INSIDE OUT 2***

INSIDE OUT 2 was released this summer and has made just shy of USD1.7bn and counting on a USD200m budget. So two things are certain. 1) No-one needs another review of this film because everyone has already seen it.  2) Bob Iger is for sure gonna greenlight a threequel.

I found the film to be charming and spot on about the perils of puberty but basically blah. Maybe I am spoiled - the stunning animation and creativity are literally something I have seen before. The novelty and sheer heart of the first instalment got me all choked up in the threatre. This one, I admired, but it didn't hit me emotionally. Plus, I am hardly the target demographic.

Our protagonist Riley is now a 13 year old good kid dealing with increased anxiety and envy at the onset of puberty. She is sent to a sports camp with her two childhood best friends and faces the twin evils of wanting to hang with the cool kids, and doubting she is good enough to make the team. But of course, as we know she's a good kid, so no actual peril there.

Meanwhile, inside her head, the emotions we have come to know and love are joined by new puberty-laden baggage, and we get a new concept - the Sense of Self.  The message here is that it's damaging to try and only use good memories and feelings to create a Sense of Self. You have to let the bad stuff in too, and deal with it, and grow from it, and love it. So enough with the helicopter parenting parents!

Yep, Amy Poehler's Joy is very much the target of all those books I have been reading by NYU Professor Jonathan Haidt about the dangers of molly coddling kids in the real world, but letting them run wild in the virtual world. So as much as this film is aimed at kids, parents take note!

INSIDE OUT 2 has a running time of 96 minutes and is rated PG.

MAESTRO*** - BFI London Film Festival 2023 - Day 7

MAESTRO was the first of two films I watched today that were well directed and acted, but where the chosen subject matter was not worthy of the efforts taken. Basically this film can be summarised as "wife is cool with her husband's bisexuality until she isn't, but stays married anyways".  I mean, okay. Domestic drama is okay I guess.  And there's a lot of great dramatic acting showing this. But oh my god, with these performers, and this direction, it could've done so much more.

The film is written by, directed by, and stars Bradley Cooper of THE HANGOVER fame.  He is making a very deliberate career handbrake-turn into wannabe auteur status by telling the story of Leonard Bernstein - acclaimed composer, conductor, educator, performer.  What's interesting, and ultimately frustrating, is that he chooses to do so solely through the lens of Bernstein's marriage to the actress Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan - SHE SAID). 

In a sense, this is a really interesting thing to do. Montealegre was apparently a significant artist in her own right. She was apparently drawn to Bernstein's genius and was progressive enough to accept him as bisexual and to tolerate his affairs as long as he was discreet. Until she wasn't. She stays, but explains it as a kind of sick joke of not knowing herself enough. She thought she was modern enough to not mind, but was actually more in need of Bernstein's attention than she had anticipated. 

As for Bernstein, in Cooper's conception, his promiscuous bisexuality was merely another aspect of his greed for life in general. He wanted more of everything. He rejected people's expectations that he would focus on becoming "just" the first great American conductor, or another great American composer. He wanted it all. He wanted to compose a film score, or a broadway musical, or teach at Tanglewood, as much as he wanted to write a great orchestral work or conduct a great orchestra. And in this life of having it all, those around him were just squeezed out for time. 

The tragedy of this film is that in this beautifully-acted, rendered domestic drama, we never see the wider social or political ramifications.  Because for Leonard Bernstein his identity WAS political.  Being Jewish, not anglicising one's name, playing in Palestine and then Israel, was indeed a political act.  Being bisexual, indiscreetly so, was and arguably remains a political act. But Cooper isn't interested in that. Until he is.  In a tonally jarring near-final scene we find an old, widowed, fat, sweaty Bernstein dancing in a 1980s nightclub with a far younger male student. Had I been watching a film about consensual bisexual affairs or a version of TAR?  I felt blind-sided by this scene.  I wished the film had been dealing in this stuff all along. But it hadn't, so why the left-turn now?

Still, there's a lot to like in this film, and I will for sure watch Cooper's next directorial venture. The first hour in particular is kinetic and assured, with real visual flair.  Matthew Libatique's cinematography is as good as anything he's done since BLACK SWAN.  And kudos to Cooper for getting Bernstein's physicality, voice and conducting style, not least thanks to some absolutely superb make-up and prosthetic work. As for Mulligan, there's a single dramatic confrontation in the marital apartment that is a tour de force for both, but especially her. She is always excellent and especially so here. In smaller parts, I really liked Maya Hawke as their eldest child. 

But if you're coming for Bernstein the musician you are going to be disappointed, as I was. We only truly see about seven minutes of him conducting near the end of the film. It's the finale of Mahler 2 and it's stunning to behold. Like Bernstein, I wanted more. 

MAESTRO has a running time of 129 minutes and is rated R. It played Venice and London 2023 and will be released on December 20th on Netflix.

ASTEROID CITY**

Sigh.  

It feels as though Wes Anderson peaked somewhere around GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL and has been offering diminishing returns ever since. To be sure, ASTEROID CITY isn't quite as pointless as THE FRENCH DISPATCH but it isn't far off.  The film looks beautiful. It is as full of Wes Anderson being Wes Anderson as ever. But at what point do we just say, "Halt! Enough!" Because of all this useless beauty becomes merely self-parody if it doesn't also make us feel.

Maybe the problem is that the stuff that is meant to make us feel has been done before, many times, by Wes Anderson.  The self-cannibalisation just feels lazy.  How often can we watch a film about the awkwardness and sweetness of first love?  We've already seen it done better in MOONRISE KINGDOM and indeed in GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL, but with way more consequence in the latter.  The story of a widower struggling to tell his kids about their mother's death and calling in his father to help is also ripped straight out of THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS.  Ask yourself if Jason Schwartzman's emotional crisis, which barely registers on screen, moves you as much as Ben Stiller's manic energy in TENENBAUMS? Everywhere I looked at this film I saw pale dilutions of ideas already worked and reworked. And nothing approaching the mournful or comedic heights of the best of Anderson's oeuvre. It's like watching the last two decades of Woody Allen knowing that MANHATTAN was once possible.

ASTEROID CITY is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 105 minutes. It played Cannes 2023 and opened last month.

ONCE UPON A TIME...IN HOLLYWOOD

Quentin Tarantino's ONCE UPON A TIME...IN HOLLYWOOD is a triumph.  Indeed it may be my favourite of his films since the superlative JACKIE BROWN.  It's a love letter to old Hollywood, and drips with compassion for fading stars, and indulges in nostalgia for the days when radio stations were the soundtrack of our lives.  The movie stars Leonardo Di Caprio as Rick Dalton  - a fictional TV star of the 50s and 60s whose career is in the doldrums because of his age and alcoholism.  As a portrait of the fickle callousness of the star system, it's a moving film. There isn't much that's honourable or likeable in Rick, but he's our idiot, and to see him bested in his art and conversation by a child star (Trudi - a scene-stealing Julia Butters) is to weep for him. To see him lured by the quick cash of Spaghetti Westerns and saddled with a young wife is to laugh at our own frailty. He's an idiot, but we care that he's okay.  And we care largely because of the most humanising thing about him - his long and loyal friendship to his stuntman/driver/buddy Cliff Booth. In a career-best performance from Brad Pitt, Cliff is just a decent no bullshit kind of a guy. He's tough.  We see him beat up Bruce Lee in one of the most hilarious scenes in the film, and we hear rumours about a potentially murderous past, so the final showdown is well within the realms of his capabilities, despite his being high as a kite. There's something so tragic about his life in a mobile van, heating up tinned food, and something so likeable about his seeming indifference to it.  He's just a good guy. We see this too in his care for Bruce Dern's Spahn - exploited owner of the ranch in which the Manson Family are living. Which of course brings us to the other story in this film...

I think a lot of us came to this film thinking it was going to be a film about the Manson Murders and it's kind of discombobulating realising that it isn't really. We only meet Manson in one scene, and barely see Polanski from a distance at a party.  Polanski and Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) live next door to Rick, but their lives are largely separate.   And what of Tate?  She's barely given the same screen time or depth of character as the two male leads. She's just a sunny happy dancing blonde, exciting to see herself on screen, in a scene that will give anyone who knows about Tarantino's foot fetish the creeps.  I felt sad for Robbie, who has nothing to do in this film, but really sad for Sharon Tate, who apparently isn't worthy of an inner life.  We do see the events of that fateful night play out. The way in plays out won't surprise people who've seen Tarantino's recent films.  It's really fucking entertaining.  But...

ONCE UPON A TIME...IN HOLLYWOOD is rated R and has a running time of 119 minutes.  The film played Cannes 2019 and went on global release last summer. It is now available to stream, rent and own.