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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

DJANGO UNCHAINED - Castigat ridendo mores

Quentin Tarantino returns to our screens with his gonzo Western homage slash anti-slavery revenge movie DJANGO UNCHAINED. It's arguably his best work since PULP FICTION - a movie so tightly drawn, so beautifully produced, so funny, so earnest, so delicately handled. Yes! Delicately handled.  There may be the trademark pulpy shootouts, and those archetypal Tarantino tense long-form dialogue scenes, but watch how Tarantino handles the politics of slavery here.  It's so deft, so respectful, so bracing, it achieves in the context of a pulp mash-up what no earnest AMISTAD like film could achieve.

The first shot of the three hour epic is of Jamie Foxx's whip-scarred back. The camera holds its gaze, forcing us to internalise what slavery really means.  It's not the forced silence of Hollywood, only to be occasionally broken by Mammy in GONE WITH THE WIND, or Spielberg's dignified oppressed. It's violent, and sadistic, sweat and blood-stained.  Throughout the film, Tarantino shocks us with visions of slaves in hook ringed chains, metal face guards, branding irons and most appallingly, a torture chamber called a hotbox. I don't think any movie has brought us up close to the reality of slavery, and given us, in the form of Christoph Waltz' Dr King Schultz, a liberal almost preternaturally modern pair of eyes through which to view it. Then notice how carefully Tarantino shows us the violence of slavery.  When he wants us to see something, he holds the camera on it, preventing us from looking away. But look how carefully he shows us Broomhilda's (Kerry Washington) limp body being wheelbarrowed out of the hotbox.  He's very careful to show us the horror without exploitatively showing us her nakedness. Or in another key episode, look at how he shows us the sadistic plantation owner and Mandingo fighting boss Calvin Candie (Leonardo di Caprio) ordering a runaway slave to be torn apart by dogs.  We hear the horror, and see it reflected it the faces of the onlookers, and we see fleeting glimpses, but Tarantino is careful not to exploit it. Even in a pivotal later seen, when our conscious, Dr Schultz, remembers it, the powerful imagery is held to a minimum.  

The film falls into three broad parts. In Act One, we meet Dr Schultz, a bounty hunter with a smooth tongue and a faster trigger-finger, as he  meets and frees the slave Django. Waltz is characteristically charismatic, holding our attention as the film's hero, almost to the detriment of Django, at least until the final act.  They make a deal - Django will help him as a bounty hunter, and then he'll help Django find and free his beloved Broomhilda.  In the second act, the initial bounty has been killed, and we move to a kind of training montage. Django becomes a sharp-shooter, and the two form a bond as Schultz explains the significance of the Siegried-Brunnhilda legend.  Our heroes have a run-in with the Clan, that plays like something out of a Coen Brothers movie.  For me, this second act was the weakest of the piece. It felt like the film was meandering, and I particularly disliked the stunt casting of Jonah Hill as it brought me out of the film.  In the final act, our heroes meet the real anti-hero of the piece, Calvin Candie and his sidekick, the obsequious head house slave Stephen (Samuel L Jackson).   This is where the true horror of slavery is exposed, where Di Caprio gets to chew up the scenery, and where righteous anger is unleashed.

The structure, revenge motif and complete mastery of DJANGO bears no small resemblance to INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, but this film feels more tightly written, less meandering and more focussed.  There's nothing as memorable or as tense as the initial scene where the Nazi general is sitting in the French farmhouse looking for hidden Jews, or as the bar-room scene where the English spy is given away, but as a complete movie, DJANGO feels superior. 

I think the courage to show what slavery was, and the restraint in showing it, especially in the context of what is essentially an exploitation-revenge movie, makes DJANGO UNCHAINED a peerless film - certainly one of the finest of Tarantino's career, and easily the most important.  But if all that makes it sound too earnest, rest assured that this is also a movie for cinema lovers - full of references to old classics, belly-laugh dialogue and ludicrous shoot-outs.  You will enjoy this film, and be educated by stealth - the perfect combination.

DJANGO UNCHAINED is on release in the USA, Canada, Belgium, France, Chile, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Kuwait, Lebanon, the Netherlands, Macedonia, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, Ukraine, Albania, Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Mexico, Norway, Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden and the UK. It opens on January 25th in  Australia, Denmark, New Zealand, Portugal, Lithuania and Uruguay. It opens on January 31st in Argentina, on February 27th in Taiwan, on March 1st in Japan, on March 21st in Singapore and in March 29th in India. 

DJANGO UNCHAINED is rated R in the USA and has a running time of 165 minutes.

LAKEVIEW TERRACE - Neil LaBute drops the ball

LAKEVIEW TERRACE speaks more intelligently and honestly about racial tensions in America than that godawful, offensive schmaltz, THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES. Problem is, LAKEVIEW TERRACE still pulls its punches. 

It begins as a brilliantly nuanced, slow-burning thriller. Kerry Washington and Patrick Wilson play a mixed race couple who move into a house next door to Samuel L Jackson's racist cop. He objects to their mixed-race marriage but writer/director Neil LaBute is careful to make it hard for us to judge him. Maybe the cop is simply being admirably honest.  After all, the couple both admit to difficulties with each other's families - the forced declarations of how much his family love her - her father quizzing him on how he'll keep their mixed-race children safe.  Their families are politically correct on the surface but racist underneath. Maybe outright condemnation is the most honest response? And isn't the racist cop right to object to the couple having sex in their pool where his kids can see them? Isn't he right to object to the husband throwing his fag ends into his yard?

The tension builds. The racist cop is clearly going after the couple. The husband responds by being cowardly and childishly aggressive by turns. The wife gets pregnant accidentally on purpose and then gets mad when her husband isn't ecstatic. All is not well. 

The problem is that Neil LaBute takes the easy way out. Just like the wildfires that are encroaching upon their houses, the movie ends in a conflagration. The racist cop is given a convenient prosaic excuse for his racism that has nothing to do with racism at all, really, and the couple get a convenient reconciliation. It's all just too neat and too ad hominem. I wanted LaBute to tell us something about the reality of mixed-race relationships. Instead he exploited a hot-button social issue as an unusual backdrop to a rather mundane thriller with a lollipop ending.

I loved IN THE COMPANY OF MEN. But recently I've found Neil LaBute's work to be rather lazy. In his recent London play FAT PIG and again in LAKEVIEW TERRACE he flirts with big social issues and then collapses into easy solutions. Poor show.

LAKEVIEW TERRACE was released earlier this year in the US, Canada, France, Argentina, Russia, Sweden, Venezuela, the Philippines, Singapore, Italy, Spain, Egypt, Denmark, Mexico, Romania and Greece. It is currently on release in the UK and opens next week in Belgium. It opens on December 18th in Germany and Portugal and opens in Australia on January 29th.

London Film Festival Catch-Up - MIRACLE AT ST ANNA

MIRACLE AT ST ANNA is a big, baggy war epic about the African-American experience in World War Two. Writer-director Spike Lee tackles big themes intelligently and just about keeps a hold of all the complex material in the movie.

The key question the movie asks is what stance African-American soldiers should have taken during the war. After all, in the US they were facing extreme racism - as shown in a pivotal scene in the centre of the film in which German POWs are treated better than African-American serving officers. And even when they were fighting, we see white commanding officers treat the African-American troops with disdain - actively putting their lives at risk because they fundamentally don't accord them the same value. So how far should the African-American soldiers identify with and support the war effort? The argument is played out in the conflict between Bishop Cummings (Michael Ealy) and Aubrey Stamps (Derek Luke). Bishop is in the war for what he can get - which is a good time where possible. He isn't going to try to get on with his white senior officers. By contrast, Stamps sees the war as a means to self-advancement. He wants to do well and get ahead, believing that the war will fundamentally change attitudes back home.

A second question the movie deals with is how far we should take direct action for a just cause when innocent people will be hurt by it. The Italian partisans in the movie are fighting against the Germans, but the villages they hide out in are subject to vicious retaliation. The partisan leader, Peppi Grotto (Pierfrancesco Favino) feels immense guilt for having indirectly caused the massacre of innocent villagers.

The third question the film deals with is the question of faith. Throughout the film, one of the most apparently dim-witted of the soliders, Sam Train (Omar Benson Miller) believes that the marble statue that he is carting around is a lucky charm. It's easy to mock train because he's such a dolt, but the statue does serially provide a sort of protection to whoever is holding it. It even allows one of the soldiers to survive the campaign and live to a ripe old age in New York when, in the movie's framing device, he finally takes revenge on the partisan who betrayed them.

The guts of this film are well executed and intelligently told. Spike Lee is at his best when he's confronting the subtle tensions in race politics. But there's too much romantic sentimental jibberish that muddies the movie. Most egregiously, the relationship between Train and a little Italian boy he's taking care of is sweet - and speaks to the mythology of the statue - but is deeply distracting. It's also weird that in a movie of subtle conflicts and flawed characters, Spike Lee has created a mythic simple-minded good guy. Train seems two-dimensional compared to everyone else in the film. The second major flaw is the denoument - which is pure unadulterated schmaltz that seems about as realistic as the final scene in Shawshank (which I think everyone agrees was unnecessary.)

MIRACLE AT ST ANNA played Toronto and London 2008 and was released last month in the US.

I THINK I LOVE MY WIFE - in which Chris Rock neuters himself

Poor Chris Rock. He has a successful career as a stand-up comedian who specialises in aggressive, outlandish commentary on relations between the sexes and relations between the races. He's appeared in, and made a couple of, movies but each time he essentially plays the on-stage Chris Rock character. In DOGMA, for instance, he's Chris Rock as the thirteenth disciple - loud, funny and pissed off AND a disciple.

The problem with I THINK I LOVE MY WIFE is that Chris Rock has delusions of grandeur. Admirably he decides to break out of the Chris Rock persona and make a straight family drama about a bored married man tempted into infidelity. (it's a remake of Eric Rohmer romatic-comedy cum morality tale, L'AMOUR L'APRES-MIDI). We know Chris Rock is serious because he's wearing glasses, a moustache and a suit and because he only lets his loud, angry persona explode for a few moments in the movie. So, first up, fans of Chris Rock, of which I am one, shouldn't approach this film for classic Chris Rock humour.

That aside, how does I THINK I LOVE MY WIFE work as a semi-serious discourse on the pros and cons of married life? Not brilliantly, and that's fundamentally the fault of the scriptwriters - Rock and Louis CK. They cast Gina Torres as the boring suburban wife and Kerry Washington as the temptress Nikki Tru but give neither of them anything to do except be whiny and seductive respectively. With such two-dimensional options, the central character's moral dilemma seems two-dimensional too. There's no real sense of danger. There's no real sense of why someone as hot and vapid and Nikki would go for this suburban schlub. And frankly, there's no sense of why someone as mature and composed as his wife would stick with him either.

So you have this semi-straight, two-dimensional family drama for an hour and a half which is boring and bland but, hey, at least Chris is trying to break out. But then, the writers wimp out and give us the most bizarre, tone-breaking, vomit-inducing ending I've seen all year, with two of the characters declaring their love by means of song. Ye gods. Did no one on set have the balls to say, "Chris, seriously, NO!"

I THINK I LOVE MY WIFE was released in 2007 and is available on DVD.

FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER - refreshingly simple

The new FANTASTIC FOUR movie is unpretentious, kind-hearted and fun. It won't win any awards, but after the bloated, god-awful summer blockbusters I've been subjected to this year, RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER is arguably the best summer movie I've seen this year.

You know the MO. The Fantastic Four are like a love-able family who happen to have super-powers. There's none of that secret identity, inner turmoil crap. The nearest we get to an emotional crisis is that Dr Fantastic (Ioan Gruffud) and The Invisible Girl (Jessica Alba) keep having their wedding interrupted by super-villains! And as for political allegory or delusions of grandeur, the only charge is a faint whiff of Gitmo in the interrogation of the Surfer, but this passes very quickly. Frankly, no-one's taking this moving too seriously. Chris Evans is clearly having a blast, Ioan Gruffud is making rain and the talentless Jessica Alba is proving that Hollywood really is an equal opportunities employer.

In this episode of the franchise, the apparent villain is The Silver Surfer. He's silver, he surfs, he has the voice of Larry Fishburne and the body of Doug Jones. More importantly, he's not really a bad guy but the herald for the truly horrific Galactos. The plot arc sees the FF persuading the Surfer to help them battle Galactos and their old nemesis Victor Von Doom.*

Like I said, FANTASTIC FOUR 2 is not a great comic-book movie in the vein of the first Sam Raimi's SPIDERMAN movie. But neither is it an embarassment in the manner of SPIDERMAN 3. So if you want a good old-fashioned mediocre comic-book flick: this is the movie for you!

FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER is on release.

*Minor criticism and spoiler: Bear in mind that I have never read a comic in my life.....But if the Surfer could destroy the Galactos all along, why didn't he do it in the first place? Surely that would have alleviated the threat to his home planet, his beloved, and left him free from being complicit in genocide?! Another unrelated questions for fanboys: does Von Doom look like the Emperor from Jedi in the comics too?