WAKE UP DEAD MAN: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY***** - BFI London Film Festival 2025 - Opening Night Gala

Rian Johnson has done it again with another fantastically fun and wickedly tricksy murder mystery - the third in his Knives Out franchise. WAKE UP DEAD MAN follows his satire on narcissistic billionaire tech bros (GLASS ONION) with an on-the-nose dissection of contemporary MAGA Christianity’s nasty judgmental power-hungry malevolent brand of religion. 

An absolutely superb Josh O’Connor (also starring in MASTERMIND in this year’s LFF stars as a young kind and earnest priest called Father Judd. He’s sent to a cultish rural church in upstate New York, presided over by Josh Brolin’s wicked fire-and-brimstone preacher Monsignor Wick. Wick is aided and abetted by a Mrs Danvers-like spooky woman-of-all-work Martha (Glenn Close) and her faithful lapdog Samson (Thomas Haden-Church). The parishioners are all seemingly within Wick’s grasp when he’s stabbed in the back in an apparent locked room mystery. We are thirty minutes into the film - so enter Daniel Craig’s deliciously camp Southern detective Benoit Blanc to save our young compassionate priest and reveal who the real murderer is! 

The first thing to say is that this film works brilliantly as a murder mystery, and I say this as someone who just reread and podcasted about every single one of Agatha Christie’s crime novels. The mystery is satisfyingly tricky and intricate and solvable - though I doubt many will. It works in the best tradition of debunking apparently supernatural crimes and a good knowledge of Wilkie Collins and Sherlock Holmes will certainly help you. 

The second thing to say is that the film works equally well as a satire on MAGA and unfeeling religion and ruthless politicians. What’s even better is that it balances cynicism with earnest respect for genuine faith, by balancing the viewpoints of self-confessed heretic Benoit Blanc and the young priest Father Judd. There’s a deeply moving scene between Judd and a receptionist called Louise that shows what faith and ministry can do when administered with compassion. 

Finally, the film is just a damn good time. It’s funny. It has jump scares. It drops in hilarious one-liners about contemporary culture - whether substack or Netflix. And we even get a self-referential Star Wars joke. There is quite literally nothing not to like in this wonderful film. Bring on Knives Out 4!

WAKE UP DEAD MAN has a running time of 140 minutes. It played Toronto and opened London and will be on Netflix on December 12th.

SUPER/MAN: THE CHRISTOPHER REEVE STORY**** - BFI London Film Festival 2024 - Day 6

For my generation, Christopher Reeve is the ultimate superhero - the dreamy, earnest Superman who flew through the skies with Lois Lane. (Sidebar - people think we only got strong female characters now, but I grew up with Princess Leia and Lois Lane, both massively professionally capable and far from blonde Barbies. What a time to be a kid!)  So when Superman was thrown from a horse and paralysed it was shocking and tragic.  He appeared once again at the Oscars making a moving and stirring speech, and then - at least for me - disappeared from view until his death ten years later.  This accomplished new documentary, from directors  Peter Ettedgui (MCQUEEN) and Ian Bonhote, fills in those gaps.

The Christopher Reeve that emerges from this film is an earnest theatre kid who makes it to Juilliard and rooms with his lifelong best friend Robin Williams.  He gets the break to be Superman and off-broadway co-star William Hurt cautions him against it.  Reeve finds international fame but also feels trapped in a certain kind of role, and people's impossible expectations of him as a perfect hero.

In fact he was a complex and flawed man, as we are all flawed. His father did a number on him, raising him in a type of toxic masculinity of hyper-competitiveness and impossible to meet expectations. Reeve was also surrounded by broken marriages and had trouble committing. He met a British woman filming SUPERMAN and had two children with her but didn't marry her and left her to go back to a single life in New York. Five months later he met the woman who would be by his side when the accident happened - Dana - and would actually marry her and have another son.

It's testament to Christopher's family, including his first partner, that they all agree to appear in this film and speak with honesty and vulnerability of what those broken relationships did to them. His elder two children argue that he was more of a present parent after the accident when hyper-competitive athletics were off the table. It's also testament to all three parents that the children seem so close and supportive of each other. I had no idea that the younger son Will lost his mother very soon after losing his father, and his big half-brother really stepped in to provide support. All three were at the London Film Festival screening and it was a privilege to watch this deeply moving film in their presence.

And what of Christopher post-accident?  He launched a foundation and became an activist for scientific research. Some in the disabled community bristled at his search for a cure, and Dana corrected that balance by focussing on care and quality of life. Both seem utterly admirable in their energy and commitment and courage. I was equally moved by the support given by his closest friends, not least Robin Williams. And it utterly broke me when Glenn Close, interviewed extensively here, says she thinks that Robin would still be with us if Christopher had not died.

I would recommend this film to those who loved Superman as children and still feel a thrill when they hear that score. It gives so much depth and insight to the man behind the cape and the extraordinary family who rose to the challenge of his catastrophic accident. I cried, but I was also uplifted. He is still my Superman.

SUPER/MAN: THE CHRISTOPHER REEVE STORY has a running time of 106 minutes and is rated PG-13. It was released in the USA last month and will be released in the UK on November 1st.

HILLBILLY ELEGY

J.D.Vance's Hillbilly Elegy was something of a publishing sensation and I very much enjoyed reading his biography.  It appealed to me as a tale of a young kid born into the opioid crisis that bred Trump's base, complete with a drug-addict mum, rescued by a a battle-axe of a grandma, who somehow gets himself into an Ivy League law school and the Marines. Along the way, Vance speaks sympathetically about the social circumstances he grew up in while also criticising some of the more feckless behaviour it breeds.  This willingness to not simply to blame structural issues but also personal choices made the book controversial. 

I was surprised that the book was inspiring a narrative fiction movie rather than a documentary.  Things that might pass as credible in real life seem broad and crass and worst of all patronising when fictionalised. And there's not a little poverty porn about Ron Howard's new film. Glenn Close stars as "mamaw" complete with frizzy afro, drooping latex boobs and stomach and hideous glasses and teeth.  It's all so patronising and broad as to be offensive. And then we have Amy Adams as the addict mum Bev - another broad performance in a thankless one-dimensional role. Speaking of which, I give you poor Freida Pinto as the protagonist's supportive college girlfriend who seems to exist merely to further his career. As for the hero? He just comes across as banal and forgettable. I didn't want him to succeed - I wanted the movie to be over. 

HILLBILLY ELEGY is rated R and has a running time of 113 minutes. It was released on Netflix on November 2th.

THE WIFE

THE WIFE is a taut, tense relationship drama that pivots on a central mystery that is revealed at its half-way point. I will therefore review the film without spoilers and strongly advise you to avoid them before watching.

THE WIFE begins as an almost placid, banal, relationship movie about an ageing rogue of a writer (Jonathan Pryce) and his quiet, reserved help-meet (Glenn Close).  She seems like a rather uninteresting character: elegant, quiet, mostly concerning herself with travel arrangements.  She says little, and when she does it's to calm the waters, especially between the author and his son (Max Irons) - another putative author desperate for his father's encouragement and approval. 

The plot sees the author awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature to his evident glee and greed - and the whole family decamp to Sweden for a claustrophobic and intense set of press interviews, rehearsals, cultural events and ceremonies.  It's in this pressure cooker environment that a literary biographer and journalist, played by Christian Slater, starts trying to ingratiate himself with various members of the family, provoking a final act unleashing of pent up recrimination.  And all this is illustrated for context with flashback scenes to the author and his wife meeting at college, and trying to get published in a less inclusive time.

What I love about this film is quite simply the quality of the writing (Jane Anderson - OLIVE KITTERIDGE) and acting.  The writing is so taut and intense that the movie almost plays as a stage-play between the author and his wife, and I was surprised that the film was based on a novel rather than a play. That said, the film didn't suffer, as some stage plays do, from feeling artificial and stagey when put on screen.  The director Bjorn L Runge does a great job of using location shooting and the grandeur of some of the ceremonies to open up the visual scope of the film.

Nonetheless, this film is a chamber piece and lives or dies by the quality of its acting. And like its protagonist, THE WIFE is a movie that is quiet, elegant, unshowy, but with profoundly held emotions. Glenn Close plays Joan with a stillness that's echoed in her younger flashback self, played by her real-life daughter Annie Starke. We see both avatars observe, absorb, almost passively.  It's a set of beautifully controlled and thus powerful performances that play powerfully against Pryce/Harry Lloyd's bombast. Of the minor characters, I also really loved DOWNTON ABBEY's Elzabeth McGovern as a jaded female author.  

As the movie rolls into its final act, what I was concerned about was that it would sacrifice the slow build of creating a nuanced character for a pyrotechnic showdown, but no - that confrontation when it comes rings true to the characters it had established. All of the wife's actions and reactions felt authentic, plausible, even admirable. And I loved the rather delicate, slippery final shot. 

THE WIFE is rated R and has a running time of 99 minutes. It played Toronto 2017 and was released last year. It is now available to rent and own.  

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY

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



GUARDIAN OF THE GALAXY is hands-down the most fun I've had in a cinema over the past year. It's goofy, funny, smart, touching and at times plain balls-out crazy.  But when the lights came up I could have happily sat down to watch the movie all over again, and I can't wait for the sequel.  It reminded me of all the reasons we loved cinema as kids - of all those Saturday morning serial inspired movies like STAR WARS and INDIANA JONES with their epic quests and buddy comedy relationships. But even better, it reminded me of the richly imagined almost gothic worlds of Guillermo del Toro movies - worlds where people (and raccoons!) look battered and beaten rather than shiny and new.  There was something nostalgic about the very concept of the movie - a throwback to the great eighties action comedies - that went beyond its hokey mix-tape seventies sound-track.  I mean, I CARED about the talking tree and the psycho-raccoon, god help me. And I want to know what happens next!

HOODWINKED! - it's better than bad: it's good!

HOODWINKED! is a wiity, clever, new animated movie that spoofs the Little Red Riding Hood story. It comes jam-packed with movie and TV references and takes the mickey out of lots of musical styles and film genres - from xXx to MI2 to film noir. The biggest wink to the audience comes in the complex narrative structure. Instead of the linear story-telling one might expect from a kids film we have a RASHOMON style structure. As the movie opens, "Red" has entered granny's cottage to find the wolf in disguise. Into the mix dives a psychotic axe-weilding wood-cutter. Soon the police have arrived, cordoned off the area and have the four suspects in custody. Because the real beef is that a thief is running around the Deep Dark Forest stealing all the cookie recipes and putting small independent cookie makers out of business. The movie shows us the events of the fatefull night from the point of view of each of the four suspects - each time building up a trail of evidence to the real Baddie.

The animation is a lot of fun with plenty of detail for those of you who will be suckered into repeated viewings on DVD with the kids. And the voice cast does just fine - notably featuring Anne Hathaway as "Red" and Glenn Close as the Granny. But the real market for this movie is not the under-tens - they'll find some of the characters fun but aren't going to stick with the convoluted plot. The people who will enjoy this movie are the kind of people who love Ren and Stimpy and wander through the Marienplatz singing The Log song*. (Yes, Gibbons, that means you!) Because the best of the humour is definitely in The Log song tradition, not least the Schnitzel song.

So, is this a recommendable kids flick? Probably not. But if you have a bunch of friends who love to quote movies and watch the Cartoon Network well into their twenties, then this is a fun movie to go see.

HOODWINKED! opened in the US at the end of 2005 and has since opened around the world, finishing up in the UK last week and finally rolling into Brazil next week and in Germany in December 2006. HOODWINKED! is available on Region 1 DVD. *What rolls down stairs alone or in pairs, rolls over your neighbor's dog? What's great for a snack and fits on your back? It's Log, Log, Log! It's Log, Log, it's big, it's heavy, it's wood. It's Log, Log, it's better than bad, it's good! Everyone wants a log! You're gonna love it, Log! Come on and get your log! Everyone needs a Log!