BUGONIA***** - BFI London Film Festival 2025 - Day 4

BUGONIA is yet another absolutely brilliantly disturbing, darkly funny, occasionally moving, and frequently bonkers film from auteur Yorgos  Lanthimos. If Johan Cruyff coined the term “total football” then I am coining the phrase “total cinema” to describe the completely immersive, unique and genre-defying worlds that Lanthimos creates.  I left the LFF screening on a cinema-high, buzzing with amazement and admiration for yet another banger.  What a film!

Once again, he partners with his Oscar-winning muse Emma Stone, who plays a smart, resilient CEO of a biomedical firm.  It’s yet another masterclass performance from arguably the finest actress of her generation. And yet, she is more than matched, if not upstaged by Jesse Plemons, who has impressed me ever since playing a teen football start on Friday Night Lights, and has since matured into arguably the finest actor of that same cohort.  He plays a deeply tragic character called Teddy, whose childhood was marred by abuse and addiction, and whose adulthood was marred by medical injury.  As so many in these dark and divisive times, he spirals into an internet conspiracy that involves kidnapping the aforementioned CEO.

The film is basically a two-hander, and I could watch Stone and Plemons go at it all day. A potential criticism of the film is that those scenes almost play like a theatre production.  In support we have two performances from debutant Aidan Deblis and Stavros Halkias as Teddy’s malleable young cousin and old babysitter, now cop, respectively. The former is particularly heartbreaking.

The film moves through its gears and there were a lot of belly laughs and moments of horror.  I feel that you need a director who is in absolute control of a film’s construction and tone to pull this off successfully.  I also wonder whether the extremity and absurdity will alienate a mainstream audience.  I love that the final act can be interpreted in two very different and both equally valid ways.  I tend toward a more trauma-induced explanation but Mr007 took it literally. We both agreed that it owed something to Lars Von Trier’s MELANCHOLIA and that the themes of the film are a perfect encapsulation of all that’s wrong with our current moment: whether the banality and venality of corporate life, climate change or the rise of conspiracy nutters to high office.

There is nothing not to love about this film.

BUGONIA has a running time of 120 minutes. It played Venice, Telluride and London. It opens in the USA on October 31st and in the UK on November 7th.

CIVIL WAR*****

CIVIL WAR is a film that is politically, visually and aurally challenging. It is vital, important and politically astute.  I think a lot of criticism that's been thrown at it about being apoliticalis unfair and I'll get into why.  But most of all this is a film that sits with you - that moves you - that provokes you to thought and also features one of the most hilarious drop tracks of De La Soul's Say No Go! What more can you want from a film?

CIVIL WAR has been written and directed by Alex Garland who started off as a novelist with The Beach and then moved into writing for film and then directing. He created the amazing TV show Devs and actually a lot of the cast from that reappear in this film. He has come to represent one of the most thoughtful voices about the real structural challenges facing us as a species which I can't believe I'm saying because it sounds so pretentious! But films like EX MACHINA and 28 DAYS LATER challenge what it is to be human and a morally centred being. And now with CIVIL WAR he is tackling head on political divisiveness and everything about the current times in which we live that pit person against person, identity against identity, and tribe against tribe.

In its structure, this movie it is a road movie.  It's four journalists in a car going from New York to Washington DC. It stars Kirsten Dunst as Lee Miller, named after the real life journo who was first into Dachau. This is referenced in the film so Alex Garland is being very explicit about his references. I also think the character is based on the late Marie Colvin.  Lee is accompanied by Joel who's played by Wagner Moura of Narcos fame. He is charismatic and a really good counterbalance to Kirsten Dunst's Lee who is  held together tightly as if all her trauma might spill out if she cracks a smile. Lee and Joel have two interlopers in the car. First, we have have Sammy played by Steven McKinley Henderson. He'll be known to you if you watch Devs. He is an old school reporter and it's implied that he worked or still does work for the New York Times. He doesn't think they should be going to DC but he also wants that story. Lee and Joel are also accompanied by a very young aspiring photo journalist who kind of blags a ride. She is called Jesse and is played by Cailee Spaeny, who recently played Priscilla Presley in Sophia Coppola's biopic.  

In a sense the Journey of the film is twofold.  We're going from New York to DC to see what hell is happening in America but also I think that there's a message about generation Z having to confront the reality of what is happening and get blooded into war. There is a tragic mantel being handed from Lee to Jessie - a toughening up and a hardening and a locking down of emotion. I have seen some people criticize the character of Jessie and I would say the only flaw I find in this film is the final interaction between the two photo journalists. I'm not going to say more for fear of spoiling it but I think I would have maybe played that slightly differently or written it differently.

Our four journalists start off in a New York that is having power cuts and where there are violent protests and suicide bombers. As they journey down to DC they've got to skirt around Philadelphia to somehow get to DC which is the front line of the Civil War then as now.  They're seeing an America that's ravaged and where armed militia have taken the breakdown in institutional authority as an opening to wield their own authority.  

Nowhere is that more chillingly conveyed than in a short cameo by Jesse Plemons, who of course is the real life husband of Kirsten Dunst. He has a very small role to play but it's absolutely I think the the philosophical and political heart of this film. He asks a question of each of our journalists: "what kind of Americans are you?" I think that to me is the line of the film because it hints at the fact that it's no longer enough to say you're an American.  You have to say if you are a progressive or a Republican or a Mega supporter or a whatever it is - whatever label - whatever qualifier.  This is the problem that leads to the War, and I would bet you money this scene comes half way through the film.

The political setup of this film has caused a lot of controversy and I don't really understand why. There is a president of the United States and it is not ambiguous at all: this guy is a fascist! How do we know? He serving his third term and we know that's illegal under the Constitution right. We know he's abolished the FBI. We know he has ordered the Army to shoot on American citizens. So this guy's a Fascist and later on when they're talking about potentially getting an interview with him Sammy who's the older journalist says you know these these dictators always disappoint you when you meet them - Ceaucescu, Gaddafi et al - when you meet them in the flesh they are smaller men than you think they're going to be so he's clearly bracketing the President in that category.

What is I think troubling to some people is that the people fighting this fascist takeover or the two states of the Western Forces are Texas and California that's blowing people's minds right because you have what's perceived to be a very right-wing State and a very left-wing State joining forces in this film.  But you've got to free yourself from your contemporary politics and you've just got to see this is the way the film's going to position itself so as to speak to both sides of the aisle.  Moreover, the film is making a point about how people abuse military power. We see the official United States Army massacring civilians but we also see individual militia committing extra-judicial murder and lynchings and even the liberating WF army is shooting unarmed civilians. So  I think there is a message there about how invading forces act and maybe it's a commentary on what Imperial forces have done throughout history but I think the message that Alex Garland is going is giving in this film is they're but for the grace of God. I think he's making a point that however this fascism begins and whichever of the states comes together to fight against it it's going to unleash the worst of us.

I cannot speak highly enough of this film. I think it's beautifully shot and beautifully acted.  I would love to see Kirsten dun and Jesse Plemons up for awards.  I think it packs an emotional punch.  I think there are images that are just haunting and I really hope it serves to tell its audience on both sides of the political aisle "look where this leads if we don't find some kind of common ground and some kind of ability to talk through our differences in a civil manner (pun intended) as opposed to splitting into identitarian tribes where one side's good one side's evil and and conversations impossible and we are only left with the most extreme options this is film making at its finest and I hope it gets the audience it deserves."

Civil War is rated R it has running time of 109 minutes it it is currently on release in the UK and the USA. It is no coincidence that it's been released on April 12th - 13th - the anniversary of the Battle of Fort Sumter in 1861 and the start of the US Civil War.

KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON*** - BFI London Film Festival 2023 - Day 5

Martin Scorsese is an iconic masterful film-maker and his latest film, KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON is perfection in every frame. The problem is, to quote the King in Amadeus, there are too many notes.  Scorsese's film is three and a half hours long and could easily have shed an hour of its running time and lost none of its narrative coherence, political importance or emotional resonance. I fear that Scorsese has become a victim of the lack of discipline afforded to directors funded by streamers.  He has lost sight of what it feels like to be a cinema audience asked to endure nearly four hours of a beautifully crafted but lugubrious narrative.  Maybe he should just admit that - as much as he advocates for cinema - this is just meant to be viewed on Apple TV over consecutive nights as a kind of self-curated TV series.

The film takes place in Osage County, Oklahoma and tells the true story of a series of horrific murders that took place in the inter-war years.  The Osage discovered oil on their land, and became ludicrously wealthy thanks to head rights to the leases.  But the white man could not abide this upending of the racial order, and just as he took revenge on the black middle classes in Tulsa, he took revenge in Osage.  Osage were often placed under a kind of conservatorship so they couldn't freely spend their wealth, they were ripped off by white merchants, and finally they were married and murdered for their head rights.

This film and the excellent book upon which it is based by David Grann focuses on the story of one family, while making it clear that there were many other murders. Mollie Burckhardt is one of four sisters, whose mother will eventually leave them her head rights.  Mollie falls for Ernest Burckhardt, whose uncle "King" Hale poses as a friend of the Osage while plotting to make sure that all of that inheritance flows to his nephew. The tragedy of the tale is seeing how far Ernest betrayed the woman he loved, and his own children, because "I sure do like that money". Eventually the crimes become so heinous, that, with the help of substantial Osage lobbying, Washington cannot ignore them. The nascent FBI is called in and justice is served of a sort.

The structure of this film is broadly speaking two hours of family life and murder followed by 90 minutes of police and courtroom procedural.  I feel we could have lost a lot of time from both but particularly the latter section. That said, as I said, everyone is on top form here. Robbie Robertson's score (his last) is kinetic - Rodrigo Prieto's cinematography is beautiful; Lily Gladstone is magisterial as Mollie and Leonardo di Caprio and Robert de Niro are compelling as her husband and his uncle respectively. I just felt zoned out by the end of it, and the final epilogue of justice lost its impact, which is a tremendous shame.

KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON has a running time of 206 minutes and is rated R. It played Cannes and London 2023. It goes on global release on October 20th.

THE POWER OF THE DOG***** - BFI London Film Festival - Day 6

Jane Campion returns to the Festival with her breathtaking and slippery adaptation of Thomas Savage's novel.  The film is set in Montana in the 1920s and cinematographer  Ari Wegner (TRUE HISTORY OF THE KELLY GANG) creates landscapes so stunning that I really hope she wins awards for this work. I also implore you to try and see this film on the largest screen you can find when Netflix puts it out on limited release rather than waiting to watch it at home.

The movie stars Benedict Cumberbatch as a cattle rancher called Phil Burbank.  When we meet him he's a nasty homophobic misogynistic bully who strides around unwashed and intimidating all and sundry. But as the movie enters its second hour we learn that Phil has many layers and our understanding of him deepens and softens. 

The target of Phil's bullying behaviour are his soft-hearted and plain-talking brother George's new wife Rose (played by real life couple Jesse Plemons and Kirsten Dunst). When we meet Rose she is a timid lonely widow, running a small rooming house alongside her teenage son Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee). Both Rose and Peter are mocked by Phil, but his brother George genuinely falls for her and takes her to live in a dark brooding grand house.  Rose is intimidated by Phil most of all, but also by George's fancy friends and parents. Dunst breaks our heart with her portrait of a woman brought to ruin by intimidation.

It's absolutely key that we believe in her ruin because that becomes the motivating point of the plot - both her reactions to and the motives of Phil and her son Peter and the relationship they form when he come home from school. What I love about the film is that even as we reach the final fifteen minutes it could go one of many ways depending on our interpretation of each character's feelings and character. I can honestly say that I was genuinely surprised by the outcome, but that when I saw it, I felt it was authentic and had been properly established in prior scenes. In other words, Jane Campion is playing fair with us.

Overall, THE POWER OF THE DOG is just a stunning film - beautifully written, scored, acted, filmed - the pacing perfection and the unfolding mystery gripping. 

THE POWER OF THE DOG is rated R and has a running time of 125 minutes. The film played Venice, Toronto and London 2021. It will be released on Netflix on December 1st.

JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH

JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH is a stunningly made, deeply affecting, beautifully acted, chamber drama about the events that led to the real life assassination of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton in 1969 at the age of just 21. His age is startling when we see him portrayed with such power, conviction and charisma in an award-winning performance by British actor Daniel Kaluuya. His Hampton is thickly accented, profoundly articulate and rousing in his stirring message of black activism and social aid. We are carried away by his powerful presence, just as Dominique Fishback's quiet poetry-loving student Deborah Johnson is, and her subtle but profound performance is equally award-worthy.  She is swept up in Hampton's activism, falls heavily pregnant and has to look on in admiration but also fear as he becomes increasingly convinced of his forthcoming martyrdom. So much of her performance is wordless, and she manages to convey so much conflicting emotion through her eyes. It's deeply impressive. 

The third person in this four-hand psychological drama is LaKeith Stanfield's William O'Neal. When we first meet him he's impersonating a cop and boosting cars. The Feds hold the threat of jail time over him and force him to become an informat. Pretty soon he's Hampton's trusted head of security, and we feel that he absolutely believes in Fred's mission even while snitching on him. The deep tragedy of  O'Neal's situation - conveyed in a subtle and heart-breaking performance by Stanfield - is the counterpoint to the tragedy of Deborah Johnson's situation.  We know that she will have to raise her child alone as the widow of a slain activst. And we know that O'Neal's guilt at his role in that FBI assassination will lead to his suicide, despite his on-tape assertion that he just did what he had to do.  

The final player in this four-hander is Jesse Plemons' FBI agent Roy Mitchell. He is also an equivocal character. This is best summed up in the final scene between Mitchell and O'Neal in a restaurant peopled entirely by white diners and staff.  Both characters are ostensibly setting up an assassination and doing so willingly - Mitchell to serve the Bureau's political aims; O'Neal to secure financial freedom.  But each looks utterly uncomfortable. Mitchell knows the FBI is rotten and that this is unjustifiable extra-judicial murder but he's a career man. And O'Neal is just so far stepped in blood it would be as hard to wade back as to go forward.

The resulting film is a profoundly moving and important biopic that teaches us how impressive Hampton was, and how despicable was the plot to take him down, and the toll it took on those who did it, and those who were left behind. It cleaves as closely to the historical record as a work of fiction can. It is perfect? Not quite. A cameo from Martin Sheen as J Edgar Hoover was utterly unnecessary and cartoonish. But pretty much everything else is so beautifully rendered as to make this one of the most outstanding films of the year. I cannot wait to see what director Shaka King does next.

JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH is rated R and has a running time of 126 minutes. It played Sundance 2021 and was released on the internet on February 12th.

THE IRISHMAN - BFI London Film Festival 2019 - Closing Night Gala

Who killed Jimmy Hoffa? Does anyone care? Martin Scorsese sure does. He spends three and half arse-numbing hours answering who and why. We only put up with this because it's Scorsese. And even then barely just.  If created for theatrical release, then this film is just too long.  It could easily lose twenty minutes of its opening hour and thirty minutes of its closing hour. Once Hoffa's dead, do we really care about his assassin's lonely old age?  I would argue that the indulgence Netflix afforded Scorsese is a hindrance here.  It has allowed him to be baggy where a conventional studio would have demanded a sub-180 minute cut.  Still, this is a Netflix release so I guess people will watch this at home over a few evenings. If so, that's a shame because Scorsese is at the top of his game when it comes to his visual style, choice of music, kinetic editing, and brilliant evocation of mood and era.  This film really does deserve to be seen on a big screen, for all the physical discomfort that arises.

Of course, no-one really cares who killed Jimmy Hoffa anymore.  I don't know many people of my generation who know how powerful he was in 1960s America, or the mystery surrounding his death, let alone those younger than me.  Scorsese's screenwriter Steve Zaillian seems to acknowledge the problem a couple of times in his screenplay, as aged up versions of characters try to explain to younger interlocuters that Hoffa was the second most powerful man behind the President - a powerful Union leader who could make or break a political campaign, and whose multi-billion pension fund could and did bankroll the mafia. He disappeared in 1975.  Everyone acknowledges it was a mafia hit.  You don't threaten mafia funding and survive. But the precise facts around who did the job remain unsolved. The Feds have their suspicions. But we'll never know. This film, however, posits a theory based on the late-in-life confession of long-term mafia hitman Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran.

And so this film tells us the story of The Irishman, beginning with not one but two framing devices. The outer device shows us Sheeran (an aged up Robert de Niro) narrating his sins to what we'll later find out is a Catholic priest - his sole visitor in a nursing home, given that Sheeran has alienated his family.  This reminded me a bit of AMADEUS - having the murderer confess, but not particularly seek atonement, to murdering a man who was purportedly his friend.  Because Sheeran wasn't just a mob hitman - he was also sent by the mob to be Hoffa's protection. Their relationship was one of trust and intimacy, even sleeping in twin beds like Burt and Ernie. It certainly makes the killing emotionally brutal.

The framing device within the framing device is watching Sheeran on a road-trip from Philly to Detroit with his mentor, mob boss Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci), and their wives. This is meant to be a trip to a wedding, but it becomes apparent in the final third of the film that Bufalino is going to call on Sheeran's higher loyalty to him than to Hoffa, by making him kill Hoffa personally. "I have to put you in this" he says.  

And then finally, we get to the meat of the film, which is a linear re-telling of Sheeran's story from the time he met Bufalino to his life in the nursing home. He starts of as a truck driver who steals for the mafiosi, then starts driving for them, then "painting walls" aka murdering people, and providing protection for Hoffa. The fact that Sheeran even makes it to the nursing home is already a gag, as time and again, we see darkly humorous subtitles telling us how various mafiosi were brutally killed shortly after the action we're witnessing. Sheeran is literally the last man standing.

The resulting story is - as I said - baggy in its first and especially final hour - but when it's solidly in the meat of its 1960s and 1970s storyline it's as pacy and compelling and stunningly put together as anything Scorsese has ever done.  The way in which he frames a shot, or explicitly moves a lens as if its our eye panning a room, or jump cuts from a violent shot to a stylish lounge scene - the way in which he uses incidental music - it's just another league from the other films at this festival, or on release, period.  The performances are also tremendous, and I have to say the subtle use of CGI de-ageing tech is an absolute success.

For me, the star of the show is Joe Pesci. His performance is so quiet, so powerful, so menacing, and so controlled.  He can condemn a man to death with the slightest, barely noticeable, nod of his head. It's also interesting to compare him with Harvey Keitel as the even more powerful Angelo Bruno. He barely says a word in the entire movie. The two characters are quiet, understated and petrifying.  Contrast this with Al Pacino's Jimmy Hoffa - perfect casting as Hoffa needs to be (at times) bombastic, to contrast with the mafiosi's quiet menace. Hoffa's problem is a complete lack of self-awareness. Even when they're all turning on him, he just doesn't get it. He still obsesses over "my union".  He doesn't understand he sold it to the mafia years prior.  But this isn't one of those pastiche Pacino large performance. Sure, Hoffa has elements of that. But he can also be quiet and fragile. There's also a lovely contrast between Hoffa, who's downfall is that he's so emotional, seeing the benefits of that in a beautiful family life. He's even close to Sheeran's daughter Peggy (lovely facial acting in an almost wordless and thankless role).  By contrast, Peggy instinctively withdraws from her father and Bufalino.  They are left alone.  As for De Niro, his performance is strong, as we come to expect, but his character is in some ways the least interesting of the "big three". I would nominate Pesci for the awards, every time.

In smaller roles, and I really can't state this highly enough, can we get some awards love for Stephen Graham as the dangerously explosive mafiosi Tony Pro?  There are a couple of scenes where he has to go toe to toe with Pacino's Hoffa at his most powerful and domineering and my god, Graham's Tony Pro gives as good as he gets.  Graham is in no way outclassed by Pacino, and Pacino is pretty fucking classy.  Best Supporting Actor? No doubt.

THE IRISHMAN is rated R and has a running time of 209 minutes. The movie played New York and London 2019. It opens in cinemas on limited release on November 1st in the USA and November 8th in the UK, and will be released globally on Netflix on November 27th.

VICE

VICE is an occasionally very funny film that contains a great performance. But it's also an overlong, baggy mess in which half of what the director throws at the film fails to stick. Even worse, it's a film that pretends to be as close to factual as possible, even while committing the cardinal mistake of painting Bush 43 as nice but stupid (he was neither).  And worst of all, it's a film that pretends to give us some kind of emotional truth about Cheney's loving home life while accusing him of being a venal power-hungry shit. This is all fine, so long as you don't then claim that what you're doing isn't partisan but "factual".  It's simply asinine for a movie director to claim that he's just showing us facts, when he's already admitted that much of what Cheney did is secret.  You can't claim that it's fact that Cheney did X or thought Y.  And to then throw in a mid-credits sequence that wants to cut off criticisms of the film as being nonsense, because it's factual.... well this is the worst kind of bullshit.

But anyway, there are many good performances in bad films.  Christian Bale's depiction of Dick Cheney is indeed a great performance and worth the ticket price. Unlike Rami Malek donning some fake teeth and an accent to play Freddie Mercury, Bale goes way beyond a mere impression (as perfect as his accent is).  In fact, it's pretty insulting to see both of these performances nominated for the same award.  Bale inhabits his character - gives him nuance, and depth, and a whole range of emotions. He has Cheney be a genuinely loyal steadfast father, a loving and proud husband, an almost absurdly slow-moving politician, but also a greedy, conniving, Machiavellian thinker.  When Bale's Cheney turns to the screen at the end of the film to address us, I utterly believed his apologia pro vita sua to be authentic and convincing.

Bale is matched in his endeavours by Amy Adams as his wife Lynne, but I'm pretty sick of two-dimensional Lady MacBeth characters and found little to really engage with.  I thoroughly enjoyed Steve Carell as Donald Rumsfeld, but he's played, literally, for laughs. But Sam Rockwell looked like a Mad magazine version of W.  So yeah - this is pretty much a one-man show.

As for McKay, the gonzo collage style directing that made THE BIG SHORT so successful goes haywire in VICE.  This film is indulgent, over-long, bizarre, heavy-handed, bludgeoning. I get the fishing metaphor Adam! I don't need to continually cut back to a sinister looking fish moving through water or have end-credits of bait.  I also really think I'd rather not have you use Cheney's heart-transplant donor - a young dead veteran - mouth your script from beyond the grave. That's just distasteful.  Overall, I don't want to get my politics from Mad magazine, and that's what this film is. 

VICE has a running time of 132 minutes and is rated R.  It was released last December in most global markets. It will play Berlin 2019.  

HOSTILES - Late late review

Writer-director Scott Cooper (CRAZY HEART, BLACK MASS) returns to our screens with a deeply affecting, beautifully shot and acted western, penned by Donald Stewart, who scripted the The Hunt For Red October.  The story is set in 1892.  A tortured civil war hero called Blocker (Christian Bale - superb) has spent the intervening period slaughtering Native Americans.  And then, he's given a galling order, to accompany a dying Cheyenne chief (Wes Studi) across the country to Montana so that he can die in his native land in Montana. And so what we get is  road trip of sorts, south to north through the most magisterial but hostile landscape. This hostility is displayed in a prologue that sees a settler called Rosalie (Rosamund Pike) lose her entire family in a vicious Comanche raid.  When Blocker rescues her, they and the Cheyenne come together in mutual defense against the Comanche who are tracking them. So who is truly hostile to whom? 

As the movie opens it's clearly the white people who are hostile to the Cheyenne. But Rosalie's desperate grief (Pike really goes for it in a career best performance) prompts an act of kindness from the Cheyenne and after that a kind of uneasy truce emerges that builds towards genuine respect and a willingness to die to defend the Other. Of course this comes at the expense of making villains out of the Comanche.  There's no real attempt to understand why they have turned to such violence, except that we know what Blocker and his ilk have done in the past. And so we end up getting evil "red indians".

Despite this mis-step I really loved this film.  Christian Bale's portrays a really complex tortured man mostly through his physical presence and facial expressions. Pike's transformation from bordering-mentally ill grieving woman to fierce warrior is stunning. Masanobu Takayanagi's cinematography is breath-taking and I loved seeing the American landscape change as we move from south to north. And last but not least, Max Richter's score is heart-breakingly beautiful. I felt that I had come to love these characters and care deeply about their future. And was held on the edge of my seat to the end of the very final scene - one that affected me profoundly.  

HOSTILES is rated R and has a running time of 134 minutes. It was released at the end of 2017 and is now available to rent and own. 

BRIDGE OF SPIES

I begin with the proviso that I am not a fan of Steven Spielberg's films. Despite the high quality photography and acting, I always feel emotionally manipulated. Worse still, in his latter movies I have begun to feel bored as he constantly reworks the same themes - the search for a father figure, the need for a perfect hero, the idea that goodness must always win, even if the overarching time and tenor is bad.  He seemed to me to create movies that were high gloss schmaltz.  

Everything changes with BRIDGE OF SPIES, and I suspect that this has something profoundly to do with the fact that it was written by the Coen Brothers and stars Mark Rylance in a character of deeply ambivalent motives. The result is a film with a mordant wit, moral ambiguity, and one of the most convincing depictions of post-war Berlin that I have seen on screen. It is a movie of intelligence and nuance. Indeed, apart from the last five minutes where the Spielbergian schmaltz seeps back in, it's damn near perfect.

BLACK MASS - BFI London Film Festival 2015 - Day Six

BLACK MASS reminds me a lot of THE PROGRAM. Both are big glossy biopics on topics I am fascinated by, whose source books I have read, and whose cast and crew I admire. I found both to be well-made but ultimately rather dull linear paint-by-numbers narratives.  And in both cases, the real reason to watch are the outstanding acting performances.  In the case of BLACK MASS, that's Johnny Depp as the infamous South Boston gangster Jimmy "Whitey" Bulger and Joel Edgerton as his childhood friend FBI Agent John Connolly.

The story of BLACK MASS is so messed up you couldn't make it up, and speaks volumes about the incestuous corrupt politics of Boston in the 70s and 80s.  In what other universe of normality could Billy Bulger rise to be State Senator while at the same time openly consorting with his elder brother, a known felon?  And what kind of messed up world does their mutual childhood friend decide to co-opt Jimmy as an informant, so that while he and the FBI take down the mafia in a Rico case, Jimmy can move in on their territory?

THE PROGRAM - BFI London Film Festival 2015 - Day Four

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

Stephen Frears’ new fictional retelling of the now sadly familiar Lance Armstrong story is NOT a great film, but it does contain a great performance. And if Ben Foster doesn’t win an Oscar for his turn as the disgraced seven times Tour de France cheat, then there’s a really outstanding movie out there that I have yet to see.

Hugely informed by USADA’s investigation, Floyd Landis’ testimony and the heroic David Walsh’s investigative journalism, this film is not a straightforward biopic. We never meet Lance’s mum, or spend time with his wife or children. This movie is, to invert the book title, all about the bike, and all about the dope. We meet Lance as a young racer in the early nineties literally getting mud splashed in his face by dopers he will never beat unless he “gets with the programme” - and that’s the programme of micro-doping, EPO, testosterone and cortisone invented by the ever-proud and morally deficient Michele Ferrari. John Hodge’s script loses no time in taking us on a fast paced tour through Lance’s early failure, cancer, that fateful and contested meeting with Andrieus, and onto his Tour success. We’re an hour in and he’s the ultimate sports hero. But we see vanity cut him down as much as it drove on - both in returning to the Tour and in cutting Floyd Landis lose.