MANCHESTER BY THE SEA - BFI LFF 2016 - Day 5

Kenneth Lonergan (MARGARET) has created a masterpiece in his tragicomedy MANCHESTER BY THE SEA, showing in what is turning out be an exceptionally good year at the BFI London Film Festival for bittersweet drama. The film stars Casey Affleck as Lee Chandler - a small-town boy who fled to Boston after a personal tragedy, but is brought back when his beloved elder brother Joe (Kyle Chandler - FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS) dies.  Joe leaves a detailed will making Lee the guardian of his teenage son Patrick (Lucas Hedges - THE SLAP) and the pair seem ideally suited.  The uncle and nephew have a genuine emotional bond and shared memories, delineated in flashback.  They share the same foul-mouthed sense of humour and seem to understand when the other needs space.  But they are fundamentally different.  Patrick is young and popular - he's on sports teams, he's in a band, he has a bunch of great friends and two girlfriends.  He great good humour make the few moments when we see his grief break through all the more powerful. But Patrick's ebullience also serves as a counter-point to Lee's almost ghost-like presence and a reminder of what he might have been like before his own personal tragedy.  The point of the movie - its emotional struggle - is to show whether Lee can somehow move beyond his past and become the father-figure that Patrick needs him to be.

TRUE STORY

TRUE STORY is essentially a two-hander between often-time comedic collaborators James Franco and Jonah Hill.  In this film, they try their hand at a straight psychological drama with limited effect.  Hill plays real-life New York Times journalist Michael Finkel who was sacked in the early 1990s for falsifying sources on a story.  Per Finkel/Hill he was doing so to enhance an important ethical story for the greater good.  The result is that Finkel is washed up until a murderer on the lam decides to appropriate his identity in order, in turns out, to lure him into a relationship. And this forms the body of the film. We see James Franco play Christian Longo, accused of killing his family, give up pieces of that story to Finkel in exchange for advice on how to better write his testimony.

Prisoner/journalist stories of this kind have the capacity to be quite spectacular, and at their apex - Capote and In Cold Blood - have the ability to ask frightening questions about how far each side needs the other and is complicit in the other's crimes.  How far does Finkel let Longo manipulate him because he needs the story that resurrects his career? This sort of material requires great skill on the part of both actors - we need to see and feel layers of motivation and ambiguity.  I'm afraid that I just didn't get that from either actor here.  Moreover, and this must be more down to the screenwriter and first-time feature director Rupert Goold - the pacing felt sluggish and the movie overall lacking in tension.  So overall, there's very little here to attract an audience either on the big screen or on DVD.

TRUE STORY has a running time of 99 minutes and is rated R. It played Sundance 2015 and was released earlier this year in the USA, Canada, Brazil, Spain, the UK, Ireland, Germany and France.  It is now available to rent and own.

3:10 TO YUMA - outstanding Western

After GIRL INTERRUPTED, COP LAND and WALK THE LINE, here's another great film from director James Mangold. This time it's a remake of the 1957 western, 3:10 TO YUMA, itself based on a short story by Elmore Leonard. There's nothing pioneering or rocket-sciency about this movie: it's just a gripping story, really well-told.

The ever-brilliant Christian Bale plays an indebted Arizona rancher who commands no respect, even in his own eyes. In a last ditch attempt to raise some cash and do something heroic, he escorts a notorious thief (Russell Crowe) to the train station in another town, where he will take the 3:10 to Yuma prison. The small posse gets eliminated one by one as Crowe's charming but immoral villain takes them out en route. And all the time, they are being followed by the villain's gang, not least a nasty but dandy-ish side-kick, played by Ben Foster in a truly break-out performance. The drama of the piece is in the confrontation between a deeply moral but pathetic man and an amoral swaggering anti-hero. The tension builds to a thrilling final shoot-out from the town-hotel to the train station. Will Bale's character get the villain to the train? And how far will the villain, who now has a grudging sympathy for the hero, collude in his own arrest. It makes for a brilliant character play, with the added bonus of some superb action sequences and handsome design and photography. Not to be missed.

3:10 TO YUMA is already on release in Russia and the USA. It opens in the UK on September 14th, in Iceland on September 28th, in Norway on October 12th, in Italy on October 19th, in Singapore on October 25th, in Turkey on November 2nd, in Argentina on November 8th, in Estonia on November 20th and in Finland on January 11th 2008.

THE NOTORIOUS BETTIE PAGE - brilliant woman; brilliant movie

THE NOTORIOUS BETTIE PAGE is the latest film from the director of cult movie, AMERICAN PYSCHO, Mary Harron. The movie is a biopic of Bettie Page - one of the most famous pin-ups of the 1950s.

The first thing to say is that THE NOTORIOUS BETTIE PAGE is a beautifully produced film. Using black and white and colour photography, Harron creates a picture postcard nostalgic vision of the US in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. The sets, costumes and music are all perfect - and for those of us with a bent toward the music of Artie Shaw and Patsy Cline, this is a soundtrack to die for.

Against this background we have Bettie Page herself - brought to life by Gretchen Mol. It's a break-out performance. Mol conveys Page's complex mix of intelligence, religious fervour and sheer unabashed delight in her own naked form. The combination of Bettie's peaches and cream megawatt smile and the bondage gear is devestating.

I also love that Harron resists doing the usual melodramatic rise and fall of the tragic heroine schtick. Bettie does have a horrid upbringing in Nashville, but this is handled discreetly and with sensitivity. At the height of her notoriety she keeps a level, thoughtful head. And when she does give it all up for a life of preaching there is no shock conversion or melo-dramatic renouncement - she simply starts reading the Bible to passers-by. And no, she is not ashamed of what she did - she's just following a different path now. Best of all, Harron avoids the big-drama Congressional Hearing show-down that I feared we were building up to throughout the movie.

Overall then, THE NOTORIOUS BETTIE PAGE is a cracking movie. It's always a pleasure to see a strong, beautiful, in-control woman on screen. And it's great to see a textured view both of the religious South and the New York porn industry. Others may patronise Bettie for her apparently simple-minded belief in Jesus, but the movie never does. And while Bettie perhaps got into poses a little racier than she at first realised, there is undoubtedly more overt sexual exploitation in her wholesome childhood town than in the photographic studios of New York.

What more can I say? This is a beautifully produced, fascinating movie about an intelligent, beautiful woman who gains control over her life and happiness. And all without an ounce of Schmaltz.

THE NOTORIOUS BETTIE PAGE premiered at Toronto 2005 and went on limited release in the US & Canada in April 2006. It goes on release in the UK on Friday and comes out on Region 1 DVD in September.