAMESAKE is a beautifully produced, deeply affecting immigrant story, based on the novel by Jhumpa Lahiri. The team behind SALAAM BOMBAY and MISSISSIPI MASALA (director Mira Nair and writer Sooni Taraporevala)and cinematographer Frederick Elmes deliver a sensitive adaptation that will, I hope, resonate beyond the ex-pat communities in America and Europe.

The two-hour drama centres on a charismatic but self-contained Bengali academic called Ashoke. An avid fan of author, Nikolai Gogol, he undergoes a traditional arranged marriage and takes his young bride to America. They have two children, move to the suburbs and have a loving, happy life. This all sounds rather banal, but thanks to absolutely stunning performances by Irrfan Khan and Tabu, this relationship is captivating. It is rare to find two such memorable characters - and such an enchanting portrait of a quietly happy marriage - on screen.

The real drama of the story centres on Ashoke and Ashima's son, formally named Nikhil (a name he can conveniently shorten to Nick in later life), but lovingly known as Gogol. Gogol grows up as an all-american kid and much of the second half of the movie centres on how he comes to terms with both aspects of his life. I found this a far less successul plot strand - although still by far more interesting than most movies. The reason is that Gogol is played by Kal Penn who, while a highly gifted comic actor, simply does not have the chops for such challenging dramatic material*. Another problem is that Gogol's love interests - a Bengali played by Zulheika Robinson and a preppie played by Jacinda Barrett - are thinly drawn: arguably casualties of compressing the novel into a two-hour run-time.

Despite these flaws, THE NAMESAKE remains a fascinating, finely-observed, moving story. Highly recommended.

THE NAMESAKE played Toronto and London 2006 and is on release in the USA, India, France, Italy and the UK. It opens in Australia and Singapore on April 5th and in Belgium, Mexico, the Netherland and Spain in May. It opens on June 14th in Germany. *Although it is ironic to note that Kal Penn has also shortened his Indian name to make it more Hollywood-friendly.

BROKEN FLOWERS - beautiful, bitter-sweet comedy

I have to say that I was pretty much guaranteed to love BROKEN FLOWERS. It is directed by one of my favourite film-makers, Jim Jarmusch, and stars one of my favourite actors, "Bill Groundhog-Day, Ghostbustin'-ass Murray!" Throw in some nice support work from Jeffrey Wright (last seen in the flaccid Syriana), Sharon Stone, Jessica Lange, Chloe Sevigny and Tilda Swinton, and you have a recipe for an engaging, bittersweet comedy.

Bill Murray reprises his role as the professionally successful, world-weary, cynical romantic from the infinitely inferior flick, LOST IN TRANSLATION. His girlfriend leaves him on the grounds that he has commitment and emotional issues. He also receives a letter from an unidentified ex-girlfriend who claims to have fathered his child. Murray barely reacts to these events - his ennui prevents him from doing anything more positive than drifting to his neighbour's house for morning coffee. Indeed, Murray spends much of the film reacting obliquely to increasingly strange things happening to him. Therein lies the comedy. When a butt-naked teenage girl called Lolita walks past him, he wears a bemused smile. The "WTF?!" reaction we have is distilled into a slightly raised eyebrow. Brilliant.

Luckily for Murray, his neighbour Winston, played with great comic dash by Jeffrey Wright, is on hand to play amateur detective*, and sends Murray on a road-trip to visit all his ex-es and find his son. Wright's character, Winston, is the kind of stand-up family guy who reassures his kids that he isn't smoking tobacco but 'cheeba, and who always has a magnifying glass to hand. He genuinely cares that Murray should get ot of his funk. Anyhoo, Murray goes travelling; strange stuff happens. Maybe he meets his son, maybe he learns something about himself, maybe not. This is not the kind of film where you get trite answers. At the end of the movie, all that Murray's character can cobble together from his experience is that: "The past is gone, I know that. The future isn't here yet, whatever it's going to be. So, all there is, is this. The present. That's it."

What does Jim Jarmusch bring to his mix, apart from his genius in writing the part for Murray and the wry dialogue? Every single inch of every frame of this flick is wonderfully cosntructed. The production design, the positioning of the props, the camera angle - everything is just right. For instance, there is one scene where Murray is sitting alone looking mournful on a chi-chi designer couch in his well-appointed house. On the coffee table in front of him is a bottle of Moet and a full glass. Marvin Gaye is playing in the background. You don't get more tragic.

BROKEN FLOWERS may not be all bangs and whistles - and it may not have answers to all the key questions of life - but it does make you smile an awful lot. You can't say fairer than that.

BROKEN FLOWERS won the Grand Prix at Cannes 2005. It went on cinematic release in Autumn 2005 and is now available on DVD.