CALIFORNIA SCHEMIN'***

X-MEN actor James McAvoy turns director in this charming, fast-paced, you-cannot-believe-it's-true story of two young Scottish lads who adopt Eminem-adjacent American personas to fool the prejudiced London music industry into giving them a recording contract.  Unable to attract interest as "the rapping Proclaimers", Billy and Gavin get a recording contract as their California avatars Silibil and Brains, and predictably proceed to exploit their new-found access to booze and girls.  They want to reveal their true identities on a famous MTV show live on air, and show up the music industry as bigots, because will they have the courage to go through with it? And if they don't, what will lying to their colleagues, friends, family and even to themselves to do their psyches?

The arc of this film is pretty unexciting and predictable. Decent kids get fame, go crazy, fall out with each other, turn their backs on all that is wholesome and true, before a last-act redemption.  What makes the film worth watching are the kinetic, grab-you-by-the-balls direction;  the compelling central performances from Samuel Bottomley and Sean Maclean Ross, who have to rap as well as act; and the sheer insanity of the story.  After I watched this film, I went on to watch the documentary, "The Great Hip Hop Hoax", and to read the real-life Gavin's autobiography. If anything, this feature film re-telling underplays just how good the boys were musically, just how far they got in the music industry, and just what utter nightmares they were when they started exploiting alcohol and women. 

A special shout out to actress Lucy Halliday (currently starring in The Testaments), who forms the calm moral centre of the film.  There's something really transfixing about her stoicism and quiet, understated performance.  Where another actress or another director might have asked her for histrionics, Halliday just radiates good sense, disenchantment and a quiet fierce strength as Billy's girlfriend Mary.

CALIFORNIA SCHEMIN' has a running time of 107 minutes. It played Toronto 2025 and is currently on release in the UK.

THE PROM

THE PROM is a ridiculous frothy neon-lit confection that perfectly fills our need for joy in this winter Covid lockdown. I know it's taken heat for a) not casting its original Broadway cast but upping the ante with big Hollywood stars and b) not casting an actual gay man but James Corden playing a very cliched camp gay man but I honestly do not care because the result is just wonderful! Meryl Streep and Corden are superb as an old down-on-their-luck, woefully un-self-aware couple of Broadway stars! Corden is just very good in this role! Despite their narcissism and delusion we root for them and their two friends - a similarly hapless chorus girl played by Nicole Kidman and a barman played by Andrew Rannells. 

This wonderfully kooky foursome cynically jump on a social media story about a teenage lesbian who isn't allowed to go to her homophobic small-town high school prom.  They swoop into town and lobby in her favour, but when the rest of the town cold shoulders her by not turning up, they throw her an inclusive prom of her very own. The dramatic tension comes from whether her girlfriend will come out, despite the fact that her mum (Kerry Washington) is homophobic; and whether James Corden's characters mum (Tracey Ullman) will finally accept him. But suffice to say that this all ends in a wonderful show-stopping tune with enough glitter and neon-light to banish the Covid blues.

This film is cheesy, predictable, progressive wishful thinking but damned if I didn't shed a happy tear by the end. Like SCHITT'S CREEK, this film shows us the world as it could be, and how joyous a thing it is to behold. 

THE PROM is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 130 minutes. It was released on Netflix on December 11th.

TROLLS WORLD TOUR

TROLLS WORLD TOUR is yet another film that should've been released in cinemas but is now available for you to stream at home. And I'm pleased to report that it's a delightful movie - and a worthy successor to the 2016 original.  

In this sequel, Queen Poppy (Anna Kendrick) and her best friend Branch (Justin Timberlake) are living happily in their world of pop-music loving happy trolls. That is until they realise that the world is full of all different kinds of troll - and shock horror! not all of them like pop music! Some are into rock, or reggaeton, K-Pop, classical music or country.  Back in the day, their troll ancestors decided that the differences between the trolls were to great for them to live (and sing!) in harmony, so they all went to live in their isolated communities.  In the present day, a rock music loving troll called Barb wants to reunite all these trolls, and restore harmony by playing a magical power chord that makes them all love rock music. At first Poppy also buys into the idea that they should all be united, although for her this means loving pop music.  And so begins a short film about learning that people are better off doing what they love, and that true harmony comes from respecting difference rather than enforcing unity.

What I love about these films is how wonderfully imagined they are - the characters are so adorable - the colours so bright - the songs so infectious. The designers clearly had fun creating characters to embody the spirit of the different music styles - with a particular shout out to whoever came up with the look for Kelly Clarkson's country singer, complete with piled up Dolly Parton hair. This isn't a film with the knowing cynicism of SHREK. It's just genuine heart-felt heart-warming earnest fun.  And I think that's truly what we need right now.

TROLLS WORLD TOUR has a running time of 90 minutes and is rated PG. It is available on streaming services. 

PETER RABBIT

There's no meta humour in PETER RABBIT that will appeal to adults - no smart-arse wise-cracking pop-culture snark.  This live-action animation combo is a very old-fashioned slapstick comedy with a warm heart, earnest and charming in equal measure.  

The film opens with Beatrix Potter's iconic mischievous rabbits - Peter (James Corden), Flopsy (Margot Robbie), Mopsy (Elizabeth Debicki), Cotton Tail (Daisy Ridley) and Benjamin (Colin Moody) poaching scrumptious carrots from Mr McGregor's garden before escaping to his neighbour the lovely Bea's house.  When McGregor senior dies, Peter thinks he's victorious and can move back into the house once occupied by his beloved parents. The only problem is that Mr McGregor's nephew (Domnhall Gleeson) moves in and falls for Bea (Rose Byrne). Of course,  the OCD neat-freak McGregor Jr can't admit he hates the rabbits for fear of losing Bea, so the two sides engage in a covert slapstick war that's a bit like Home Alone with the rabbits as Macauley Culkin and McGregor as the trespasser. 

The resulting film is predictable and hokey but nonetheless beautifully animated, heart-warming and genuinely fun.  

PETER RABBIT has a running time of 95 minutes and is rated PG. The movie is available to rent and own.

THE LADY IN THE VAN - Crimbo Binge-watch #1

THE LADY IN THE VAN is the very funny, rather moving true story of an old homeless lady - Mrs Fletcher - who was taken in by the famous writer Alan Bennett.  Maybe "taken in" is too strong.  She lived in a ramshackle van, had no bathing facilities, and sold small items for money.  She parked up her van outside various houses in a street in Camden until Bennett took pity on her and let her live in his driveway and use his lavatory.   What begins as a kind of bizarre fascination turns into an odd sort of friendship, sustained over decades, culminating in an understanding of what drove her to madness, and a play, then film, for the author. 

The result is a film that is - typically Bennett!  Wry in its observations of English class niceties - the tolerance of a homeless woman by middle-class pretentious people who think they are somehow being charitable in their condescension - and yet that odd way into which English people will transform something unpleasant into a national treasure. And let's be clear about how unpleasant Mrs Fletcher's hygiene and habits could be!  

In front of the lens, Alex Jennings is superb as not just one Bennett, but two - as the author turns into his own interlocutor - a fantastic conceit that avoids the dreaded voiceover. Maggie Smith gives Fletcher more than just the Dowager Duchess' acerbic wit but also real pathos. And occasionally there's some provocative stuff about the demands that religion makes of us.  This film is both intelligent and moving - a real delight. 

THE LADY IN THE VAN is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 104 minutes. It was released in 2015.

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. 

TROLLS - BFI London Film Festival 2016 - Day 4

TROLLS is an adorable, heart-warming, smart new animated children’s film from the folk at Dreamworks. It creates a world in which the happy, huggable, fun-loving trolls are on the run from the mean sad Bergens who think the only way they can be happy is to eat a troll. The trolls are supposedly safely in hiding until a super loud fun party arranged by Princess Poppy (Anna Kendrick) gives away their hiding place to the evil Chef Bergen (Christine Baranski) who wants to cook them for her King (Christopher Mintz-Plasse). This prompts Poppy to go on an adventure to rescue her captured friends with the help of the one unhappy, sarcastic Troll called Branch (Justin Timberlake). But once she finds her friends, Poppy's mission changes. She wants to help a lowly Bergen scullery maid (Zooey Deschanel) find true love with the Bergen King and show all the Bergens that happiness comes from within, rather than from eating a cute little Troll.

INTO THE WOODS

INTO THE WOODS is a sanitised an anodyne version of the Stephen Sondheim musical that supposedly shows us the dark side of fairytales.  This is, of course, material far better and more deeply explored by Angela Carter in her books and with Neil Jordan in his 1984 gothic horror classic THE COMPANY OF WOLVES - a movie on which I have recorded a full length DVD commentary, which can be found here.  The Sondheim musical is, by contrast, a work that tries to show the dark backing of the mirror - death, disenchament - but never reached the psychosexual depths of Carter.  It has a two act structure - in the first a variety of familiar fairy-tale characters journey into the woods with many of the threads tied together in the story of the baker and his wife who need to collect a handful of fairy-tale items and so lift the curse that prevents them from having a baby.  We meet Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, some Princes and Jack and the Beanstalk and all more or less get what they want. But then, in the second act we see that fairytales don't end happily ever after. We see death, infidelity, and the high cost of "winning".

All of this is good post-modern stuff, except a few decades too late to pack a real punch.  I wonder how kids in the post-Shrek era will view this rather tame revisionism.  None of this is helped by Disney trying to keep the movie to a PG certificate and running shy of a 3 hour running time. This means that the pivotal, albeit it largely off-screen character of the baker's father - the man who starts so much of the plot - is omitted.  Much of the violence is toned down and character motivation is subtly altered. The result is a wolf with a lesser bite.

Overall, I did still enjoy the film although I wouldn't want to see it again. The acting is just fine, the production design beautiful and the cinematography really very good indeed.  The only misfires are, for me, too (and two) campy performances from Meryl Streep as the witch and Johnny Depp as the Wolf, and the aforementioned ellipses.

INTO THE WOODS has a running time of 125 minutes and is rated PG. The movie is on release in the USA, UAE, South Korea, Canada, Kuwait, Bulgaria, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine, Cyprus, Greece, Hungary, Papua New Guinea, Portugal, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Kenya, Romania, South Africa, Australia, Czech Republic, Croatia, Macedonia, New Zealand, Slovenia, the UK and Ireland.  It opens later in January in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Belgium, Luxembourg, Peru, Thailand, Spain, Iceland, Pakistan, France, the Philippines, Brazil, Chile and the Netherlands. It opens in February in Argentina, Mexico, Poland, Taiwan, Austria, Germany, Israel, Turkey, Venezuela and Japan. It opens on March 14th in Japan, March 26th in Denmark, March 27th in Norway, on April 1st in Sweden, April 2nd in Italy, on April 17th in Estonia, on April 19th in China and on April 24th in Lithuania.

PLANET 51 - harmless, disposable fun

PLANET 51 is the Meg Ryan of kids animation. It's not flashy, ground-breaking or breath-taking. Rather, it's harmless, banal, and mildy amusing in parts. As Christmas entertainment for bored kids, you could fare worse, but this is no TOY STORY.

The concept is clever. Instead of aliens invading earth, with all the predictable genre-defining consequences, earthlings invade an alien planet. Or rather, a narcissistic astronaut (voiced by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson) lands on a planet of little green men and women. The kicker is that the aliens are just as versed in pop culture and B-movies, and are just as petrified of the "alien" as we would be. In fact, one of the most memorable and endearing things about this film is the beautiful and witty translation of the look of late 1950s/early 1960s small-town America to the alien planet.

Unfortunately, the story doesn't really live up to the concept, because there really isn't one. The astronaut lands, gets separated from his ship, hides out with our alien teen hero (Justin Long) and then tries to get back to his ship. On the way, his robot (a dead ringer for Wall-E) tries to hook up with him and his alien helper tries to hook up with a hot alien chick (Jessica Biel). The problem is that the guy we're meant to empathise with as our hero is pretty whiny and dull, and the other person we might empathise with, the astronaut, is an insufferable bore. It's never good when the little robot has more personality than the hero. (As a sidenote, I also don't get why Dwayne Johnson couldn't have voiced a coloured astronaut?)

So, where does that leave us? PLANET 51 works well as a namecheck of alien invasion classics, and adults will get a certain kick out of that. There's probably enough slapstick humour, not to mention the cute robot, and that'll keep the kids happy. Happy, but in a sort of disposable, single-serving way.

PLANET 51 was released in November in the US, Malaysia, Peru, Russia, Ukraine, Canada, Italy, Argentina, Georgia, Greece, Kazakhstan, Brazil, Cyprus, Mexico and Spain. It opened earlier in December in the Philippines, Germany, Kuwait, Portugal, Iceland, the UK, Australia, Israel, New Zealand, Singapore, Bulgaria, Panama and Venezuela. It opens tomorrow in Turkey and on December 31st in Slovenia. It opens in Finland on January 1st, in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Sweden on January 14th. It opens in France on February 3rd and in Belgium and the Netherlands on February 10th.

LESBIAN VAMPIRE KILLERS wishes it were SHAUN OF THE DEAD

LESBIAN VAMPIRE KILLERS is a puerile, poorly-written British film that tries to walk the fine line between horror and comedy in the vein of the far more successful SHAUN OF THE DEAD and SEVERANCE. The "humour" consists in watching James Corden (THE HISTORY BOYS, STARTER FOR TEN) and Matthew Horne (TV show GAVIN AND STACEY) run round the English countryside saying "shit" and "fuck" a lot and presumably the nudge-nudge wink-wink puerility of seeing pseudo-Scandinavian chicks show their tits. I can forgive puerility if it works - just look at SEVERANCE - but this movie never earns the right to use its oh-so-clever "look how post-modern we are" title.

If you were generous, you could say that LESBIAN VAMPIRE KILLERS was another example of a successful British TV comedy double-act failing to make the translation to the big screen, just like Mitchell and Webb in MAGICIANS. But in reality, GAVIN AND STACEY was never as funny as PEEP SHOW, and this movie is less disappointing for that reason.

LESBIAN VAMPIRE KILLERS is on release in the UK. It opens in France on June 17th and in the Netherlands on June 25th.

Mike Leigh retrospective - ALL OR NOTHING

ALL OR NOTHING is the first Mike Leigh film that I truly enjoyed from start to finish, and that's an odd statement, because it's a pretty grim movie about the British underclass. Still, for all that, there's a tremendous sense of compassion and understanding that runs through the film, in sharp contrast to Leigh's earlier, more satirical movies.

Thatcherism is dead. Long Live New Labour. We are in London in 2002 and not much has changed for the socially deprived. They're still living on decrepit council housing estates, neutered by lack of opportunity and lack of ambition, living on a diet of fried food, alcohol and cigarettes. Leigh introduces us to a rare nuclear family. Timothy Spall plays Phil - an optimistic but lazy taxi driver, reduced to cadging change of his kids to pay for his minicab radio in a scene almost too painful to watch. He's married to Penny: Lesley Maville in a role usually described as "long-suffering". They have two obese children - a loving daughter Rachel (Alison Garland) and a brutish, selfish son called Rory (James Corden. Their journey is of self-realisation. Phil has to realise he is unhappy before he can get the will to change. Penny has to discover the courage to speak out about her frustration. Rory has to face the consequences of his sloth. Rachel, one feels, still has her epiphany ahead of her. In some ways, she is the most intriguing character - so passive, and yet she evidently has a great fondness for her dad, and is deeply affected by her parents' rowing.

The secondary characters are a rogues gallery of teenage pregnancy, abusive boyfriends, slappers and stalkers, except that Leigh's characterisations are much more nuanced than my abusive short-hand descriptions. Together they give a rich sense of the untapped potential, frustrated hopes and yes - the community spirit that just about still exists on the estates. And it's this fine quality, combined with the flashes of gallows humour, that keep ALL OR NOTHING from being a dirge - and stops the film from feeling over-long or unrelentingly grim.

ALL OR NOTHING played Cannes and Toronto 2002 and opened that year. It is available on DVD.

STARTER FOR TEN - 80s nostalgia masks formulaic bilge

STARTER FOR TEN is woefully formulaic coming-of-age romantic-comedy. Decent but naive working-class boy makes it to pinnacle of academe (Bristol(!) and University Challenge TV quiz programme). On the way he falls for a supposedly sophisticated middle class girl who uses him shamelessly. He then realises he loves the more worthwhile but less fit activist chick. Blah blah blah.

What saves STARTER FOR TEN from utter mediocrity is the sheer likeability of lead actor, James McAvoy who is suitably at right-angles with the in-crowd. But the biggest reason to see this film, and the only reason you might make it through with a smile on your face, is some class 1980s nostalgia. The movie is set in Britain in the early 80s - a time of deep political polarisation, mass unemployment and awesome pop music and the movie does well to capture the spirit of the times. This is achieved by means of an outstanding sound-track, some brilliantly well-observed production design and by giving Brian some mates who are stuck at home in Essex being indicted for dole fraud. Best of all, a lot of the drama is played out against the backdrop of the TV programme University Challenge. For non-UK readers, University Challenge is a British quiz show that pits teams of four from different universities against each other answeringly fiendlishly obscure general knowledge questions. The comedy part is that Oxford and Cambridge enter not as Universities but as individual colleges. Back in the 1980s the programme was hosted by cult-presenter Bamber Gascgoine, and part of the joy of this film is seeing Bamber Gascgoine brought back to the screen.

So, much like SIXTY SIX, STARTER FOR TEN is a harmless and mildly entertaining comic drama, on its own terms. But I can only really recommend it for the generation that got drunk for the first time to New Order....

SIXTY SIX is on release in the UK. It opens in the US on February 16th 2007.

THE HISTORY BOYS - the play's the thing

THE HISTORY BOYS is a little bit like NEIL YOUNG: HEART OF GOLD. By which I mean that the stuff of which it is made is of such high quality that the resulting movie is almost bound to succeed no matter what the competence of the team behind the camera. Neil Young anchors a great live concert and with THE HISTORY BOYS - the award-winning play written by Alan Bennett and staged by Nicholas Hytner at the National - we have a superb piece of theatre.

The play is superficially extremely English and for the benefit of overseas readers I'll go into some details. (Apologies to the locals.) THE HISTORY BOYS is set in a grammar school (a state-funded school that selects pupils on the basis of academic ability and gives them a classic humanist education.) The boys have just passed their A-levels (school-leaving exams) with flying colours. As a result, instead of going on to any other university or starting work they are returning to school for yet another term in order to cram for the entrance exams to get into Oxford and Cambridge - then and arguably still the best universities in the UK. This might seem quaint but the old "Mode E" entrance was only scrapped ten years ago, although it had already been changed so that you could sit the papers in your final year of A-levels rather than returning for another "seventh" term (semester). The entrance exams tested not just Gradgrindian facts - it assumed that anyone sitting the papers would be full of facts . Rather, the exams aimed to test the capacity for original and clear thinking, personality and flair.

And of course this opens up a conflict of interest. Given the time pressures these boys are under - should they continue with their lesisurely pursuit of authentic learning for its own sake - or should they hastily bluff contrary opinions just to stand out from the crowd? Mr Hector, the history boys' teacher believes that the boys should learn for the sake of learning and be honest in the interviews. But the Headmaster - eager for quantifiable results, not inspiration - hires a young tutor to get the boys to jump through the hoops.

The mechanics of getting the boys into Oxbridge might seem anachronistic but I think the issues it touches on are absolutely relevant. The Gradgrindian headmaster wants to do well in the league tables - a rather Blairite concern - and the boys are merely cannon fodder for his campaign. I also wonder how much room there is for the sort of indulgent liberal arts degree that I enjoyed in a world where students are accumulating debt. To be sure, if I knew I was going to start my working life in considerable debt I might have been more keen to study a practical degree than waste time reading eighteenth century French utopians. These days universities are vocational training courses for investment bankers and management consultants - doctors and lawyers. Gone are the "well-rounded men".

The high drama of THE HISTORY BOYS arises from the conflict between these two modes of teaching, mediated by a third teacher - a woman who bemoans history as the study of the incompetence of men. But the real heart of the play - the real emotional drama - arises from its treatment of homosexuality. For Hector is a man whose homosexuality is an open secret and who has a penchant for being overly affectionate with his boys. And one of those boys is in love with another of them - something everyone knows.

The comedy of the piece - and it is very, very funny - arises from peculiarly English concerns. Alan Bennett is a master at ridiculing the particular class preoccupations of English society. So there are jokes at the expense of Hull and Sheffield and the best anti-Welsh joke on film since A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS. There's also an absolutely hysterical five-minute skit that is entirely in French. Oddly enough, there are no subtitles which suggests to me a certain presumption about the audience on the part of the film-makers. One wonders whether they will subtitle it when the movie goes to the US. I also wonder how the US market will take to the play's rather indulgent treatment of a teacher who is, after all, fondling his students, especially after the recent peadophila scandals in the Church.

I am not sure if THE HISTORY BOYS is great cinema in terms of the camera angles, sound editing etc. I was too busy laughing hysterically or sympathising with Hector and Posner to care. It was an absolute pleasure to be in the midst of some bloody good writing and acting. And if the movie was explicitly theatrical in its staging - and especially in the denouement - this was not an issue for me at all.

THE HISTORY BOYS opened today in the UK, opens in the US on November 21st and opens in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany in Spring 2007.