DIE MY LOVE**** - BFI London Film Festival 2025 - Day 11

Lynne Ramsay (YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE) creates a claustrophobic, deeply unsettling, occasionally mordantly funny drama about a mentally fragile woman suffering severely from post-partum depression. It stars Jennifer Lawrence in a raw, vulnerable role as the dangerously unboundaried mother in question. She cannot write, her sex life has gone to shit, she has lost her tolerance for the banal bullshit people say to mothers. Some of her rude interjections are funny.  But as the film goes on it becomes more and more frightening. We realise that while post-partum is definitely a factor, Grace was not well from the start.  And we ratchet up to a finale that’s both poetic and devastating.  It’s a bravura performance from Lawrence, and shows us just what she is capable of when she makes the right choice of material - something that has been sadly lacking for pretty much the last decade.  Robert Pattinson is also good in the smaller role of Grace’s husband Jackson. It’s a tricky role because he could so easily be played as unfeeling or feckless but he’s just a young man out of his depth.

This is a film that is slippery and refuses easy answers.  We are never really sure if things are happening for real or in Grace’s fevered imagination.  Does she really sleep with a mysterious neighbour (LaKeith Stanfield) or is he just a man she meets in a supermarket and then projects her sexual frustration upon.  Most importantly, when Grace finally says “enough” is she leaving the baby that she clearly loves, in spite of everything, or is she going to take her own life?  Even the attitude of the people around her is tricky to parse.  How far was Grace’s mother-in-law (Sissy Spacek) aware of her mental instability from the start? Her attitude at the wedding appears to be one of suppressed shock. And at a social gathering later on in the film, one of covering up and enablement.

My only criticism of the film is that when you make something that claustrophobic and intense then the running time of probably needs to be shorter.  I think 100 minutes would have been ideal. But I loved the way Ramsay traps us in a world that threatens to suffocate us, most notably by using a 4:3 aspect ratio and essentially one location.

DIE MY LOVE has a running time of 118 minutes.  It played Cannes and London. It will be released in the USA on November 7th and in the UK on November 24th.

NO HARD FEELINGS*

 

NO HARD FEELINGS is a desperately ill-judged "comedy" in which Jennifer Lawrence attempts to be Amy Schumer and fails. It pains me that such a talented dramatic actress should waste her time trying to be something she is not - because she is not kooky or adept at physical or verbal comedy.  She stars in this film as a thirty-something commitment-phobe who is about to lose her family home.  Desperate, she answers a Craigslist ad to basically deflower a shy, much-bullied kid before he goes to College. Cue lots of awkward and unwatchable scenes where J-Law throws herself at the petrified teen who rightly deploys pepper spray.  He actually is a sweet kid, and as played by the talented Andrew Barth Feldman, is the only thing hooking us into the heart of the movie. Ultimately, naturally, both of them grow through the experience.  She realises she needs to grow up and leave home.  He realises he needs to do the same. They end up as friends.  But what happens within the running time of the movie is just bizarre. I am not saying that a weird age-gap film can't work.  Just look at HAROLD & MAUDE. But J Law doing a nude comedy fight scene just wreaks of desperation.  Avoid at all costs.

NO HARD FEELINGS is rated R and has a running time of 103 minutes. It is available to rent and own.

RED SPARROW

I sat down to watch RED SPARROW with limited expectations given the poor reviews and controversy surrounding the Jennifer Lawrence spy thriller.  But I found the film to be beautifully cast and acted, superbly photographed, evocatively scored, with a script that was intelligent and provocative and a directorial eye that rightly forced us to address all of the darkness inherent in the #metoo movement. I have since read some of the reviews and it feels as though many people are utterly missing the point of this slippery film.  But I would urge you to watch it, and to keep your wits about you and your loins girded.  No other film better speaks to our times.

The movie opens in contemporary Russia where Jennifer Lawrence's prima ballerina Domenika (shades of BLACK SWAN - Darren Aronofsky was originally attached to the film!) is savagely injured on stage and her career ruined.  Facing eviction and no means of supporting her sick mother (Joely Richardson - saying more with one look than many actresses with pages of screenplay), Domenika is lured into working for her uncle (Matthias Schoenaerts - a dead ringer for a young Putin), the Deputy Director of the Russian secret services. He essentially pimps her out to an oligarch, deliberately putting in the way of sexual assault. When Domenika then becomes witness to that oligarch's murder she is given the non-choice of being assassinated herself, or joining the Russian SS4 spy school and essentially continuing her career as a spy/whore for her country.  Her specific mark is an American CIA agent based in Budapest, played by Joel Edgerton, who is running a mole in the Russian secret service. Her task is to seduce him and get the name of the mole. Meanwhile, she runs a side-con, offering him the information that a senior American official is selling state secrets.  

Let's start with the unequivocally good stuff. This is a movie that looks gorgeous. Every detail of the shabby 70s looking Budapest and Russian apartments contrasted with the ornate Russian government offices and ballet theatres is sumptuous and evocative, creating a world that I utterly believed in.  The cinematography and editing is similarly superb - particularly in the opening scene that intercuts the ballet accident and a spy meeting in Gorky Park that goes wrong. Even that name is evocative - and this is a film that clearly knows and respects the history of its genre, complete with a final handover scene straight out of SMILEY'S PEOPLE. Moreover, with the exception of a few very violent set-pieces this is not really an action movie at all. It's a genuinely tricksy intelligent spy thriller that has you genuinely guessing as to which side Domenika is on, and who the mole is.  It has the confidence to make its audience work hard, and to confirm a theory with a simply subtle smile between two characters rather than with heavy-handed exposition. 

And now to the controversy. RED SPARROW is a film about how men exercise power over women, subtly, obviously, through coercion or outright aggression, and more often than not through sexual violence.  This sexual violence graphically shown and so it should be  - to show the sheer fear of a woman physically assaulted by a powerful man - and to contrast with how Domenika slowly takes back that sexual and intellectual power from pretty much every man in the film.  It is - then - a film that doesn't shy away from showing scenes of rape, attempted rape, and sexual manipulation and humiliation. But each time, there is a power shift.  And how refreshing to see a woman's sexual power explored on film by an actress who was firmly in control of the film's development and her own nudity.  In other words, this isn't - per many reviewers - a sexist film - but a film about sexists.  It's a film about a woman's political awakening. And that couldn't be more relevant. 

RED SPARROW has a running time of 140 minutes and is rated R. The film was released in cinemas in March 2018 and is now available to rent and own. 

JOY

There's this thing David O Russell does where he captures the gonzo craziness of everyday family life in real families - where's the too much to do and not enough time, and a lot of love but also a lot of bickering and irrational emotional lashing out.  He somehow captures the too many loud voices and freewheeling chaos. He did this is SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK and does so again at the start of JOY, where we see Jennifer Lawrence's harassed single mom cut her fingers on a shard of glass as she mops up a spill and get the inspiration for the miracle mop.  The movie starts with such energy and such crazy larger-than-life characters that I was prepared to let myself get swept up on the wave of this most improbable biopic. I loved that Joy had an estranged latino husband (Edgar Ramirez) who still somehow had her best interests at heart. And that her feckless father (Robert de Niro) has a hardball rich widow girlfriend (a scene-stealing Isabella Rossellini) who didn't give Joy a dime without asking some tough questions.

But somewhere after the first half hour the movie descends into a pretty cheesy underdog story in which every set piece is predictable.  How did we somehow know that when Joy first appears on TV home sales network she's gonna bomb, or that she's gonna triumph when she realises that she needs to take off all the wardrobe and make-up and just be a housewife on TV?  And it's all too predictable that her family are gonna become jealous and try to rip Joy off or otherwise put her in a precarious situation.  And maybe that's the problem with the latter half of this film.  Joy is perfect.  She survives and survives and survives despite her feckless family and thieving manufacturers.  And at the end of the day it's her ever loyal ex-husband and best friend who stick by her, because why?  I just felt the movie kind of ran out of steam. Yes Joy is successful and saintly in helping other single moms find their dreams. But where's the resolution?  I also feel - and maybe this is unfair - that I've seen too much of Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper on screen together to the point that I found whatever manufactured sexual tension might have been between the two characters hard to stomach.  I feel that this small David O Russell repertory company needs to be disbanded for its own good.

JOY has a running time of 124 minutes and is rated PG-13. It is on global release in the USA, Greece, Israel, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, New Zealand, Egypt, France, the UAE, Bahrain, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Taiwan, South Africa, Austria, Estonia, Finland, the UK, Ireland and Latvia. It opens later in January in Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Australia, Colombia, the Czech Republic, Macedonia, the Netherlands, Portugal, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, the Ukraine, Bulgaria, Spain, Mexico, Pakistan, Poland, Romania, Turkey, Belgium, Argentina, Bosnia, Bolivia, the Dominican Republic, Peru, Puerto Rico, Uruguay, Venezuela, Brazil, Russia, Slovenia, India, Lithuania, Italy and Ecuador. It opens in February in Chile, Croatia, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea, Thailand, Vietnam and Kazakhstan; and in Indonesia in March.

THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY - PART 2

As I right this, MOCKINGJAY 2 has had the weakest opening weekend of any of the movies in this franchise and this financial blunder is not undeserved. The fourth movie in the series has none of the emotional power, imagination or wit of the previous instalments. Instead, we are treated to a two hour dirge in which our post-apocalytpic heroine Katniss Everdeen is shell-shocked, guilt-ridden and almost impassive despite a plot that sees her raid the Capitol city in an assassination attempt on the tyrannical President Snow.

Perhaps the problem was splitting the final book in Suzanne Collins' trilogy into two parts. Like Peter Jackson's HOBBIT, the story seems stretched thin over two movies of almost interminable action.  Regardless, this movie misses the effervescence of Elizabeth Banks' eccentric fashionista Effie Trinket, and even Woody Harrelson's cynical alcoholic seems to have sobered up. Even Shakespearean tragedy contains light relief.

THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY - PART 1

The late Philip Seymour Hoffman as show producer Plutarch Heavensbee
and Julianne Moore as rebel President Coin.

MOCKINGJAY is a dirge of a film. Two hours of hackneyed dialogue, J-Law stumbling around debris with PTSD interspersed with the occasional attempt at a rousing speech for rebellion.  The movie has no pace, no flow, no excitement, largely because it's basically pre-amble to the final showdown between the oppressed masses and the ruthless President of this dystopian future dictatorship.  I'm not sure how the young fans of Suzanne Collins' wildly successful books will react to the style and content of this film but I found the shift in tone from the gladiatorial action of the first two films to the attempt at earnest commentary on war jarring.  Which isn't to say it isn't an honourable attempt at engaging with contemporary politics, but my god it isn't entertaining either.  

As the movie opens, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) has been rescued from the Hunger Games and wakes up traumatised in District 13 - an austere military bunker run by the sinister President Coin  (a typically steely Julianne Moore).  Coin decides to pimp Katniss out in much the same way as her nemesis President Snow (a 2-D villain played with mustache-twirling glee by Donald Sutherland) did.  Instead of schmaltzy TV interviews for the state, Katniss now does supposedly impromptu Churchillian speeches urging the rebels to rise up - all of which have been expertly stage managed by Coin and her on-the-ground director Cressida (Natalie Dormer).  The movie cruises toward the inevitable showdown contrasting the "propos" with the terrorist/freedom fighter acts in various districts. And all the time, in the background, there's Katniss' demand that Peeta be rescued, culminating in an extraction that is clearly inspired by the Navy SEALS raid on Abbotabad.  All of this is fine, except that it gets undercut by the hokey dialogue and plot turns.  Of COURSE, when Katniss rescues her sister's cat we just now there's going to be some perilous plot moment when rescuing the cat places Katniss in jeopardy.  And the scenes near the end when President Coin commands her troops against a state bombing campaign reeks on the final scenes in STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE.

Overall, I'm not sure whether they really needed to cut the final book into two films. This first part could easily have been much shorter - just one propo - just one montage of the people rising up - because what we want to get to is the final fifteen minutes of Part 1 and then all of Part 2.  I applaud the good intentions to get gritty and real but once again, I'm just not sure how this constitutes any kind of credible storytelling in a world of such outlandish fantasy costumes and hokey dialogue and cartoon villains. 

MOCKINGJAY has a running time of 123 minutes, is rated PG and is on global release.

SERENA - LFF14 - Day Ten

Sweet tap-dancing Christ, SERENA is so bad people were laughing at the movie at the screening I attended.  In fairness, this final act hilarity was a massive improvement on the sheer tedium, implausibility and banality of the first hour of the film.  God knows what Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Copper were thinking of in signing up to this garbage and I'd love to hear from anyone who read the book upon which the movie is based as to whether it's better/different/other to what landed on our screen.  What's equally bizarre and shocking is that the film was directed by Susanne Bier, whose A SECOND CHANCE is also screening at this year's London Film Festival and is possibly one of the best films this year.  One cannot imagine the distance between A SECOND CHANCE's quiet intensity, closely observed emotion and tense climax and SERENA.  Both films are about the powerful emotions prompted by parenthood but they are otherwise like chalk and cheese.

So, let's take a step back. SERENA is set in depression era North Carolina. Bradley Cooper plays George Pemberton, the indebted owner of a lumber yard. Rather than marry for money he marries a hard-headed businesswoman called Serena (Jennifer Lawrence). A double threat hangs over the couple. Their business is in hock, and their land threatened by its potential forced purchase to create a national park. Second, Pemberton is hiding an attachment to his illegitimate son, something Serena finds intolerable once she loses her own child.

The characters begin as tough and cynical - unwilling to let anyone get in the way of their success. This makes it hard to sympathise for them when they meet tragedy - and all the soupy orchestral scores and dreamy photography can’t overcome this central problem in the film - it’s hard to care about the fate of people we hate. Moreover, as the movie progresses we see the cracks show in the screenwriting, direction and acting. As Serena becomes more unhinged the movie tips over the edge of heightened drama into cheap melodrama, and the attempted reformation of her husband seems automatic and unconvincing. Of course, by this point we care so little about their fate that it’s just a mad dash to the end. And wow! what an ending. I don’t think we’e seen such an absurd and literally laughable denouement to a male protagonist in quite some time. It’s the stuff of Razzies and spoof fan service.

I would simply repeat: it’s hard to see how so many actors and a director of quality went so wrong. I guess it sometimes happens with movies: good intentions just get out of control and the end result doesn’t look like the storyboards. At any rate, this is a film to avoid at all costs. The good news is that the stars are so big, their careers are unlikely to be dented by a small fall.  

SERENA has a running time of 102 minutes.  The movie played London 2014 and opens in the UK and Romania on October 24th, in Spain on October 31st, in New Zealand and Finland on November 6th, in France on November 12th, in Portugal on November 20th, in Australia on November 27th, in Italy on November 30th, in Lithuania on December 5th, in Germany, Greece and Singapore on December 18th, and in Ukraine and the Netherlands on February 5th.

LFF preview - SERENA

So, I'm in cinema detox for the month before the BFI London Film Festival.  I'll be watching forty films in ten days and reviewing them all here! In the meantime, here's the JUST-released trailer for one of the two movies I'll be seeing by director Susanne Bier.

SERENA is apparently set in 1920s North Carolina with Jennifer Lawrence playing a world-savvy woman who builds a timber business married to Bradley Cooper's George - a man with a past.  The costumes look gorgeous and there seems to be shades of Scarlett O'Hara in the role.  Plus anything with Toby Jones in a supporting role is worth checking out.

  

X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST

X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST is a long and convoluted film. That it remains engaging says something for the quality of the cast it has assembled, the ballsiness of its premise and the elegance of its action scenes.

The movie sees Wolverine sent back in time to the 1970s by Kitty Pryde to persuade Professor X and Magneto to come together and prevent Mystique from being captured by an evil inventor called Trask.  He will create robots called Sentinels who use Mystique's own mutated blood to become the ultimate Mutant killing machines.  If she isn't stopped Mystique will unleash a future in which Mutants are all but extinct.  But the mission isn't an easy one. Wolverine has to persuade a disillusioned, drugged up Professor X to help; he has to bust Magneto out of prison for killing JFK; and that's before he even gets to Trask.

The cast is impeccable. Fassbender vs McAvoy as Magneto vs Professor X is just the ultimate buddy movie with consequences.  You need actors will real heft to pull of a man scarred by the Holocaust and another who has to go back into his wheelchair for the good of humanity.  Jennifer Lawrence plays a woman on the brink of a massive ethical decision. The new additions are Peter Dinklage as the bad guy, Trask, fine but nothing spectacular, and Evan Peters as Quicksilver. (Yes, you're right - a different Pietro Maximoff to the one in AVENGERS....)  Peters doesn't have much to do, but he does star in the most awesome action sequence of any X-MEN movie to date, in which he goes so fast the reality around him slows down and he literally re-arranges bullets in the air.  Amazing scoring for that scene too. As for Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, well, he's played Wolverine so many times by now I almost don't think of him as acting anymore.

The heart of the film is the relationship between Mystique and Magneto.  Is he going to stay good or go bad?  And between Charles Xavier and, well, the world. Is he going to give in to depression or grasp the future, the future he can create?  It's this more than anything else that keeps us coming back to the franchise.  It's not just ever bigger and bolder action sequences but that these are grown up, complex, scarred characters that wrestle with their doubts and dissatisfactions. There are no easy choices. Everything carries weight. Everything matters.  That's what elevates X-MEN, and this instalment in particular, to something very special indeed.

X-MEN DAYS OF FUTURE PAST has a running time of 131 minutes and is rated PG-13. The movie is on global release.

Oscars 2014 - Who Should Win; Who Will Win

The Oscars a grimy political business - studios shelling out PR campaigns that appeal the voting demographic that skews old, conservative and ex-actors.  You start seeing nasty little negative stories planted in The Hollywood Reporter and the more obvious than usual pimping out of the 'talent' at minor award ceremonies who's only real value is as a predictor for the big event.  The Oscars are not a judge of merit - just look at the iconic pictures that have been unrecognised. But they DO add to the bottom line.  And so, we Greedy Capitalist Bastards simply have to take them seriously.

This year there seem to be three main contenders: AMERICAN HUSTLE, GRAVITY and 12 YEARS A SLAVE. I loved the raucous slippery energy of HUSTLE but was left wondering if it's gonzo kitsch was intentional or not.  GRAVITY was a technical tour de force and pure in intention but, of course, has to fight charges that it contains little else.  12 YEARS - ah 12 YEARS - I loved the courage, the artistry, but was left cold by the inclusion of Pitt and the epilogue.  So it's pretty much even stevens.I guess my overall feeling is that liberal Hollywood will go for 12 YEARS for behind the lens but that HUSTLE will win out in front of the lens, with GRAVITY pulling the Technical awards.   Also, BEST ACTOR is a sentimental tie between Bruce Dern and a form-busting Matthew McConaughey.  The only egregious inclusions are PHILOMENA, which was schlocky at best. The pleasant surprise was Sally Hawkins for BLUE JASMINE.

So here we go: who was nominated, who shoulda been nominated, who will win, who should win.  "Will" is marked with an asterisk, "Should" with a cross. Also, I should point out that I haven't seen DALLAS BUYER'S CLUB or HER yet. 

BEST PICTURE: 12 Years a Slave*; American Hustle; Captain Phillips; Dallas Buyers Club; Gravity; Her; Nebraska+; Philomena; The Wolf of Wall Street.

BEST DIRECTOR: David O Russell, American Hustle; Alfonso Cuarón, Gravity; Alexander Payne, Nebraska+; Steve McQueen, 12 Years a Slave*; Martin Scorsese, The Wolf of Wall Street

BEST ACTOR: Christian Bale, American Hustle; Bruce Dern, Nebraska+; Leonardo DiCaprio, The; Wolf of Wall Street*; Chiwetel Ejiofor, 12 Years a Slave; Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyers Club.

BEST ACTRESS: Amy Adams, American Hustle*; Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine+; Sandra Bullock, Gravity; Judi Dench, Philomena; Meryl Streep, August: Osage County.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Barkhad Abdi, Captain Phillips; Bradley Cooper, American Hustle*; Michael Fassbender, 12 Years a Slave+; Jonah Hill, The Wolf of Wall Street; Jared Leto, Dallas Buyers Club.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Sally Hawkins, Blue Jasmine; Jennifer Lawrence, American Hustle*+; Lupita Nyong'o, 12 Years a Slave; Julia Roberts, August: Osage County; June Squibb, Nebraska.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: American Hustle*; Blue Jasmine; Dallas Buyers Club; Her; Nebraska+.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Before Midnight; Captain Phillips; Philomena; 12 Years a Slave+; The Wolf of Wall Street*.

BEST FOREIGN FILM: Broken Circle Breakdown (Belgium); The Great Beauty (Italy); The Hunt (Denmark); The Missing Picture (Cambodia); Omar (Palestine).

BEST DOCUMENTARY: The Act of Killing; Cutie and the Boxer*; Dirty Wars; The Square; 20 Feet from Stardom.+

BEST ANIMATION: The Croods; Despicable Me 2; Ernest and Celestine; Frozen*+;The Wind Rises.

BEST ORIGINAL SONG: Alone Yet Not Alone, Alone Yet Not Alone; Happy, Despicable Me 2; Let It Go, Frozen*+; The Moon Song, Her; Ordinary Love, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom.

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: The Grandmaster; Gravity; Inside Llewyn Davis; Nebraska+; Prisoners.

BEST EDITING: American Hustle; Captain Phillips; Dallas Buyers Club; Gravity*+; 12 Years a Slave.

BEST SOUND EDITING: All Is Lost+; Captain Phillips; Gravity*; The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug; Lone Survivor.

BEST SOUND MIXING: Captain Phillips; Gravity*+; The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug; Inside Llewyn Davis; Lone Survivor.

BEST MAKE-UP AND HAIR: Dallas Buyers Club*+; Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa; The Lone Ranger.

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE: The Book Thief;  Gravity*+; Her; Philomena; Saving Mr Banks.

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN: American Hustle+; Gravity*; The Great Gatsby; Her; 12 Years a Slave.

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS: Gravity*+; The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug; Iron Man 3; The Lone Ranger; Star Trek Into Darkness.

BEST COSTUME DESIGN: American Hustle*+; The Grandmaster; The Great Gatsby; The Invisible Woman; 12 Years a Slave.

AMERICAN HUSTLE

AMERICAN HUSTLE has swagger and style and enough hairspray to raise the Titanic. It has whizz bang energy and crazy characters high on their own con. There are times when it's outlandish hype slips into self-conscious kitsch - times when the performances are so balls-deep in crazy you wonder if the movie has just become BAD, but it's so fun, so bizarre, so outlandish you can't help but stick with it. 

So what's the skinny?  AMERICAN HUSTLE is a very loose retelling of the Abscam scandal of the late 1970s - an FBI sting operation that spiralled out of control, eventually targeting US senators and congressmen with a fake Arab sheikh offering cash for a passport.  The whole thing was murky as hell.  I mean, the guys took the bribes, but this was entrapment and selection of targets as an artform.   In this version of the story, the original conmen are Irving Rosenfeld, played by Christian Bale, and his partner Sydney, played by Amy Adams. They're caught on a small time charge by FBI agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper), who gets so glamoured by their lifestyle that he decides to become part of the con, using them to entrap politicians.  Key among them is a New Jersey mayor, Carmine Polito - a mobbed up man, to be sure, but one who genuinely speaks from the heart when he says he wants to use the fake Sheikh's money to reinvigorate his home town.

Director David O Russell is far less concerned with the technicalities of the plot and the con than with the characters and their conscious and subconscious motivations. This is absolutely right.  And ironic.  In a movie so concerned with surface - the hairstyles, the clothes, the moves - there is no superficiality.  When a character extravagantly combs over his hair, or creates a tight perm, or wears a dress cut to the navel - they're becoming a character and the whole point of the movie is to watch them reimagine themselves as they'd like to be. So when the movie becomes a cheap melodrama, that's maybe because that's how these characters see themselves - as the stars of their own C-list caper movie.

Another delicious irony - the most honest man in the film is the original conman, Irving Rosenfeld.  And when I say honest, what I mean in the context of a film about self-delusion is that Irving is totally self-aware.  He knows he's a schlubby conman.  He knows he's going to be ensnared by his manipulative wife forever. And he knows he can stay safe by staying small, and not letting greed get the better of him. He's even self-aware about his weakness - his need to disguise his baldness.  This gives Irving a kind of wisdom and humanity that's lacking in the other, almost universally more narcissistic characters.  He's fully aware that Carmine Polito is a good man dirtying his hands to do good works, and is the only character who shows any kind of moral courage in warning him off.  There's a kind of brilliance in Bale's understated performance - the flash of knowledge that passes across his face as he acknowledges that DiMaso is out of control and makes the call to effectively switch sides.  And, yes, I see the added irony of calling Bale's performance subtle. But it is. Under the weight gain, and the combover, and the velvet wide-lapel suits, it's a great subtle performance. 

By contrast, we have Brad Cooper in appropriately manic mode as Richie DiMaso, the henpecked mama's boy who sees the glamorous "Lady Edith" (Sydney's con character) as his ticket to reinvention as a kind of John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, super-cool, super-macho, big-time PLAYA. He over-reaches in a way that Irving never would - to Lady Edith - to Senators - and his tragedy is that unlike Irving he really can't handle reality. 

Irving's wife Rosalyn is as deluded as Richie but to gloriously comic effect. She's a young single mother so fortunate as to have Irving provide and adopt her son.  But in her mind, she's always in the right, always responsible for the good things, never responsible for the bad, and a star in her own universe.  Jennifer Lawrence is so unbelievably hilarious and captivating in her few scenes that she threatens to unbalance the movie just as she unhinges the con, and if her Oscar nomination last year was generous, this year it will be thoroughly deserved. 

Sadly, Lawrence's incadescent Rosalyn put Amy Adams "Lady Edith" in the shade.  Adams, cast against time as the vamp, just can't carry off the super sexy outfits and in the inevitable final act confrontation between Irving's lover and his wife, it's Rosalyn/Lawrence who comes out triumphantly on top.  In fact, they seem to be in different films - and maybe that's the point.  Adams/Edith is playing in a romantic tragedy whereas Lawrence/Rosalyn is in a lurid supersexy melodrama. Adams has the  emotional crisis, but Lawrence has all the fun. 

All the way through watching AMERICAN HUSTLE I felt like I was right on the edge where so bad it's good becomes just bad.  But the more I think about it, the more I think that's the point. These characters are all, more or less, actors, hustlers, putting a con on themselves and us. Some do it better than others.  And David O Russell has made a movie that isn't so much his take on the Abscam scandal, as a patchwork of all these hustlers own perceptions of their con.   Maybe I'm being generous. And if I'm wrong, there are times when the performances and the direction in this film are so broad and pastichey and kitschy they are bad.  But if I'm right, then this is a film working on a meta levels of brilliance while all the time being entertaining in the most basic of ways. 

AMERICAN HUSTLE has a running time of 138 minutes and is rated R in the USA and 12A in the UK.

AMERICAN HUSTLE is on limited release in the USA and Australia. It opens on December 20th wide in the USA and in the UK. It opens on December 26th in Israel, Singapore and Vietnam; on December 31st in Taiwan; on January 1st in the UK and Italy; on January 2nd in Lebanon; on January 9th in Greece; on January 17th in Romania; on January 23rd in Argentina, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Portugal, Serbia and Turkey; on January 31st in Japan; on February 5th in France; on February 7th in Brazil and India; on February 12th in Belgium and Germany; on February 21st in Finland and Sweden and on March 20th in the Netherlands. 

THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE

THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE begins in media res, assuming wisely that we've all watched the first movie if not read the wildly popular books.  We're in a harsh dystopian future where fascists keep the masses in penury, fobbing them off with glitzy super-violent reality TV. Our heroine, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) is back from the Hunger Games of the first movie, struggling to explain her faked on-screen romance with fellow survivor Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) to her home-town love-interest Gale (Liam Hemsworth.)  But this nascent and hackneyed love triangle is rightly cut short by larger political dangers.  The evil President Snow (Donald Sutherland) fears that Katniss has become a symbol of defiance and, when she can't convince him or the crowds that she's an obliging mouthpiece of his regime, he orchestrates a Hunger Games in which she will once again have to compete for her life. The catch is that she will compete against those she cares for - Peeta and their mentor, Hamitch (Woody Harrelson).

What I love about The Hunger Games franchise is that while it does have a fair dollop of the typical teenage romance, it's given limited time and is handled with far more nuance than, say the Twilight franchise. Katniss is a strong woman - she isn't defined by her love interests - indeed, to Gale and Peeta's disappointment, she refuses to even acknowledge them.  We understand that she loves both men in different ways - Gale as a symbol of the home he loves but Peeta as the man who can empathise with what she has been through since she left.  And in an unusual twist on the typical romance, Katniss is the physically stronger of the two, whereas Peeta has the higher emotional intelligence. She may save him in the arena, but with his ruses to win the heart of the public, he saves her from the Capitol.

Given this film's emphasis on the political fallout from Katniss victory in the first film, and lesser time spent on the actual gladiatorial contest, I far prefer it to the original. I love seeing the dystopian world-building - the rich art direction - the beautiful costumes - the stark depiction of poverty.  More importantly, I love the satire on contemporary reality culture, and the sinister edge that Stanley Tucci's gamehost, Caesar Flickerman, lends to what most would leave as just a comic performance. There's something truly unnerving about his forced laugh and day-glo teeth.  But for me the real scene-stealer is Elizabeth Banks as Katniss and Peeta's stylist, Effie. As in the first movie, Banks has to sport the most outlandish costumes and toe the party line on being fabulous-dahling but in this movie, she gets to show the real heart beneath the wigs, while all the time pretending to still believe in the system. It's a marvellous portrayal.

As usual, I had less time from the games in the arena, which always seem like a series of levelling up quests followed by a tricksy ending. There's nothing to match the death of Rue in the original.  There are some new characters, all rather banal, and poor Jena Malone's over-acts fiercely as the angry Johanna Mason.  Most fascinating is the casting of my acting hero, Philip Seymour Hoffman as Plutarch Heavensbee, the new gamesmaker.  For most of the film, Hoffman is so anonymous as to almost look like he's in a different movie, or phoning it in.  I leave you to decide whether, given the final act, this is a clever choice or just lazy.

Overall, the best way to describe the movie is professional and faithful.  Taking over from writer-director Gary Ross, we have Francis Lawrence in the director's chair and Simon Beaufoy and Michael Arndt writing the script.  I could discern little difference - we still get a movie with rich production design, solid to excellent performances and a fascinating political plot.  Indeed my only real criticism of its direction and script is the rather underwhelming final shot - that said, this is probably faithful to the book.

THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE is on global release. The film has a running time of 146 minutes and is rated PG-13.

London Film Fest 2012 - Day 11 - SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK (SURPRISE FILM)

David O Russell brought arthouse integrity and quality to the underdog sports movie with THE FIGHTER, and pulls the same trick on the rom-com genre with SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK. It's a clever, funny, superbly acted movie with a visceral, up-close and uncomfortable shooting style that almost fools you into thinking that it's a braver, more unconventional movie than it really is.  At its heart, the movie is a basic one - boy meets girl, girl loves boy, boy's too hung up on former lover to realise he loves girl, there's a dance contest, they kiss, the end. The twist is that he's bipolar and just out of a mental institution, she's a widow with massive SLAA issues, his dad's OCD  with anger management issues, and his mum's clearly an enabler. The film's plot is driven by the unhealthy quid pro quo: she'll help him contact his ex (against whom he has a restraining order) if he'll participate in a dance contest with her.

David O Russell's script (based on Matthew Quick's novel) is whip smart and crackles with energy.  Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper have real chemistry and seeing them spar is one of the joys of the film.  It's great to see her broaden her range beyond put-upon hardened teen and similarly it's great to see him move beyond pretty-boy wise-ass roles. There are mis-steps to be sure -  the age difference threw me off and I never really bought it.  The inclusion of an African American character (Chris Tucker is his most modulated and impressive performance to date) only to have him, per movie cliché  contribute to a dance scene by having the white characters "dance blacker". And that schmaltzy final declaration could've come out of a risible Richard Curtis movie.  But overall, it was fun to spend time with the main characters and feel the grunginess of working class Philadelphia through  Masanobu Takayanagi's (WARRIOR) frenetic camerawork. 

SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK played Toronto 2012 where David O Russell won the People's Choice Award for Narrative Feature. It was the surprise film at London 2012. The film will be released in the USA, UK, Russia and Iceland on November 21st. It opens in Portugal on December 6th, in Sweden on December 21st, in Germany, Norway and Turkey on January 4th, in Spain on January 11th, in France and Australia on January 31st, in New Zealand and Bulgaria on February 8th, in Argentina on February 21st, in Belgium and the Netherlands on February 27th, in Italy on March 14th and in Denmark on April 25th.  

THE HUNGER GAMES - eheu o me miserum!

HUNGER GAMES plays like a po-faced, de-fanged version of RUNNING MAN and BATTLE ROYALE. In a dystopian American future, the tyrannical 1 percent demand each district volunteer two kids to fight to the death in a gladiatorial reality TV show. Predictably, the two kids from the poorest district work together to game the system and survive - the only spin being that they become as manipulative as the game they are in to succeed - feigning teen love (or are they?! - who cares) to win public sympathy.  Clearly, the franchise, based on a trilogy by Suzanne Collins', is gearing up for a finale in which the triumph of the 99th percentile inspires a revolution of the Plebs. Which begs the question why, with all their technology, cash, and cunning, the 1% allows them to survive so long. Frankly, any ruling elite so utterly incompetent deserves to die by dingleberries. Dr No, sorry, Snow, is giving us a bad name. 

Anyways, what can we say about this film. It has less pretty lead actors (Josh Hutcherson, Jennifer Lawrence)than the Twiglet series but equally pitiful dye jobs.  (Picture the Celebrity Death Match between Josh Hutcherson's blonde highlights and Twiglet's Nikki Reed!) The acting is better in THE HUNGER GAMES, basically because Jennifer Lawrence can communicate so much nuanced and conflicting emotion without saying a word. But this is offset by some truly shitty production and costume design - so over-the-top, so absurd, that it looks cheap and trashy and completely undermines the attempt at portraying earnest emotion. The worst victim of this is poor Elizabeth Banks in what one can only call the Parker Posey Memorial Role, as inspired by Helena Bonham Carter. By contrast, Lenny Kravitz hardly looks like he's trying at all, and one can imagine an hilarious conversation between the rock musician and the make-up department where he just refuses to go with it. Finally, the direction (Gary Ross - THE TALE OF DESPEREAUX) is also pretty pedestrian.

But my real problem with the whole show was its hackneyed premise coupled with a pretty superficial use of Roman names and concepts.  The world really just doesn't need a desaturated RUNNING MAN. It's like the whole problem with Twiglet: vampires who don't have sex are about as compelling as a Death Match where studio economics require a PG-13 certificate, so that all violence happens off-screen. Apparently the books are more savage, which is great, but then again, Suzanne Collins does try to palm us off with a kind of lo-rent tipping-of-the-hat to Rome.  Clever, clever to call a food deprived land "Panem", and to keep the plebs happy with circuses, but you just can't call major characters Cinna and Caesar without following through. It all felt highly disrespectful coming from a woman who purports to have serious influences. Moreover, where's the subtle satire on reality TV? Where's the subversive politics? The film seems to pick up so many interesting, dangerous concepts, but doesn't seem to have the balls to follow them through.  Oh, and one final thing.  Why give your heroine a name that sounds like "catnip"?

THE HUNGER GAMES is on release pretty much everywhere except Chile and Vietnam, where it opens on March 30th; South Korea and Lithuania, where it opens on April 6th; South Africa, where it opens on April 13th; Spain where it opens on April 20th and Italy, where it opens on May 1st.

London Film Fest 2011 Day 4 - LIKE CRAZY

God I hated this movie. I hated it from the opening scene where kookily sweet English girl Anna (Felicity Jones) propositions  goofy, nerdy American boy Jacob (Anton Yelchin) with a quirkily, goofily, cutesy letter under his windscreen-wiper.  I hated the falling in love scenes - all reading each other's poetry and carving each other's names on a chair - adolescent crappiness - and the self-indulgent, stupid manner in which the girl screws up her visa application by over-staying her welcome.  I had no sympathy for the couple. She just seemed selfish and juvenile - he just seemed weedy and pathetic.  Her parents seemed unbelievably nice - why didn't they just slap them both round the face and tell them to get on with it?  And as for so-called honest insights about the problems with long-distance relationships - jealousy, cheating, feeling left out, expense - frankly, there's nothing more profound in this flick than in the mainstream rom-com GOING THE DISTANCE.  

Just because you film everything in a ramshackle indie style; give it a score by Dustin O'Halloran; and neither of the lead characters ever wash or comb their hair, doesn't make a movie authentic or interesting.  I really just don't get the hype it's receiving.  It struck me as juvenile, self-indulgent and banal - just like its milquetoast lead characters.  ENOUGH ALREADY!  

LIKE CRAZY played Sundance 2011 where it won the Grand Jury Prize - Dramatic beating TERRI, MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE and HERE. Felicity Jones won the Special Jury Prize for Acting.  The version shown at London 2011 has been cut to achieve a PG-13 rating.  LIKE CRAZY will be released in the US on October 28th and in the UK on February 3rd.

Felicity Jones on the red carpet for the UK premiere
of LIKE CRAZY at the BFI London Film Festival

X-MEN: FIRST CLASS - Gentlemen, you can't fight in here: this is the war room!

I have always been rather conflicted about the X-MEN movies. On the one hand, I found the comic book tale of mutants, whose mutations had the appearance of superhero powers, rather confused and illogical. In a cosmic tale of "scissors-paper-stone" how was I to know whether a particular mutant's ability to whip up a storm could be trumped by another mutant's ability to throw fireballs? It all seemed too easy for the writers to whip up a deus ex machina. On the other hand, I absolutely loved the profundity of the intellectual debate at the heart of THE X-MEN. The comic books served as a plea for the acceptance of "freaks" - and for mutants one can read those who are sexually or racially oppressed in real life. The real battle was not between humans and mutants but between Professor X and Magneto. Professor X believes mutants can "be the better people", helping humanity, even though humanity is not always supportive of mutants. By contrast, Magneto believes that humanity will inevitably hunt what it fears and fear what is different. Mutants should therefore go on the offensive. This is the debate between Dr King and Malcolm X - the language of acceptance and self-hatred - the conflict between appeasement and aggression.

The great news is that X-MEN: FIRST CLASS, by taking us back to the origin story of Professor X aka Charles Xavier and Magneto aka Erik Lensherr, really delves into these issues. For the first time in the franchise, I really felt as though I had equal sympathy for both sides (rather than disdain for Magneto), and felt the emotional conflict that ultimately ripped these two friends apart and led Xavier's adopted sister Raven/Mystique to leave him for Erik. I can't say enough about James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender's nuanced and emotionally affecting performances as Xavier and Erik respectively. I truly believed in their friendship between opposites - the little boy who grew up amidst great wealth and led a sheltered life at Oxford befriending the angry, tortured soul, brutalised by the Nazi scientist Sebastian Shaw. And Jennifer Lawrence, given far less to do than in her Oscar nominated role in WINTER'S BONE, brings real depth to her performance as Raven - the girl who cannot hide her mutation in plain sight and has self-esteem issues that any teenager can relate to. Because you care about these people, your perception of the stakes shift. Every good action movie needs you to feel the stakes to make you care. But the stakes here aren't stopping Sebastian Shaw from inciting the USA and Soviet Union to turn the Cuban Missile Crisis into Nuclear War. (Although these serve as an amazing setting for the final action set-pieces and made me wish Matthew Vaughn could direct a James Bond movie starring Michael Fassbender). No, the real stakes are whether the disagreement between Magneto and Xavier will destroy their friendship and tear apart the mutant family.

All of which makes the movie sound rather ponderous, but that really isn't the case. It is intelligent, yes, and takes its material seriously. But it also has a sense of wit and, even cheekiness! What I really love about Matthew Vaughn's direction is that he takes the 1960s Cold War setting and really mines it well, with production design that has an air of those early Sean Connery Bond films and costumes for January Jones' that are practically Austin Powers-esque. I mean, we have January Jones (Emma Frost) in fem-bot spangly bikinis; an urbane Bond-like action hero in the form of Fassbender's Erik; and Kevin Bacon is pure Blofeld, with his double-breasted suits, yachts and obsession with atomic energy. Other comedic touches included a training montage of the type spoofed in TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE, that stays just the right-side of camp. A set-piece with the mutant kids showing off their skills that involves a choreographed move that feels like SCOOBY-DOO. And when the action set-piece reaches its climax, with Erik pulling off an amazing feat, we get a soundtrack that comes straight out of TOP GUN. Not to mention the war-room looking like something out of STRANGELOVE!

The genius of X-MEN: FIRST CLASS is, then, that it combines the intelligence of Jane Goldman, Ashley Miller and Zack Stentz's script with the pop-culture sensibility of director Matthew Vaughn. It's a movie so earnestly in love with the comic book material and its cinematic antecedents, that it can be intelligent but also witty - it can be self-referential (viz. the Hugh Jackman cameo) but never kitschy. I truly think this is a great summer blockbuster - and is far more entertaining and quietly clever than INCEPTION ever was. It has restored my faith in big summer action movies, after the disappointment of PIRATES 4 and THE HANGOVER 2. I can't wait for the next installment!

X-MEN FIRST CLASS is released today in the UK, Denmark, France and Serbia. It is released on June 2nd in Argentina, Australia, Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Singapore and Thailand. It is released on June 3rd in the US, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, India, Norway, Paraguay, Poland, Spain, Sweden and Turkey. It is released on JUne 8th in Italy; on June 9th in Germany and Greece; on June 11th in Japan; on June 18th in Armenia and on June 23rd in Georgia.

WINTER'S BONE

WINTER'S BONE arrived in the UK from Sundance and Berlin covered in praise for its strong central performances and gritty portrayal of middle-American rural poverty.

The heroine of the film is seventeen-year old Ree Dolly played with impressive authority and conviction by Jennifer Lawrence. Ree is the daughter of an absent felon father and mentally ill mother, and has been forced to take on the parenting of her younger brother and sister. This involves a delicate balance of learning how to live on scraps and handouts without losing a sense of pride. This fragile existence is put under threat when bail bondsmen threaten to seize Ree’s house and woods unless she can find her father and bring him to jail. One could almost regard the search for the father as a MacGuffin – an excuse for the Ree to take us on a journey into the wider community. Because that’s what this film ultimately is – an excuse to explore a community full of adults that have responded to the lack of economic opportunity in the Ozarks, and turned to drug-using, drug-dealing and violence. Every single adult Ree turns to for help refuses to take the responsibility befitting an adult. And while, to spoil the ending, she does ultimately keep her house – and there is palpable relief that she won’t be separated from her brother and sister – that relief is ultimately false. Because we leave Ree in exactly the same position that we found her in at the start of the movie – living in poverty, forced into maturity before her time, and martyring herself for her family. We’ve basically just seen a young girl literally beaten to a pulp in her fight to stand still – just maintain.

So, WINTER'S BONE is no pleasure-ride, but it is an impressively made and well-acted movie, and that gives a certain pleasure of its own. By persuading the people from Ozarks to let her use their houses, and to appear as extras and minor characters, director Debra Granik imbues her film with a rarely seen sense of authenticity and sympathy. To be crude, even when viewed from the comparative luxury of your art-house cinema seat, this film never feels like poverty-porn. Is the movie flawless? No. I found the black-and-white animated dream sequence gauche and what should have played as a grimly horrific scene on a river was so over-the-top I laughed. Nonetheless, this is a powerful film – a film that creates and sustains a menacing tone, and that contains fleeting glimpses of genuine familial tenderness in the most unforgiving of circumstances.

WINTER'S BONE played Berlin 2010 where it won the CICAE Award and the Reader Jury Prize of hte Tagesspiegel. It also played Sundance 2010 where it won the Grand Jury Prize - Dramatic and the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award. It was released earlier this year in the US and is currently on release in the UK. It opens in France on November 3rd.